Email Marketing - How Much is Enough?

A recent MailChimp blog post looked in detail at email frequency, in response to this article and this one.

On one side we have the argument that increasing email frequency yields more revenue. The other side? Just the opposite: the more you send the lower your click through rate. So what is the deal?

Opt-in is king.

Today, most email marketing that we engage in with customers is opt-in. Your patrons want to hear from you. They are already interested. That does not mean you can email them into oblivion, but you have already started a conversation with them. Using other email lists (third party maybe) is of course different, but that is where segmenting comes in and knowing your target audience.

Sometimes it is just about brand awareness.

Not all emails are about click throughs or engagement. Unopened email with a compelling subject line and a good "From" email is a powerful brand message. I'll give an example. A friend recently told me about her experiences with email marketing with a Ticketsolve customer. She has two young kids and has on occasion taken them to see shows at The Ark (a cultural and performance centre dedicated to kids programming). She signed up for their email newsletter on one such family trip. As she explained, the emails serve as a reminder to her to buy tickets - even if she never opens the email. The "From" email is simply, "The Ark" and the subject line is a great reminder to book tickets soon - "June Bank holiday events at The Ark". She frequently buys tickets to The Ark, but rarely clicks through the emails she gets. As a customer, she would never even come up in click through analytics, but she is prompted to purchase just by the email in her inbox.

Reach, frequency, segmenting and engagement.

In email marketing I have to come down in agreement with John over at MailChimp. We need to be committed to engagement over time - not just for the next show. If we want to build a relationship with our patrons as well as build revenue we need to carefully tune frequency and segment our customer base in order to get good engagement from our customers over time.

In the MailChimp study, they found that engagement (that is, click through not just opening an email) went down with increased frequency in emails. Importantly, there is a sweet spot for each segment with regard to the exact frequency. A certain segment may have great results with two emails a week and another segment needs two email a month. So while brand awareness may increase with increased frequency, click throughs, e.g., purchasing may not. No matter how big your list - it matters more how you use it.

Ultimately it depends on what your target audience expects from you. Are they used to emails everyday (this maybe true of a news service) or are they used to twice a month? Certain segments may welcome emails twice a week others less often. What is the current click through rate? What other purchasing data can you harvest?

Ticketsolve and MailChimp

In order to understand the frequency sweet spot for your audience, you need to experiment. Ticketsolve is fully integrated with Mailchimp, which means as new customers purchase tickets on your site, they are automatically added to your email database at least one once a day. The Ticketsolve integration will allow you to experiment with frequency and gather purchasing data in one place. You can easily experiment with frequency to get the best results for your audience.

If you haven't talked to us yet about integrating MailChimp with Ticketsolve, you can call us on +353 01-5240954 or email talktickets@ticketsolve.com