Email Marketing Guide

How Much Is Too Much in Email Marketing?

As a business owner or marketing manager, you may be wondering if you’re doing too much email marketing. Is there even such a thing as too much email marketing? The answer to that question is yes, but overdoing it with email marketing looks very different from one business to another. Here are some things that we have found are often signs that you’re sending out too many emails.

1. You’re Paying A Lot, But You Aren’t Getting Results

If you’re paying a lot of money for email marketing services, you need to make sure that you’re getting results that make your email advertising campaign worth the expense. Not only should you ensure that your campaign is leading to profit rather than a loss, but it’s important to make sure that all the parts of your email campaign are effective. If you find areas of your email advertising campaign that are not profitable, it’s best to either improve them or pursue other avenues. 

2. You’re Emailing Your Subscribers Too Often

If you’re emailing your subscribers multiple times a day, you’re probably sending out way too many emails. As a rule of thumb, you should only email your subscribers when you have an important update to give. This could be a new sale that you’re having, a new product that you offer, a change in your company’s setup, or any other important update. 

Otherwise, you’ll find yourself sending the same emails over and over, which will be counterproductive. In fact, this could even lead to people unsubscribing. 

It’s best to email your subscribers several times a week to send them new offers. However, if your business features new offers daily, it may be advisable to email your subscribers once a day. We feel that newsletters should be sent once per week or once per month. 

If your company tends to change frequently, you might want to consider sending out your newsletter weekly. However, companies that do not change very much over time may want to consider sending out their newsletter every month instead. 

3. People Are Unsubscribing

If you notice that people are unsubscribing, this is a huge red flag that you may be overdoing it with email marketing. Often, the reason why people unsubscribe is that they see your emails as irrelevant or feel that you’re sending them an excessive number of emails. 

However, keep in mind that some people will unsubscribe even if you aren’t sending out tons and tons of emails. You can keep track of your unsubscribe rate to determine if your subscriber list is shrinking. If your unsubscribe rate seems to have gone up markedly, consider that you may be sending out too many emails. We also have found that a large number of people unfollowing you on social media can be a red flag.

4. Your Emails Are Being Flagged as Potential Spam

If your emails are being flagged as potential spam, this could be a warning sign that you have been sending your subscribers content that they don’t see as relevant. We feel that it’s important to carefully evaluate the emails that you’ve been sending out if you notice this. 

However, keep in mind that some email services routinely flag advertorial emails as spam even if they aren’t. So, finding that an email service flagged your emails as spam does not necessarily mean that you’re sending out too many emails. However, if you find that multiple email services have begun flagging them when they didn’t before, this is more of a cause for concern. 

5. Determine How Many People Are Actually Reading Your Emails

In order to determine whether or not your emails are working, there are three statistics that we recommend looking at: 

  1. Open Rate: This is the percentage of subscribers who have opened your email campaign. Ideally, your open rate should be 20-40%. If it is significantly lower than this, you might want to consider if you’re sending out too many emails or creating ineffective content. 
  2. Click-Through Rate (CTR): This is the number of people who have clicked on at least one link in your email marketing campaign, divided by the number of total emails sent. 
  3. Conversion Rate (CR): According to VWO, the average conversion rate for a business in 2020 is around 15.11%. If the conversion rate of traffic that was directed to your site with emails is less than this, it’s possible that you’re sending out too many emails, or you need to improve the subject line of your emails, content of your emails or website, and/or your call to action (CTA)

If you’re looking to add email marketing to your overall strategy, the experts at Corporate Communications Center are prepared to help you develop a plan for building your customer base. Get in touch with us at 214-871-2941 or via email at info@corpcom.com.