We are asked fairly frequently, “How many times should we contact our customers”?

Remember the “old” days when “touching a customer” meant running an ad in the newspaper, mailing out direct mail cards, a 30 second radio spot, or having a sign in front of your store.

All those are still valid communication tools, but the internet has a HUGE captive audience since nearly 70% of Americans regularly surf the web. Almost all of them have email accounts.

E-blasts (HTML delivered emails with a sales intention) are an effective way to reach your audience. And they’re the least expensive way to get their attention.

But how many times should you send eblasts? What frequency?

First, almost 75% of companies have a list of customer emails and don’t send ANY thing out to them on a regular basis. Shame on you! It’s wasting a HUGE sales opportunity!

So, be sure, if you decide to send eblasts, to follow these rules:

• Make sure they’re professional. Constant Contact is a great way to do eblasts. They offer several  well-designed templates to create your own content. Although, I would recommend hiring someone like us to develop a custom template that will look like your brand and be unique toward your brand positioning.
• Make sure you have the Opt Out ability on every eblast. That gives a person the easy way to decide “I don’t want these any more!” Constant Contact does this for you and gives you a list of anyone “leaving” your list — then it actually removes the name from your mail list.
• Make sure the content is relevant. Web is all about content. Keep it short, simple and interesting. Build on your benefits and your brand.
• Watch your stats. Constant Contact give you a statistics feedback of how many open the email, forward it, or click through to something that’s linked. Make sure you watch for fluctuations — and try to discover why more read one over another.
• Have a Point. Be sure to know why you’re sending it. To sell, to educate, to entertain, etc. But always have a motive.

So how many times do you send them? Things to consider:

• Most people don’t mind getting great information in their email. Especially if it’s good content.
• The average person wants to get more from you — if it’s good material.
• Start with once a month, then keep increasing it until you see your opt-out numbers start to increase. Then ease back a bit.
• It’ll be different for everyone. It’s up to you to find out how many your customer wants!

Let us know if you need assistance in the design, set-up, or content of eblasts. We produce them for the majority of our accounts and we have a PinPoint system to make them effective for your customer-base too!