How often should you send an eblast? There is no pat answer, but John, who owns the spinning studio I go to, gave me some food for thought today. I told him that I enjoyed receiving his email newsletters, which seemed to come fairly frequently, although I had never stopped to think exactly how often. He told me that he was sending them out once a week, but originally had not stated the frequency of distribution on the newsletter. Then, people began commenting that they didn’t understand why they were getting them so often. This prompted him to add “weekly” to the subject line and masthead (e.g., “John’s weekly newsletter”) and people “got it.” No one has commented on the frequency since.
The lesson we can learn as marketers, i.e., professional services firms sending out eblasts, is that the frequency of our communications impacts the recipients’ expectations. In short, we need to let people know how often they will be receiving the email. However, make sure you don’t commit to a schedule you can’t keep. For example, don’t say “once a month” and then send it only every six weeks. If you don’t want to commit to a particular schedule, just say that it’s distributed “regularly,” which doesn’t tie you to a time frame.
