In a perfect world, businesses would automatically know how to fill emails with the perfect content and send the perfect number to their subscribers and get the best response possible with each email sent. Unfortunately, we’re not in a perfect world, so you have to find a balance between email quantity and quality on your own.
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Email volume per sender keeps going up year after year, but your organization might not have more people on hand to manage the increase in volume. This might leave you with the decision to either spend your time creating more emails or better emails. The trick to successful email campaigns is finding the sweet spot for your business that is the right balance of quantity and quality. Here are some points for both quantity and quality when it comes to your email campaigns.
Why Email Quality is Important
Studies tell us that the content quality of your emails makes a difference in response rates, and response rates are what will garner your revenue from your email marketing campaigns.
For example, if you send an email to 1000 people that gets you a 20% open rate, a 5% click-through rate, and you earn $1 for each click, you’ll make $50 from that one email. However, if you take the time to improve the quality of the subject line, and that increases your open rate by 10%, then you just earned yourself $5 from that same email just by a slight quality improvement.
If you continue to spend time improving the quality of your emails, like creating them to be responsive for mobile recipients, you can expect to see incremental increases in open rates and click-through rates, which means an increase in revenue. And, you can expect these increases to continue through the subsequent emails in the campaign series.
As you make improvements to the quality of your emails, split testing will become necessary. You’ll have a clear picture of which quality changes improve your campaign statistics, and you can apply those changes to your other campaigns. The time you’ve invested in improving the quality of your emails will quickly pay for itself.
Why Email Quantity is Important
While a beautifully crafted email with excellent graphics and valuable content will help your click-through rate and overall revenue, the fact is that there are still many people who will not open your email. There are a variety of reasons why someone wouldn’t open your email, but whatever the reason, the quality of the email won’t matter.
If you do a quick search of “how many touchpoints does it take to make a sale,” you’ll see numbers ranging anywhere from five up to over 13. The specific number doesn’t matter for this point; what is important to understand is that it takes more than one email but less than 100. Or, you can send too few or too many emails.
Compared to increasing the quality of your emails, finding the right amount of emails to send is tough. Unlike quality, there are negative consequences to increasing quantity too much, but it’s hard to know when you’ve emailed too much. Plus, not everyone has the same preference for how many emails they receive, so the number will vary from one subscriber to another.
If you send the same 1000 people from above two more emails, you may see a decrease in open and click-through rates. However, even with lower rate percentages, the overall number of opens and clicks will be higher, which means an increase in revenue.
Before you start sending your subscriber’s multitudes of emails, keep in mind that you’ll probably see an increase in opt-outs, which can translate to potentially lost revenue. Additionally, responses might be inflated at first, and people may start to ignore your emails later if you send a high quantity.
How To Mix the Two Factors
While it may seem, based on the scenarios mentioned, that it’s clear you should increase quantity over quality, that is not necessarily the case since there can be long-term negative effects of emailing too much or not enough.
If you improve the quality of your emails, you might see more long-term improvements. When you work on your campaigns, you want to ask yourself what use of your time will deliver the best long-term results. The answer will vary from business to business, and maybe even campaign to campaign.
If you’re feeling stuck with your email marketing automation and can’t quite find the balance between quantity and quality that delivers the best results, book a free consultation with Business Marketing Engine. We can work with you to create an email marketing strategy that works.
