Email is a powerful marketing tool for insurance agents who want to stay in touch with prospects and customers. Relevant and timely newsletters keep them interested, informed, and connected to your agency.
One of the most common questions marketers ask is how often they should send email communications. The answer depends on the audience, as well as your content and email marketing goals. To determine the most effective frequency for your email marketing campaigns, start with a quick review of your email objectives and then consider the following five points:
1. Make your email relevant. Think about your reader and develop the type of content they will find valuable. Effective frequency and relevant content go hand in hand. The more you know about your customers, the more personal you can make your emails. For instance, customers with children will appreciate information about household safety and estate planning. If you don't have valuable content to send to a specific demographic, wait until you do. Your readers will respond much more consistently if you give them what is relevant to them. Try to create a balance of marketing information and general content.
2. Set a monthly goal. Your goal should be to email often enough to be remembered without being annoying. Generally, you want to touch your list at least once a month. If you are mailing any less frequently, you may be losing your customers' interest and not catching their eye. One idea is to start with seasonal emails: Halloween safety, safe driving on snow and ice, spring weather alerts, summer safety tips. These can be supplemented with other information, such as renewal reminders, new products, etc.
3. Segment audiences and treat them differently. Segment your list and consider how frequency may affect each segment differently. Some customers may appreciate and respond favorably to more frequent communication (perhaps once a week), while other groups may be more comfortable with a message only once a month. It's a good idea to let your audience decide how often they would like to hear from you. You can elicit this information through a short survey embedded in one of your emails, or by asking readers when they opt in how frequently they prefer to be contacted.
4. Review and understand message metrics. Analyze and review the metrics from your email campaigns. Look for trends that give insight into how often you should email your customers. You can usually spot clues for increasing or decreasing frequency based on how your audience is responding. Declining open rates and click-through rates and increasing unsubscribe rates over time can be indicators of over-emailing or list fatigue. In comparison, if these rates remain steady, your frequency is right on target or you may even be able to email more frequently.
5. Be realistic about your resources. Many marketers try to develop an aggressive email marketing plan and don't have the resources to deliver on that plan. It's better to tackle a high-quality monthly newsletter and have audiences respond well to it than to have unfulfilling messages scattered more frequently that don't represent your brand and don't deliver value.
Jordan Ayan is founder and CEO of SubscriberMail, an email marketing company that helps organizations successfully develop and deliver email communications. He can be reached at jordan@subscribermail.com or by calling 630-303-5000.
