Email Marketing by the Numbers: How to Use the World’s Greatest Marketing Tool to Take Any Organization to the Next Level

Subscriber Engagement: What Matters?

By Kelly RuskCommunications Manager, cardcommunicationsBlog: http://www.cardcommunications.com/blog

So you got people to opt-in to receive your emails. Now you can go ahead and send them whatever you want, whenever you want, and they will just love you forever, right?

As ridiculous as that sounds, the truth is that email marketers often worry more about growing their database than keeping existing subscribers engaged. Like any kind of business, it’s more cost-effective and valuable to keep existing subscribers rather than find new ones.

Email marketing is all about relationships. And like any relationship, it takes work to keep your subscribers happy. In order to develop your email subscriber relationship, it’s important to know who your subscribers are and what type of information they want to receive from you.

While there can be hundreds of methods, facts, and opinions about keeping subscribers engaged, it really all comes down to testing with your own list. After all, I think you know your own subscribers better than I do.

But what do you test? The joy (and pain) of email is that there are so many variables. The possibilities are endless, and I’ve included what I believe to be the big ones:

• Determine frequency. Sending emails too often might annoy your subscribers and cause many to unsubscribe. While there is no rule of thumb for email frequency, unless you are sending very relevant information, more than once a week may be too much. If ...