Email Frequency? Depends on Whether Your Content is Boring or Brilliant
by Tom Ruwitch
One of my clients in my Content Transformation Academy asked recently, “How often should I send emails.”
The client, Mike, stopped sending emails altogether (bad idea), and now he was thinking of rebuilding his list and sending them again.
My reply: “I send one every weekday. Five per week. Monday through Friday.”
I said that to provoke and challenge him.
“I don’t want to do THAT,” he said.
I knew that’s what he’d say, and I wasn’t suggesting that’s what he do.
But I wanted to steer the conversation to the key idea. So, I asked another provocative question.
“Why don’t you want to do THAT?” I asked.
“Because,” Mike said, “That’s too many emails.”
I replied, “Too many to write or too many to receive?”
Mike didn’t answer so I continued, “I’m teaching you how to make your content more captivating and how to make the writing process easier so you can generate great emails without getting stuck. So, that’s not too many to write.”
Mike furrowed his brow and said, “I guess I could write the emails. The question is, ‘Who wants to receive that many emails?’”
Now we were getting to the heart of the matter.
“My subscribers want to get my emails. Why wouldn’t your subscribers want to get yours?” I asked.
Mike frowned and said, “Because they’re from you. I’m not you.”
That’s what they call limited thinking.
I shook my head and said, “No, Mike, you’re you. And you’re enrolled in a program that will teach you how to write emails worth opening. You don’t need to be me. You just need to be you and learn how to write emails that subscribers will open and act upon.”
I get the “how often should I send email” question all the time. It always boils down to two myths:
1. Myth: People don’t like to get too many emails. Truth: People are happy to get lots of emails — if those emails are relevant, interesting AND entertaining (info-taining).
2. Myth: “I’m not creative. I don’t have what it takes to write info-taining emails. Truth: Anyone can learn how to write better emails and other creative content. It’s not a magic act reserved for creative unicorns. It’s a process based on easy-to-learn systems.
Small-business people who buy into these myths churn out content occasionally. (“We don’t want to send too much.”) It’s loaded with information that demonstrates their expertise, but it’s boring.
It doesn’t matter whether you send emails quarterly, monthly, weekly or daily. If you send the same old, boring content, prospects will tune out and move on. Bored prospects will always think you’re sending too many.
If you’re sending informative, entertaining emails, subscribers will happily open them, and they’ll look forward to more — even if you send emails daily.
I’m not suggesting that you, dear reader, start sending daily emails.
I am suggesting, though, that you can and should write info-taining emails and then send more.
When you captivate prospects, the more you send, the more you sell.
Tom Ruwitch is founder and Chief Story Office at Story Power Marketing. Coaches, consultants and other experts hire him to power up their stories because most dish out the same “blah, blah, blah” content, put prospects to sleep, and then feel fed up and stuck. So he helps transform content from boring to brilliant, marketing from frustrating to fun, and results from pitiful to profitable. Sign up for Tom’s info-taining, daily(ish) emails at storypowermarketing.com/email