Currently we send between 2-3 email blasts/newsletters a month to our customers in our CRM. This does not include and of our normail followup emails or ticklers setup in our CRM.
We are afraid that if we are sending to many emails a month, we may become spam or the customer may never even open our email to see what we are saying.
How many emails do you guys send per month? What type of open rate should we be looking for? We currently have a 18-20% open rate and of course we want to see that number grow.
Good questions! I'm a huge advocate of email marketing.
2-3 marketing emails a month I would way is right on the mark and maybe just 1 too many depending on the message.
I separate our database out and use 2 different services for Service/Retention and Prospecting.
For service retention email marketing and follow-up I use @utoRevenue. For prospecting I use our CRM and some of my dealers use IMN for their newsletter.
My service database (previous sales/service customers) ONLY gets service messages - service marketing campaigns, appointment reminders and recall notifications. It's VERY rare I hit this database with a sale message and if and when I do it's coupled with a service message as well.
I approach my prospecting database a little different and with a higher send frequency. I usually hit my prospecting database 2 times a month. Soon after the incentives hit and another towards the later middle of the month. I use my CRM for this campaign. Looking at the numbers and from looking at previous years of stats from email marketing, IMO there is really no reason NOT to proceed in this fashion.
Of course our Newsletter is a separate database since we use IMN. Both Prospects and Previous sales/service customers are included in this campaign. Again, looking at the delivery rate, open and opt-out, nothing suggests that I should not do it this way.
Depending on the message - sometimes we will send 2 prospecting email campaigns and the newsletter but usually it's the newsletter then the later middle of the month prospecting campaign.
Yes - this can sometimes be considered too high of a frequency, but the numbers have never suggested I change this.
Note: No matter how great of an article(s) you have in your newsletter - your "sales" ads and inventory links get more action than anything else. Everytime!
