Considering that we specialize in the gardening and outdoor living market, most of our clients face significant issues with seasonality. Consequently, some of them for whom we publish an enewsletter think we should only mail “in season.”
That’s a mistake for two reasons. For one, even when gardeners aren’t gardening, they’re usually thinking about gardening. Planning happens in the off-season, and you don’t want to be out of sight, out of mind.
Second, your open rates will be higher if you maintain a consistent mailing schedule. We recently had the opportunity to prove this when launching an enewsletter for a new client. They had a large list of people who had signed up to receive an enewsletter, but they had never published one. Some of the names on the list went back two years or more.
We divided the list by time frame and mailed each group separately. The information sent remained the same. As expected, there was a much higher percentage of undeliverable addresses on the older list. But without the undeliverables factored in, the open rate plummeted by 31% for the names that were between one and two years old.
The takeaway: Regular mailings keep you top of mind with customers and prospects, and help maximize your open rates. The higher open rates will undoubtedly more than cover the cost of additional emailings. So keep feeding your subscribers useful information on a consistent basis, and the results will pay off.
