How much is too much? emails

[skuba]

Hi,
We used to send 1 email a month to our userlist.
3 months ago we started sending 2 emails a month. 1 one the seconf week of the month and other on the last week.

It's a sports ecommerce website that I manage. The email pieces listed above feature each 15 hot deals. Mostly parts and accessories.

My boss wants to start doing a 3rd email a month. This third would be more specific, like Clothing Blowout with only clothing deals, for example.

We have good response to our promotional pieces. Our userlist has 100,000 users, the email opening rate is %40 in average and totalize about 300 orders for each campaign.

DO you guys think that including a 3rd email will be bad? Users will Opt out?
Response will go down?
Probably response will go slightly down and more users will opt out, but we might be able to get an extra 200 orders a month. Right?

I would like to hear from you.

Thanks a lot!

[gotcopy?]

Hey Skuba,

When people opt-in are you saying anything
in the opt-in process about how often they'll be contacted?

If you've kinda left this open then I don't
see why you couldn't send them something
every week.

That's just my personal opinion.

One friend of mine sends something to his list of 10,000 everyday!

But he doesn't always try to promote
someting - he mixes it up a little by
providing pure info one day and a
promotion the next day and it works
very well for him.

So this could possibly be an option
for you by providing some really
great info pertaining to your market
one week and then a promotion the next week.

Also the copy in your emails makes
a big difference too!
If you are seeing 300 sales out of
100,000 subs that's tremendous!
So you're obviously doing something right.

In regards to your email copy...
A little tweak here and there can make a huge difference at times.

[jestep]

I agree you could definately do three, but if you did one letter with good articles pertaining to your industry or that would be of value to your customers that could also help a lot. Maybe do it every week, just to stay on a set schedule, and one week a month send out an informational newsletter, vice an advertisement news letter. If written well, it could definately spark interest in other products or activities and increase the amount of return visitors. It would be like passive advertising.

[gotcopy?]

Hi,

Jestep that's exactly
what I was referring too!

Also what I've found to work really
well is starting off
an email with pure info and
then move to a promotion
in the same message that's related
to the topic.

It's referred to as
"The slippery slope technique"

and it can work wonders
in generating sales!

Food for thought

[marketershandbook.com]

Hi,
I think 3 campagins is good. It definately increases brand awareness.

If you are only emailing 3 campaigns per month then I don't think people will be THAT sick to opt-out.

3 Per month isn't exactly a major hassel.

As long as you are incluing some industry specific, FREE information, which your target would find useful.

If you do hen everything should go smoothly.

You could probably get away with perhaps 4 campaigns per month, as long as you include at LEAST 4 FREE articles per month, just to space everything out.

It also doesn't makeyou look money grabbing if you include some free things.