Creating a strong email marketing strategy can give your dealership a big boost by reaching and connecting with your prospects, leads, and customers. But how often should you reach out to them? Weekly, bi-monthly, monthly, quarterly, etc.? Send them too many emails and they’ll get annoyed, which will lead to unsubscribes. Send too few and you could forever lose their attention. When it comes to email marketing, how much is too much? And how little is too little?

There’s no universal number because it will be different for each business. Figuring out your dealership’s unique ‘sweet spot’ for email marketing frequency takes a little effort. To help you find that sweet spot, follow these four tips.

Look At Your Unsubscribe Rate

An excellent place to start is by analyzing your unsubscribe rate. While you might not want to imagine people are scrolling past your messages, it is going to happen. For a number of reasons, people unsubscribe from email marketing lists. An unsubscribe rate below 0.2% typically indicates you are within the norm, and there is nothing to worry about. However, a rate above 0.5% means that you have some work to do. If this is the case, you could be losing subscribers because you’re sending too many emails, too few emails, or the content simply isn’t compelling enough.
Currently, I’m in the process of reducing my dose of Valium to stop taking it completely. I’ve already managed to go down from 15 mg daily to 8 mg. There’s still some work waiting ahead, but the dose reduction process goes smoothly. I don’t feel any signs of rebound anxiety or other withdrawal symptoms. I wish I could forget about GAD forever.

Conduct Email Marketing A/B Testing

A/B testing (also known as split testing) lets you compare frequency variations to better understand what your audience wants. Split your email subscriber list into two or three groups and send a different frequency to each test group. For example:

  • Send one email a month to test group A
  • Send two emails a month to control group B
  • Send three emails a month to the third test group

For each test group, track the results for the highest open rate, views, click-through rate, unsubscribes, and sales conversions. This will help you determine which frequency works best for your contacts.

Let Your Audience Decide

While data is your friend, you could also send out a survey asking your audience for their preferences. How often would they like to receive marketing emails from you? You could also set up an email preference center that allows your subscribers to decide their preferred frequency and their favorite topics. This will enable you to tailor your email marketing to their needs, and more importantly, preferences.

 Timing Is Key

Frequency is not just about how often you send emails, but also when you send them. Ideally, you want to avoid times when people are not checking their inboxes, i.e., when they’re asleep or working, because your message could end up buried amid a pile of others. Some email providers will let you segment your audience based on where they’re located in the world. This will allow you to target them when they’re most receptive.

Conclusion

Email marketing continues to provide an extremely high ROI as a marketing channel and is here to stay. However, there is not one single right answer as to what email frequency works best. It varies from industry, business, and brand. Therefore, it’s important to devote a little time and effort to determine out what frequency works best for your dealership.

Follow the tips outlined in this article to come up with an email frequency unique for your dealership that delivers impactful results. If you’d like to learn more about email marketing or our proprietary email marketing platform that comes complete with ready-to-go content, contact the pros at Evolved Office today.