We participate in what’s called permission marketing, signifying that the recipients of your emails have given permission to be contacted. The purpose for this is two-fold: first, hostile recipients rarely make willing customers. There’s no practical use in sending unsolicited emails, because your click-thru rate will suffer. Second, email marketers with a complaint rate greater than 0.1% will be blocked by most ISP’s, meaning your future emails will not be delivered. Emails should be anticipated, personal, and relevant. If yours are not, you’ll want to reevaluate your pupose in sending them in the first place.

Sending emails too frequently will motivate your subscribers to end their subscription. Sending emails infrequently, and you’ll lose rapport. There’s not an optimum schedule for sending marketing emails, because each email campaign has a unique purpose. That said, I would recommend not sending emails more frequently than once per week, and not less frequently than once per month.

If you find that setting aside time in your schedule is difficult, I’m with you. Here’s a trick. Block off a few hours on a particular morning each month. Write your next two or three emails, and stagger the delivery of the emails to meet your strategy – with most email marketing services (but especially with Online Outbox), you could schedule Email #1 to be sent today, Email #2 to be sent next Tuesday at 8:00am, and so on.

If your subscribers remember your previous emails, and, even better, are looking forward to receiving them, your readership (marketing guys will call this your open-rate) will skyrocket. The first-glance constant of your email in your subscriber’s inbox is obviously the email’s “From Name” and/or “From Address”. The first item that most individuals look at when determining which mail to open and which to ignore or complain about, is whom it’s from. Building recognition will do wonders for your readership.