The Unanticipated Cost of Too Many Free Emails?

It is true – free multiplied by two is still free, but there are other potential costs to your email marketing efforts other than out of pocket cash.

Using broadcast emails to keep customers informed is growing in popularity on a daily basis and makes good sense when our time spent online is ever increasing.

Is there a point of diminishing returns for email blasts?

In a blog post by Dana Blankenhorn (http://www.clickz.com/835961) on the problems with email marketing he asks "Who killed opt-in email?" While the point is pretty obvious today when we continually get included on email lists we never requested, he made that point in January 25, 2001 – nine years to the day! Point is, the volume of email ads isn't going down any time soon. Even when we opt-in the condition persists.

My completely unscientific and informal survey convinces me that the primary reason people unsubscribe from a companies email list is because of the sheer volume and frequency of the emails. Companies who would never consider telephoning a customer two times a week, week in and week out, will think nothing of emailing the same customer twice each week and even multiple times in one day.

If you send too many emails to market your business, causing people to unsubscribe, the cost is the complete loss of email as a path to that potential customer.

By all means, jump on the "bandwagon" – just don't make your concerts so frequent that they are no longer looked forward to.