Sending emails on regular basis

Now, since I have been conducting workshops all over India on "Good practices of Email Marketing", I do come across a lot of questions related to the same. The best I thought to address them is by writing about them :-). So, here is my first post on "Easy tips to make sure you stick to your schedule!".

The question is what is the correct frequency of sending emails? Most of the times this question is simply answered by saying "don't send too frequently or too in-frequently". But the way I look at it is the frequency of the email campaign should be aligned with your business and more importantly should address the basic concept of consistency. In other words,  not sending on a regular basis is the same as sending too frequently or infrequently. Think of email marketing as a beginning of a new relationship. The more you see the person, the more will there be bonding build and more there will be trust. Now imagine that in a new relationship, you show up thrice in the first week and then just not show up at all for 3 months, what happens? Did you not just dig grave for yourself? This is exactly what happens to your recipients too in an email marketing campaign. 

I had a friend of mine who was working with a magazine and she was just sharing her working style with me. She had a calendar that was shared between all editors and writers keeping a track of all the things they are doing months or weeks ahead of time. I think this is just such a classy idea for email marketing too. Create a calendar, it need not be absolutely accurate but can simply be a guesstimate of your campaigns so that you know how much time you'll need to get specific emails together.

One more very weird and funny thing that organizations do which either causes delay or irregularity in sending emails is by not giving the creation of the email to the same person everytime. This almost like rolling out a different product each time. Simply appoint one person who own the calendar and make him accountable forthe design as well as delivery. Let the person be a shepherd from start to finish. To my surprise, this came as one of the primary reasons why there is irregularities in emails being sent out.

As a manager, I have always been taught to break up a big task into small manageable sub-tasks. Similarly, why do we try doing that with our newsletters. What does a newsletter include - new features, industry news, good news, tips, etc. Once you have a good idea on what you need to include, templatize it. Then all you will need to do is drop in the appropriate section-focused text or images every single time. The key to this exercise is not to reinvent the wheel, but rather come up with a system that helps you easily stick with a schedule.

As a business owner or even a email marketer, you don't want to compromise with your routine and would like to stick to it all the time, even during the busiest parts of the year. By putting these measures into place, you'll know well ahead of time how much time you'll need to dedicate to every single newsletter, and exactly what's needed both text and art-wise to keep your campaigns on schedule.