Email Marketing: Email Fatigue is Real
When is too much of a good thing too much? It is more a perception than reality, but the email fatigue is real.
The No. 1 reason people say they unsubscribe from email lists is, “I get too many emails in general,” says a survey by MarketingSherpa, titled the “Customer Satisfaction Research Study (Dec 2016).” That may not seem like a “you” problem since you may feel as if you have no control over the number of emails people receive in a day. Yet it is a real reason people unsubscribe from your emails. The No. 2 reason people unsubscribe is that the emails “are not relevant to me.” That you can control and fix.
What is of more concern is the No. 3 reason, “I receive too many emails from this company specifically.” So how many is too many? I’m not sure anyone has the exact answer. It is somewhere between 1 per week and 1 per month. Relevancy plays a large role and so do many other factors.
According to respondents to the survey, some of the other factors are that emails are “boring, repetitive and always trying to sell something.” A little over 10% believe that emails are too focused on company needs and “not enough on my needs.” Some also said that the emails look too cluttered and sloppy. They also said, “I get emails that don’t look good on my smartphone.”
What can wake up your email campaigns? Try relevancy first, personalized messaging, better design and better targeting. The alarm is sounding.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle.
After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant.
He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.”
Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.”
One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College.
Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board.
Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.