If user acquisition is the first problem startups face, the second is getting those users to continue to come back and be active on the site. After all the time, money and effort spent to get new users to register, online startups have to go one step further to find ways to turn new users into active members. While there are more than a few methods of motivating users to come back, this post focuses on direct contact. Specifically we’ll be talking about email.
Whenever you sign up for a new service online, you’re likely to see a required field asking for your email address. There are few exceptions. Many times you’ll get a verification email with an embedded link that needs to be clicked in order to activate your account. To the startup company, this is great for two reasons: 1) you can filter out spam and fake registrations and 2) you know that the person behind the registration can be contacted at a working email address.
Though bloggers and industry jouranlists have been predicting the death of email for years, direct email communication with a userbase remains the single best way to relay updates, new features, and other motivating factors to get members to return to a site. Think of how often you check your email, then compare that to how often you check out RSS feeds, twitter, facebook, etc. Since people are constantly looking at their inbox, sending an email update is the most efficient way to reach the largest number of people that have indicated interest in what you have to offer.
When someone signs up for your service, how long will they remember you without a reminder? It’s a great question. Think of how many times you’ve signed up for something, tried it out, and forgot about it. If you’re like me, that happens pretty often. Sure, I may see the "Welcome to _____" email later, but if I don’t see that in a few hours after signing up, it drops out of sight in my inbox.
How Often Should You Send Updates?
"So," you’re saying "I get it. It makes sense to send updates via email to users. But how often should you do it?" Well, I’m glad I pretended you asked that question. It’s a really good one with a certain amount of risk involved. I mean, send too often and users will be annoyed and unsubscribe. Send too infrequently, and people will forget about you. It’s a tough one.
I decided to take a look at some of the newsletters I receive to see- on average- how often they send an email. Here’s what I found:
- 1-800Flowers.com- 7.5 Days
- Adobe 22.3 Days
- Amazon- 5 Days
- Apple- 4 Days
- BestBuy Reward Zone- 8 Days
- CafePress- 3 Days
- Dopplr- 32 Days
- Evernote- 23.5 Days
- Going.com- 7 Days
- IdeaBlob- 30 Days
- 12seconds.tv- 8 Days
- Joost- 10 Days
- Magnify.net- 18 Days
- MarketingExperiments.com- 3 Days
- MisterWong- 3 Days
- TED- 15 Days
- Utterli- 12 Days
- Vator.tv- 3 Days
- Zazzle.com- 5 Days
- TripAdvisor- 14 Days
Note: These include updates only. I’m not including things like friend requests, support emails, etc.
Looking at this semi-random sample of both startups and established companies, you can see that there’s a decent disparity of frequency. That makes sense. Additionally, you’ll also notice that an average doesn’t really represent the frequency of updates, as things like holidays can change the average (a company can send a note every day near a holiday and very infrequently at other points during the year, thus skewing the average considerably).
But The Right Frequency Is Subjective
So, here’s the problem- everyone has a different interpretation of what is too much and what is too little. To me, getting an email from Amazon.com every five days is excessive, while getting something from Apple every 4 days doesn’t seem like too much. And I’m fully aware that from a logical standpoint, that makes no sense. Both are trying to sell me something each time, so I should look at them the same way, right? Well, I don’t. And that’s what makes it hard.
So with illogical users, each with a different interpretation of the right update frequency, what should you do? One idea is to have the users let you know how often they’d like your updates. Let them decide if they want weekly, monthly, bi-monthly etc. updates. If they choose the monthly option, you can package all of your weekly updates together as one big monthly update.
But, like everything else, there’s risk. Once you ask a user how often they want to receive your updates, they start to think about getting emails from you. When a user is thinking about frequency of emails, they’re much more likely to unsubscribe from your list than if they just blindly register without giving it any thought. The simple act of asking them how often they’d like to hear from you may make them answer "never." But I’d say that’s okay. If they really don’t want to hear from you, that’s their right, and it’s not likely that they’re the kind of user that would allow you to send them newsletters without clicking "unsubscribe."
Sending News vs. Begging For Logins
The other big question is this: why are you sending the email in the first place? Do you have something truly newsworthy, or are you just trying to throw enough content together to send something, hoping users will login? If you’ve really got something that users will be excited about, that’s one thing. Just sending a re-worded buzzword-filled press release just isn’t a good idea. When users see frequent, value-free emails, they’ll just drop you. It will happen.
Summary
So, what’s the magic number for you? Also, as a user, what’s your email threshold from sites/services you care about? To me, this is an entirely subjective question that depends on the service offered, the quality of the updates, etc. I’d love to hear what people think.
