Startups- How Often Should You e-mail Your Users?

by Nathan W. Burke on December 29, 2008

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.

  • I’m into SaaS tools and not a big fan of asking for email addresses – I think it’s important to make it as easy as possible for people to sign up and try it out. And since they’re paying for the services every month – and constantly using them, it’s not about selling that service to them over and over but keeping them happy and selling additional services. So, instead of email, I have a little twitter-like message board that I post to with news about the service itself and new services. The users also post there with questions and feature requests.

    I’m not saying this is the best solution – I keep asking myself what would happen if I did ask for emails so I could send out information to people who don’t subscribe… hmmmm. Thanks for this post – it got me thinking about this again!

  • Nathan W. Burke

    Chris- gotcha. I guess I should have specified that I’m referring to services that are free to the user, though some of the post would apply to paid services. Having a forum to communicate news and feature updates is great, but only if the user is already on the site.

  • This is so current why are we not using it now?

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    – Jack

  • What type of RSS feed do you use here, because i can’t seem to get it working with my reader… 🙁 hopefully I’ll figure it out because I like this place!

  • I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.

  • Your blog has some great information for small businesses. Thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge!

  • This blog is a great resource for small business who want to actively market their business. Thanks for the info. I appreciate it.

  • Thanks for the marketing information, it was very helpful!

  • Thanks for the post I enjoyed it

  • If you contact your customers, circle of friends …. more that once every 3 months, you will find them asking you to remove them from your list…so make each communication important, good presentation, and meaningful information.

    Sonny

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