How Much Email Is ‘Too Much’ for Your Subscribers?

The other day I got this email from a subscriber named Galit that made me laugh:

I am loving this series! I’m curious, though, the first few emails seemed to be about an email course then this one is about running a giveaway. If these are, by chance, two different drips, is there a way to get access to both? I am definitely interested in both topics!

Thanks so much for everything, I’m learning a lot from you!

Let’s see, you’re asking an email marketer… who likes to write emails… to please send you MORE email?

Well, you asked for it…

Galit hadn’t yet signed up for both of the email courses I have on my site, so I jumped into my email software and flipped the “both barrels” switch.

Right around the same time, I had another conversation with a guy named Ari.

Ari signed up for the class I’m presenting on Thursday and managed to break my shopping cart software.

Turns out he’d actually unsubscribed from my email list a couple of months back.

I got curious so I reached out to him about it.

He said:

Yeah, I unsubscribed from your list because it was too much email. I’d like the webinar reminders, but that’s it.

New email marketers tend to spin their wheels stressing over the “right” amount of email to send.

Truth be told, there is no “right” frequency that makes everyone happy.

There are subscribers like Galit who are REALLY into whatever it is you’re doing. No matter how much content you give these people, they’re always going to want more.

Galit is gunning hard to level up her marketing knowledge right now, and for her 1 email a day isn’t enough—so she wants to read everything I’m putting out.

Then there are the Aris.

Ari probably would prefer to hear from me once a week, or maybe even just once every few weeks.

The reason I’ve embraced email courses is, they cater to both groups (and everyone in between).

Even though an Ari doesn’t want endless daily emails, he’ll still sign up for an email course with a set timeframe. (Ari originally signed up for my list to get my 9-day “How to Make More Sales with Email Courses” course.)

And for Galit, the daily emails are just an appetizer. When a Galit joins your list, she’ll sign up for everything you can offer her.

This approach is working great for me at Simple Programmer.

Our audience of software developers is generally not thrilled about getting tons of email.

So I’m creating these short focused email sequences that go out daily, then taper off.

The casually interested subscribers grit their teeth and hang on, since they know there’s a definite end point to the email barrage…

While the hyper-interested subscribers get their “fix,” and then go sign up for all of the other email courses I’ve created as well (4 at the moment, with more to come soon.)

If you’d like to see exactly how I’m doing this…

And get some techniques for getting your subscribers to email YOU begging for more emails…

Join me for my live webinar, Behind the Scenes of a Six-Figure Email Course.

Registration is here:

http://joshuaearl.com/products/six-figure-email-course

Related posts:

  1. Will Formulaic Emails Put Your Subscribers To Sleep? In the Email Copywriting Workshop I launched last month (which is just wrapping up), student Ram queried: If I keep on repeating the same structure, won’t my mails look very routinized and formulaic over time? Will people trust me with my stories any more? Very valid concern. In the workshop,...
  2. What’s the No. 1 Mistake Bloggers Make with Their ‘Welcome’ Email? Sharp-eyed subscriber Galit asks: Hi Josh, I have a question for you—I am watching your “Behind the Scenes of a Six-Figure Email Course” video and I noticed your callout of the coveted Welcome email. But I’m looking back at my emails from you and this is the first one that...
  3. Should You ‘Incubate’ Your New Email Subscribers Before Pitching Your Product? On a private forum I belong to, the whole topic of “incubating” new subscribers came up recently. There are two warring schools of thought on this. One group INSISTS that you can’t just sell to your new subscribers straight out of the chute. That just turns people off. You have...
  4. How to Handle Criticism from Your Email Subscribers In the programming world, there’s this tongue-in-cheek term that gets tossed around a lot: “Bikeshedding” Bikeshedding means: Obsessing over the trivial while ignoring what REALLY matters. This happens because these small details are easier to understand than the big picture questions that actually make a difference. Most people aren’t bold...