Josh Turner wrote a good article about email marketing. Here are my comments I posted onto this blog article:
I'm a little confused by your blog post. You criticize the person sending out a weekly email blast on "LinkedIn stuff", but then I read your list and 80% is about "Linkedin stuff". Is it that you send an email blast less frequently than the other "expert"?
Also, you infer a level of irritation at the other emailer for sending you something once a week focused on a topic dear to you. However, you don't talk about your "frequency". I'm not sure I really get what they are sharing that irritates you vs. the content you share. I would like to understand in your email plan or social media communication how frequency plays a role.
Here's my perspective on email based on doing email marketing for the last 20 years:
Most professional B2B prospects and customers (never been on the B2C side so I cannot speak to it fairly) will only tolerate one email - especially if it's "marketing/sales oriented" every 3-4 weeks. Anything more frequent and they grow weary of your overwhelming persistence and flood of information. However, the same low tolerance for receiving information doesn't seem to be as big of a problem through social media - so I "supplement" my email marketing with social media communication to my network.
I post daily or every other day into LinkedIn Groups I moderate depending on the volume of activity and size of the group. I post a total of about 5-6 articles a day into these various LinkedIn Groups - these appear as notifications in my feed on LinkedIn to my connections. I have a large network on LinkedIn - over 5000 so it can tolerate about 5-6 status updates in my feed spread through out the day. I also try to log into LinkedIn 3-4 times a day and take a couple of minutes to review my connections' "sharing" updates - posting likes and comments when appropriate - maybe I'll do 8-10 of these a day.
I post about 1 twitter message an hour. These are all automated using 2-3 different tools and pull from the thousands of pieces of curated content I have and previous blog postings. I have a large stable twitter following and I've found it can tolerate that level of messaging - no link or article repeats itself in my automation over a 90-120 day period (except my job postings of once a day)
I try to post 2-3 public google+ shares a day and 5-6 into specific circles daily.
Finally, I send to specific tag groups on LinkedIn a short note about something very useful to them every two weeks. I have 5-6 core tag groups segmented by their specific interests.
I find making the content I am sharing very specific to the interests of my segmented groups/connections AND not overwhelming them with a flood of information and content helps reduce the "churn" of people listening or following you.
I would really like to hear your thoughts - perhaps some of your readers thoughts too - on this issue of frequency around email combined with social media communication.
Thanks for allowing me to be long winded.
Barry Deutsch
Social Media Coach to Vistage and TEC Speakers and Trusted Advisors
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