If you are an email marketer, you most likely have a testing program in place to determine what version of your message captures the most open rates. You are likely testing subject lines, copy, image placement, call to actions or timing. However, one of the most overlooked testing criteria is frequency as it relates to customer retention.
Frequency testing can be an invaluable tool in determining the threshold of messages that individuals are willing to receive before the email recipient stops opening your messages or, worst case, opts out or tags your communication as SPAM. Testing your message frequency will ensure that customers are receiving just the right amount of messages from you thus increasing the number of recipients that you retain from campaign to campaign. There are a few critical pieces of frequency testing that need to be considered when creating your testing plan.
- Create a control group (this will be the majority of your database), a reduced frequency test group (A), and an equal part for the increased frequency test group (B). Depending on your database size, you could choose a 90%-5%-5% split for your Control and your equal A/B test groups.
- Your test period should be representative of your normal email communication execution schedule.
- Your test period should also be long enough to collect meaningful results. Adding or removing 1 message during a month long period may not show significant increases or decreases in message activity.
- You will not only be looking for increased/decreased open rates but increased or decreased opt-outs or SPAM complaints and other key metrics that you use for determining campaign success.
- For accurate results, ensure that your sequencing does not deliver multiple messages during a small time frame. (If one of your test groups is delivered 4 messages within a month, they should not be delivered in one week.) It is also a good idea to start testing after a normal period of regular email activity and not after a period that may have generated more campaigns than usual.
- Both your control and test messages should be identical. Additional testing of other message components can skew results.
- Review your results after your testing period and determine if either your A or B test groups performed better than your control group. You should test for optimal frequency on a quarterly to semi-annual basis depending on your messaging schedule.
Testing for optimal frequency will ensure that your recipients are not overloaded with email communications from your organization. Keeping a client is much less expensive than trying to gain a new one. You may also find that you are just as (if not more) successful with adding or removing campaign from your regular campaign schedule. At the end of the day, it’s simple, it is only a test.
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