Email marketing: frequency counts

What’s one of the most important factors in the success of your email marketing campaigns? Frequency. You don’t want to overwhelm customers too many messages, or they’ll tune out. But you have to send enough that they remember you. 

I received this message from Eurostar, operators of the train through the Chunnel, this week:

Now, a nice little “Hey! Wouldn’t a weekend in Paris be just brilliant?” message is a great idea. If you live in London, anyway. And if you show any sign of being someone who goes to Paris regularly. 

(I will admit that while puns in marketing copy usually annoy me, the bulldog/poodle thing made me smile. I’m a big softie for dogs and cats.)

Now, London and Paris are two of my favorite places on this planet, and I’d love to go to Paris for weekend. The thing is… I live in Texas. It’s a long way. And as lovely as a London/Paris trip sounds, with a Eurostar trip in the middle of it… it’s a long, long way and at the moment my dollars are so worthless there that it’s even more expensive that it was last time. 

Last time, by the way, was 2006. I haven’t heard a peep from Eurostar since then. I don’t even remember if I opted into their email list, so I don’t know if this is spam. (I might have; I was spending a lot of time in France then so there was a period of time when Eurostar deals would be an appealing thing to hear about.) 

Two years later, when the guy with an American credit card hasn’t bought another ticket since? Not great targeting. 

If I’d been getting messages all along, I’d probably have smiled, thought, “Ah… Paris.. London…” and deleted it, thinking, “But not this year.” 

But I haven’t. I’m a one-time customer from long ago. So instead I thought, “Wow, I wonder if bookings are down and they’re scraping up every email address they’ve got to scare up some sales.” 

Don’t be too frequent… but don’t let addresses get stale. And if they are stale, try to revive them with something appropriate. (”It’s been a long time since you’ve enjoyed a Eurostar holiday! Here’s a special offer…”) 

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