Email Overload: How many is too many?

Today, I want to cover the frequently asked yet not so easy to answer topic of how many emails are too many? The short answer (in question form): How many times in a row can you listen to a mediocre song? How about your favorite song?  If my witty analogy just confused you further, never fear. I won't leave you in the dark. Keep reading.

Long answer: Proper frequency can be determined by two factors. 1) Activity of a particular subscriber, and 2) relevancy of content to this particular subscriber. I'm talking about segmentation, people. Sending a daily email to your entire list will appeal to some, but turn off most. Are you having trouble growing your list organically? Are you losing 'em faster than you're bringing 'em in? Then you may suffer from Too-frequent-itis. This disease is more common than you think. It seems easy, right? Hey, these people signed up to receive my emails. They want to know about our soup del giorno or the latest polish color of our VP's toenails.

A delicious restaurant here in San Diego called The Wine Vault & Bistro has caught the bug. And to top it off, their emails are all text and super wordy, so it's hard to find the info I really want. So far, I've received 10 emails in the month of September, and here we are with a week and a half to go in October, and I already have 8 more. Here's a picture of my flooded inbox (filtered):

You'll notice their subject lines are often similar indicating they are sending many messages about one event. So maybe I wouldn't mind this high frequency if I wasn't so overwhelmed when I actually open the email (highly unlikely). Here's what I mean. Don't say I didn't warn you:

Most of "War & Peace" here can be found on the website. I don't have time to hunt and scan for dates, times, and menu options. I want instant gratification and I'm sure I'm not alone. So what's to stop me from unsubscribing and just checking the events calendar every so often?

Tips for WV&B:

1) Work on your subject lines

2) Use links to your website vs. displaying all your website's content on every email

3) And for crying out loud, do some segmentation. Get a preference center. Ask your subscribers what they care about and send them what they want. I guarantee a bigger return on your investment.

For the record, I'm working on a new post that discusses how not everyone can afford fancy graphics and pretty pictures for their email, but there is a way to send your long winded ramblings (a.k.a. blog content) via email and it doesn't involve copy and paste.