This week I read something from “MarketingSherpa”:http://www.marketingsherpa.com called “Media Industry Shamed – Whose Email Lists Are Growing Fastest (and Whose Are Not)”:http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=3140. _(Hurry to check this out this article is only available for free for a few more days.)_
This covers a topic that many people have asked me about: What are typical growth rates for email lists?
According to the MarketingSherpa article, email lists are growing at an average of 40% per year. But, it seems some industries are doing better than others.
Which industries are doing a good job of increasing the size of their permission email lists?
Social and professional organizations
* 7.7% email addresses added each month
* 2.2% unsubscribes and hard bounces
* 5.4% average email list growth per month
Manufacturing companies
* 6.0% email addresses added each month
* 0.9% unsubscribes and hard bounces
* 5.1% average email list growth per month
Which industry is not doing well?
Media and publishing companies
* 6.9% email addresses added each month
* 4.7% unsubscribes and hard bounces
* 2.2% average email list growth per month
MarketingSherpa isn’t giving us much insight as to _why_ these numbers come out the way they do but they do say “media companies are more likely than other mailers to be sending daily or weekly. And 57% of consumers surveyed by Pew studies say ‘high frequency’ is a reason they’d consider a mailer a spammer — yes, even if they give permission.”
For some tips from MarketingSherpa you can “read the full article”:http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=3140 but free access expires soon.
And remember, you may get permission from recipients but if you don’t live up to their expectations of frequency and relevance, they will soon unsubscribe or, worse, consider your email spam.
Make sure you communicate to subscribers how often they will be getting email from you. Instead of sending everyone the same content consider increasing the relevance by sending two or three shorter emails each targeted at a specific group. You can also consider _not_ sending an email to a group if your content is not relevant.
I would be interested in learning more about what others are seeing with their email list growth? “Contact me”:http://www.onedegree.ca/contributors/stefan_eyram with your thoughts or post a comment.