What is list fatigue?
List fatigue is an email marketing term that refers to a list of subscribers who have largely lost interest in your email campaigns. This can happen for a lot of different reasons. It might happen because you’re sending too many emails, or because you’re sending too few emails, or it might happen because the content you’re sending isn’t relevant to the list that you’re sending it to.
Signs of list fatigue are a low open rate, a low click-through rate, and a high unsubscribe rate (measured up against your pre-set benchmarks).
What are the common causes of list fatigue?
Here are some of the most common reasons for list fatigue.
- Irrelevant Content — When you send content to your email list that doesn’t apply to them, they will often tune it out. They might even unsubscribe. A few irrelevant emails usually won’t destroy your longterm relationship with them, but enough over a long period of time certainly will.
- Poor Send Timing — When you send your email campaigns is more important than most email marketers give credit. Trial-and-error (A/B testing) is the best way to determine when your audience is most likely to engage with your emails. But to determine which days/times you should even test, ask yourself, “When is my audience most likely to check their email?”
- Sending Too Many Or Too Few Emails — If you’re sending too many or too few emails to your audience, subscribers will start to tune you out. Your emails will hit their inbox, but they won’t open, click, or probably even notice. How many emails is too many? And how many is too few? Well it completely depends on your audience, how many emails they want or expect, and your conversion goals. For some businesses, three emails per week is too much. For others, that isn’t even close to enough.
- Learn More: How Often Should You Send Marketing Emails?
- Focusing On Sales Rather Than The Relationship — Relationship is king in email marketing. Unfortunately, many email marketers make the mistake of focussing to heavily on their business and on making sales rather than building a relationship. There’s a balance, to be sure, but always err on the side of building a healthy relationship with your subscribers rather than hard-selling them.