Mail a Sequence of Emails to New Subscribers from 0 to 60 Days After Registration

"Strike while the iron is hot." Email subscribers are far more responsive during the first 30 days after registration than at anytime thereafter. By 60 days after registration, responsiveness to your calls-to-action may decline to half the original conversion rate.

As a result, don't wait as many as 29 days to send a monthly newsletter to a new subscriber. Similarly, don't wait for random events to trigger an email alert. Instead, design a series of sequential mailings that will be sent to new subscribers at pre-planned periods during their most responsive time on your mailing list.

For instance, you might want to consider a sequential schedule that starts like this:

DAYS AFTER REGISTRATION	MAILING NAME
0	Welcome
1	Call-to-Action 1
4	Call-to-Action 2
8	Achievements
11	Call-to-Action 3
15	Call-to-Action 4
18	Newsletter
22	Call-to-Action 5
25	Thoughts from the Executive Director
26	Donation Request
30	Call-to-Action 6

This mailing schedule is probably NOT too frequent, especially when the relationship with your subscriber is new. As the relationship gets older, or if the calls-to-action are time consuming, then add additional time between the emails.

Having said that, err initially on the side of potentially "too frequent," while monitoring the unsubscribe rate carefully. If the unsubscribe rate seems unacceptably high, spread out the email sequence to see if that lowers the unsubscribe rate enough to compensate for the fewer calls-to-action per month.

Good Email Service Providers will be able to distribute your pre-planned sequence of messages at preset intervals to new subscribers. As an alternative, you can handle the mailings yourself with the assistance of "Autoresponder Software."

Examples of autoresponder software include:

AutoResponse Plus: http://www.autoresponseplus.com/features.html
AWeber: http://www.aweber.com/

Test Every Time

Don't Assume that a
Very Low Unsubscribe Rate is "Good"