Sometimes "worst practices" work

Kudos to the folk at MailChimp for digging out this case study of a self-help website.

Subscribers to FlyLady's email list get over 10 email reminders each day. And it's hugely successful.

That's right. Not monthly, weekly or even daily emails. But pretty much hourly ones. In a world of email overload that sounds insane: no email expert on this planet would advise such a high mailing frequency. But it seems to work.

I love this story because it's a super reminder that before you take action based on the general advice, benchmarks and best practices people like me blog and write about, you must first put them into the context of your own business model and audience.

A dozen emails a day works for "FlyLady" because the content (reminders of daily activities that need doing) matches the audience (people who want and need these constant reminders to get themselves organized.)

More on frequency | Tags: email marketing, email frequency, flylady

Permalink | September 19, 2007 | 4 comment(s)
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4 Comments:

Heck, when my wife signed up several years ago, we received closer to 50 emails a day from Flylady. It was too much for us, and we unsubscribed after a few weeks. It was a continuous flow. I recently asked Flylady some questions about their success with this kind of frequency.

Email Frequency: Flylady Delivers a Continuous Flow of Advice

All the best

Tom
By Tom O'Leary, on 19 September, 2007

I'm questioning whether FlyLady subscribers are happy with the 13 emails a day...

I signed up for it, (recommended by my mom - is she hinting at something??)and it quickly drove me CRAZY. While the advice is great, practical and useful the emails are excessive. Especially because half of them are testimonials (OK, maybe to inspire, but annoys me more than anything)

Also - One email, which is repeated EVERY day, contains a disclaimer "(If you have already done these babysteps then celebrate and just delete this message and don't whine about getting it every day. There are new members that need this message.)" which tells me I'm not the only one going crazy about it...

Perhaps it's because I work in the industry, and know there's a better way.. but I've also told others about it, (before I signed up) and they've come back yelling at me about it!

Since it's done through a Yahoo Group, I did go back and select the "Daily Digest Option" so I only get one daily instead of 12-13. But unfortunately I don't get around to reading it most days.
By Kelly Rusk, on 19 September, 2007

So perhaps not quite the success story the article claims then...though I think the point holds that frequency needs to match content and audience.

I wonder how good a job they do of making it clear to prospective subscribers just what kind of volume they're likely to get.
By Mark Brownlow - Email Marketing Reports, on 20 September, 2007

I thought some more about this. FlyLady uses Yahoo Groups -- which is free -- to email her 400k+ subscribers so often. If she had to pay for a normal email marketing service, she couldn't afford that mailing frequency. So to some extent her success is reliant on the munificence of Yahoo. I hope for her sake they don't start charging.
By Mark Brownlow - Email Marketing Reports, on 20 September, 2007

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