Our friend Dan Kennedy once added up how often his business reached its members.
The answer was at least 279 times a year.
That's a touch on most days of the year.
And this was more than 15 years ago.
Members got print newsletters, a CD, a weekly fax, books, events, and a catalog, along with email.
Many of those touches cost postage, printing, or a disc someone had to make and mail.
He sent them anyway, because the math worked.
Today, an email costs close to nothing to send.
So how many times did you reach your list last year?
A monthly newsletter is 12.
Kennedy saw every relationship as either growing or losing value each day.
"If your primary connection with them occurs once a month you got 29 days of loss of value," he said.
So he paired frequency with constancy: the same thing, at the same time, so people come to expect it.
A magazine like House Beautiful shows up the second week of every month. Monday Night Football was every Monday night, not some of them.
He also wanted to be so present in members' lives that they couldn't turn around without seeing something from him.
We see the same thing in our own numbers.
We send this newsletter twice a week.
Unsubscribes stay around half a percent or less per send, and more than half the people we send to open it.
People usually leave a list when it stops being useful, not because it keeps showing up.
So try this.
Count how many times you reached your list in the last twelve months.
Not the plan. The actual number.
Then ask whether that number is one you chose on purpose.
Sending more often shouldn't mean more work, which is most of what automation is for.
