Over the years, email has been proclaimed dead many times by the inexperienced who tend to extrapolate trends to infinity and don't realize patterns will stabilized and redistribute. In fact, there are numerous stats that indication email will be with us for some time:
Over 4.037 billion email users. This figure is predicted to reach 4.481 billion by 2024 which is a growth of 3% yearly. - Radicati Group (2021)
96% of consumers check their email every day. - DMA Consumer Tracker (2021)
Over 70% of Consumers believe email is the best channel for company contact, preferring it almost twice as much as any other channel: 46% compared to 26% for post, and 24% for text or face-to-face. DMA Consumer Tracker (2021)
Types of email sends
That's not to say there aren't any problems with email. We are inundated by email both professionally and personally. Remember this feeling/perspective and use it to guide your approach to emailing your users. Because we put a lot of effort into our emails we tend to assume... "of course the users want to get this email I sent them" but in reality there may only be a passing interest at best in most cases... and while there is light interest they are likely to prioritize an uncluttered inbox more than the possible value our communication might have in their eyes. This feeling of clutter is exacerbated because it is far too easy for bad actors to spam recipients even with authentication methods aimed to protect us like DKIM, SPF, DMARC, etc. We continue to get unwanted emails from illegitimate sources and often from legitimate senders. Meeting Privacy Laws (which we'll touch on later) is the lowest bar. Earning a place in the user's inbox as wanted mail is a much higher bar. To do that we have to talk about the receiver's expectations and the types of email an organization has.
Transactional
Transactional emails are Emails that are sent to an individual recipient following a commercial transaction or specific action performed by that person, such as a purchase, a password reset request, or registration to your event. If there is more than one follow-up, it's a best practice to set the expectation with the recipient and give them the option to unselect follow-up they may feel is extraneous, ahead of time (i.e. during registration allow the user to skips hotel recommendations and event reminders etc). Because this is anticipated and expected by the user and is a direct response to a transaction or action, an Opt-in is not required (though it might be a good idea to check their privacy status and ask for if they would like to update if they are not currently Opt'd in). These should be exempt from any email sending frequency limits.
Operational
Operational emails are intended for sharing important information specific to a customer or based on a specific customer's activity. This also applied to users of communities. Examples include product, service or community changes that the user should be made aware of as it affects their product/service and may need them to take action. These communications should avoid any obvious marketing/promotional content. While this isn't anticipated they are expected to be informed of changes to product and service they have with you an Opt-in is not required (though it might be a good idea to check their privacy status and ask for if they would like to update if they are not currently Opt'd in). These should be exempt from any email sending frequency limits.
Subscriptions
These are often confused with Topics of interest but are very different things. A subscription is a communication user can sign up to receive. These typically will revolve around a topic and will often have a set cadence (i.e. monthly) and there an expectation there will be regular content generated under this communication. This is the main difference, while subscription centres may ask a person about topics of interest... there is no commitment to routinely communicate about that topic. It's mere a way to test interest in topics. Because people Opt-in to subscriptions, these should be exempt from any email sending frequency limits. Inviting non-subscribers to join a subscription and sending them a sample should be treated as General Marketing.
General Marketing
The last category of marketing email sends is broad and included a lot of types of content and formats. These are all of the emails send that are not anticipated and don't fall into one of the above categories. All of these need to follow Privacy Status requirements of the user's country and your business's email sending frequency limits. Let's talk about some common examples.
Promotions / News / Announcements
These typically time sensitive or the content is perishable and are usually sent in one-off single topic emails. Here are some examples:
Event Registration promotion
Special pricing / deal promotion
Product / Service announcements
Public Relations announcements
Product / Company news
etc
Newsletter
These are multi topic email communications with a regular cadence. The advantage is you can fit in more content than a single topic email, but the disadvantage is you are putting more than one topic in the communication and potentially fracturing the recipient's focus. It's a double-edged sword. While these are a good way to work within your business's email send frequency limits when you have multiple pieces of general marketing that is targeted at similar audiences. You should lay out the newsletter with reoccurring sections in the same spot and summary at the top to make it easier for user to get at the info they are most interested in.
Nurture
These are sequences of content, usually aimed at helping users move from one stage to another by sending them recommended content. Drip (keep warm) is another kind of Nurture program where every green content is continuously added, and you keep you contact base warm with these email sends if nothing else is targeting the user. This content is usually ever green (not time sensitive or perishable content). But the way these are typically put together, the end users really doesn't see this as anything different than Promotions / News / Announcement as the content doesn't have an obvious common thread for the end user. It's really a construct we have put together to move the user through stage invisible to them. This is why these will follow General Marketing Privacy requirements and Send Frequency rules. If a Nurture track has its own branding and the is messaging explaining to the user they are part of a series of emails with a very specific topic/goal. For example, if there is an Education track to teach user about using your product/service, one might argue it can be categorized as a Subscription. In that case, you should get them to opt-in to the subscription, so these emails don't have to be subject to email send frequency rules.
Sales email
While these aren't typically controlled in marketing, you do need to link systems, so there is at least some awareness and coordination. It doesn't matter which team inundates the recipient, they look at the company as one entity. Work together and coordinate. Sale emails need to follow the same Privacy and Send Frequency rules.
Privacy Rules and Statuses
The privacy rules you will want to apply will be based on the country of residence of the user and the status that you have for them. Generally countries will fall into one of these categories of minimum barrier need to send General Marketing or Sales emails. These are also types of type of Opt-in statuses you will want to collect.
Opt-out
This is the least stringent of the Privacy categories... companies need only to honour opt-out requests in their email contact rules meaning you are allowed to email any email address you have as long as they have not opt-ed out.
Opt-in
This is more stringent... companies can only email contacts if they have previously opt-ed in to the company's email communications. These are usually collected digitally on form offering an asset and asking the user to also opt-in to marketing communications. In some countries, the rule is temporary relaxed and an interaction like filling out a form or attending presentation allows you to classify these contacts as implied Opt-in for a short period of time. Make use of this window to get a full Opt-in, so you can continue to communicate with them after the temporary window.
Double Opt-in
This is currently the most stringent of categories... company not only need to collect an Opt-in (i.e. via a form) but have to get validation they knowingly Opt-ed in. In this case, after collecting the Opt-in you can only send a transactional email to ask them to validate they are opting in that email address. Only after they validate the opt-in, can you send them General Marketing email sends.
Earn that place in their inbox
To foster good will and trust your business should add additional rules on email communications to earn a spot in the recipient's inbox. These take the form of email send frequency rules, targeting and segmentation rules, preference centre and cadence control. Remember at the beginning of this post we talked about how full our inboxes are. If you have a new contact enter your database, and you email them daily, but their expectation was to get emails at most once a week... you will at best have someone that ignores your emails or unsubscribes... but it could be much worse. They could mark you as SPAM because it's simple and easy for them to do and ensure they don't get more emails. We have to set expectations and pick content that matches their interests, and we have a limited number of attempts to do it. Leverage analytics (and Data Science if you can) to match content to contacts and collect feedback directly when you can and indirectly if you have to. Use what you find to make the best email experience you can for them and that is how you earn and place in their inbox.
