How many emails is too many emails?

[VisHorizons]

When a customer orders, immediately they get:
1. Order confirmation email
2. "Where did you hear about us" email (a thing my boss has set up on his Outlook)

The first Wednesday after the order (and every week following, unless they unsubscribe):
3. Newsletter email

A couple weeks after the order, they'll get:
4. "Customers who ordered X also ordered Y" email
5. Google Customer Reviews email (this is opt-in)

I'm looking into a product reviews module. I see the Miva one will also send out an email so-many-days after an order:
6. Review request email

This seems crazy. Or am I overthinking it?

[AHerb]

- order confirmation
- request for a review few weeks after the order
- 1 newsletter every 2 weeks works best for us (if more frequent, we're getting much more unsibscribers)

That's it.

Depends on the products you sell, but have a look at the amount of emails sent by Amazon. They spend 10ths of millions on marketing and analytics teams who are tracking users behavior, and I'm sure they know way more than us.

[VisHorizons]

Thanks for the reply.

Amazon is exactly the reason we send out a "Customers who ordered X also ordered Y" email. My bosses saw it from Amazon and told me to implement it for our site.

Also, boss says he likes the personal feel of his "Where did you hear about us" email and won't let me combine it with the order confirmation, which feels more automated.

I have to walk the line between "bringing in sales" / "irritating the customers" / "pleasing my bosses." It's fun!

[AHerb]

As far as I recall, for "Customers who ordered X also ordered Y" they're not sending a separate email. Instead they just populate order confirmation and shipping confirmation emails with some additional data. I may be wrong!!!

[oliverands]

That sounds like a lot of emails to me. If I were you, I would look to combine some of them.

Here's what we do:

1. Order confirmation email once order is complete
2. Order shipped email with tracking number the next day when order has shipped
3. 42 days after order, an email from the Easy Review module that asks for reviews on items purchased AND gives three "customers who placed an order like yours also bought" suggestions
4. Newsletter once a month thereafter

I chose to ask for the review and give suggestions at 42 days after order based on a detailed analysis of our customer order history. That's enough time for them to have used the product so they can provide an intelligent review, and it's the start of the window where we naturally start to get follow up orders from customers who are going to become repeat purchasers. I use this as a prompt to remind them about us and suggest a few other items they might like. I use UTM codes on all the links in the email so I can track performance of this email with Google Analytics. It works well for us.

The where did you hear about us email sounds a little odd. I would look to see what percent of recipients provide a response and if anything actually gets done with the information. If the answer to the first is less than 10% and to the second is "nothing, really" that's one I would look to prune away.

[habreu]

At one time we had a 'where did you here about us' item as a drop down as part of the order. It might even work on the account creation screen though you'd to add something for guest purchases then. "Customers who ordered X also ordered Y" email seems like a waste to me personally - I'd show them related items at the time of the sale or anytime they browse the site (since you have their order history. You could also add some upsale items at time of purchase. You could segment if your customers fall into different groups, then send them slightly different variations of the newsletter with the basic content the same but with different 'featured products' for each. This could also provide some useful information (split testing) ie product B on Newsletter 2 got twice as many clicks as product A on Newsletter 1.