List Fatigue

It is a term that refers to a waning of responses and results from email lists.  This term typically applies when this decreased impact results from the list’s repeated use, but can also include times when email list subscribers have become disinterested in the distributed content but have yet to unsubscribe from the list.

In typical email marketing experiences, subscribers new to the list are often more responsive than those who have been active subscribers for longer periods of time. As time moves forward, these new users may feel that they have seen all that the campaigns have to offer and their engagement levels may decrease.

Many email marketers experience list fatigue from three main reasons: frequency of communication, stale information delivery, and information bombardment.  Email list owners can easily fall into a pattern of sending communications more frequently than their subscribers may like. As email frequency increases, recipients may feel that they are receiving too many messages and may stop responding to the communication.  Stale and unvaried information has a similar effect on list subscribers.  If the recipients read the same information in each communication, they may feel that the emails are predictable. As they become more able to predict the email content, they have less need to open and engage with the communication.  Other email list owners may bombard their lists with too much information.

Often, email marketers may be excited about many new happenings in their company.  Instead of spacing announcements about these events, they may send multiple emails advertising each occurrence separately.  List subscribers may feel this is too much — especially if the frequency is very closely distributed in time — and slow their responses; email marketers often experience better results by focusing on one major event or product at a time and space their communications bi- monthly or weekly.