An old adage that has continued to stand the test of time says “anything in excess is always bad”.
Too much food, too much sleep, too much work, or too much relaxation. Bad is anyway bad, but too much of good is also bad.
This holds true for marketing communication as well! Regardless of how great your content, creatives, and messaging might be, the last thing you want to do as a marketer is to put-off your users courtesy excessive communication.
A study by Yankelovich, Inc., a marketing firm, stated that an average modern person is exposed to around 5,000 ads per day. This was way back in 2006-07.
Imagine what those numbers look like today!
Amidst so much clutter, you do not want to bombard your users with multiple campaigns, and catch their attention for all the wrong reasons.
My favourite music app sends me push notifications about new album releases. But, I eventually had to disable push notifications when I began receiving them far more frequently than required.
The problem: zero contextualisation and complete disregard for the user’s privacy in an attempt to drive higher app usage.
This is a major challenge for modern marketers who have to ensure top-of-mind recall while aiming to keep their growing user bases engaged. All of this needs to be done while ensuring they aren’t bothering them with too many multi-channel campaigns.
Fret not, every problem comes with a solution. And, Netcore’s robust feature – Frequency Capping – addresses the very same with AI-backed precision!
Frequency Capping automatically restricts, i.e. caps the number of times (frequency) a specific user receives or sees a marketing communication in a given time period (day/week/month). You can cap the number of messages received by a user either on a single channel, across all channels, or both. You can do it for specific campaigns, automated customer journeys, or set a global frequency limit for your users.
Suppose you set the Frequency Cap to 3 per day, your users would not receive the 4th and 5th and any further campaigns that you send through the day, if he/she has already received 3.
You might have a slight degree of FOMO, or might find it hard to keep yourself from sending that awesomely crafted push notification or in-app message campaign to your users…but, you must still consider the option of setting a frequency cap.
Why?
As a brand, you want to be visible, but you do not want to annoy your users with too much content. You could be running a number of distinct marketing campaigns, but if the recipient user base is the same, it is extremely critical that you limit the number of campaigns a user receives.
Excessive content leads to decreased campaign performance. Users and prospects may ignore your campaigns completely, causing your conversions to drop, and eventually creating brand dissonance that may even result app uninstalls.
Frequency Capping can be particularly helpful when your users might have subscribed to multiple campaigns based on their interests, location, or current offers, but at the same time are likely to uninstall or opt-out of notifications when encountering an overwhelming volume of multi-channel messages.
Related blog: How to send highly contextual and personalised messages through STO & SLO
Identify a Frequency Cap that Works Best for your App or Website
- While your industry plays a major role in determining the ideal number, going by the rule of 3 in digital marketing, it is advisable to cap your campaigns at 3 per day, and be strategic with how and when you deliver them
- Also, time of the month or the year is also a factor. For instance, it might not be harmful for a cricket app/website to send 5 or more notifications a day during the annual IPL season, or an ecommerce brand to send more than 3 campaigns during a flash sale. But, a bank sending more than 2-3 promotional campaigns every day may not be a good idea
- You also need to look at your data trends, especially where opt-outs and uninstalls seem to peak for different user segments
- A good rule of thumb could be to set lower frequencies for awareness campaigns and higher ones for retargeting campaigns
Keep Optimising: Don’t Set and Forget!
Frequency caps aren’t binding. You can and should override them for a critical or urgent messages. As mentioned earlier, you set these caps based on time and occasions for a specific duration.
As you keep recalibrating your multi-channel marketing strategy, a previously implemented cap may not match your campaign goals. Hence, keep revisiting and adjusting the caps on a regular basis.
A once-a-month check should suffice, as you won’t want to act prematurely on user behaviour that hasn’t been fully fleshed out.
Drive Higher Conversions with Effective Retargeting
A prospect visiting your website for a couple of times does not imply that he wants to see your emails or push notifications each time he opens his mailbox or picks up his smartphone.
Overwhelming the prospect may increase the probability of him never converting into a customer. Well-thought out retargeting campaigns supported by frequency capping can certainly shoot up the lead conversion rates.
Marketing fatigue is real. The issue is gaining more attention as the number of marketing channels are growing and users are increasingly becoming allergic to frequent exposures to promotions and ads.
While you focus on acing the game through user behaviour-based hyper-personalisation and optimisation, do pay due attention to the delicate balance that frequency capping can help you achieve.
To know more, schedule a demo with us today!
