Written by DROPS.ST.
Contact customers when you have something useful to say, within the choices they have made and the rules that apply to your business. Set a shared contact budget across campaigns and reminders so several teams or tools do not each treat their message as the only one. There is no universal weekly frequency that fits every shop and audience.
DROPS puts customer records and follow-up tools alongside orders. That gives staff a better foundation for choosing a relevant audience and understanding the relationship. The business result is a more coherent reason to revisit your shop, with less repetitive communication to manage.
Count what the customer receives
A campaign calendar can look restrained while an individual customer receives several overlapping messages. A weekly promotion, a restock update, a win-back invitation and a referral reminder may all land within days. Add SMS or Telegram and the total is easy to miss.
Review contacts by customer and purpose, not only by campaign name. Your manual process may need to reconcile activity across channels; verify the available controls instead of assuming every channel shares one automatic frequency limit.
Order confirmations, payment clarification and collection updates solve a different need from promotions. Keep them factual and timely. Do not pad an essential service message with offers merely to avoid counting it as marketing.
Build a purpose-based contact budget
The following is an illustrative starting policy for an eligible, opted-in audience, not a recommended legal limit or industry benchmark.
| Message purpose | Example operating rule | What takes priority |
|---|---|---|
| Necessary order update | Send when the actual order state warrants it | Accuracy and timely service |
| General promotional campaign | Review against a maximum of two planned contacts per month | Customer preference and relevance |
| Requested stock update | Send when the requested change is verified | The customer's specific request |
| Win-back invitation | Review recent contact before including the customer | Avoid another near-identical promotion |
| Referral reminder | Use only when there is a useful reason | Do not crowd out a more relevant message |
Two contacts per month is a number to test in this example, not a promise of safety or performance. A customer's stated preference may be lower. Applicable channel and market requirements still govern the actual contact.
Give one person responsibility for overlaps
Before a send, check the planned audience against recent and upcoming activity. Remove people with an unresolved service problem from a promotional audience when that message would be inappropriate. Confirm that withdrawals and channel choices have been applied.
For a small team, a short shared campaign view can be enough. Record purpose, audience, channel, proposed date and owner. The owner should be able to explain why this message deserves attention now. A scheduled slot alone is a weak reason to contact someone.
The communication withdrawal review helps identify repeated reasons customers ask for fewer messages. Listen to those signals before adding another campaign.
Measure usefulness alongside sales
Imagine an illustrative campaign reaches 400 eligible contacts. It produces 28 shop visits, eight completed orders and four withdrawals. The observed visit rate is 28 ÷ 400 = 7%; order rate is 8 ÷ 400 = 2%; withdrawal rate is 4 ÷ 400 = 1%.
Keep the definition and denominator consistent. Do not compare recipients in one month with delivered messages in another without saying so. Also record useful replies and complaints. An order-linked message can produce revenue while still damaging the longer relationship through poor timing.
To test frequency, compare similar audiences over the same length of time and keep content quality in view. Sending twice as often with entirely different offers does not isolate frequency. Small samples can guide a practical adjustment without proving a universal rule.
Make preferences easy for staff to honor
A customer may want order updates by one route and promotions by another, or no promotions at all. Keep those choices understandable and accessible to the people who act on them. The service preference guide explains how to make customer choices useful in everyday work.
During a DROPS demo, inspect audience selection, campaign review and the customer record. Ask how your proposed contact policy will work across the channels you intend to enable. Agree the actual controls before promising a preference option to customers.
Make every message worth receiving. See DROPS and build a follow-up plan that brings customers back without turning your shop into background noise.