You’re going to lose your friends if you keep bugging them.

You work all year to get email subscribers. They’re incredibly valuable — fans who actually give you permission to send them stuff. It’s one of the rarest and most special kinds of marketing — because email is the only kind of advertising we ask for.

And then the 4th-quarter sales pressure hits. And then marketers start bombarding the list with offers.

They do get an uptick in sales, which are easy to measure. But temporary.

But they forget to measure the lifetime value of lost, annoyed former customers. They forget to measure the lost sales to previously happy email subscribers who bailed due to over mailing.

Resist the temptation.