Latest / Marketing Automation with Fexingo: HubSpot, Marketo, and Automated Customer Journeys / When Marketing Automation Ignores Customer Frequency Fatigue
Transcript
- Lucas: A customer opens three of your emails in one day. In most marketing automation systems, that looks like a super-engaged user. So the platform cranks up the frequency — more emails, maybe a push notification, even a retargeted ad. Luna: And you think that's a mistake. Lucas: I think it's a blind spot. A 2025 study of 2,000 online shoppers found that people who received three or more brand emails within 24 hours were 38% more likely to unsubscribe within the next week. Yet most automation workflows treat a burst of opens as positive reinforcement. Luna: So the system is basically rewarding itself for annoying the customer. Lucas: Exactly. The problem is that automation platforms like HubSpot or Marketo don't have a concept of 'session' — a bounded period of interaction. They log every open as an individual event, and their engagement scores are cumulative. There's no cooldown. Luna: What would a session-based logic look like in practice? Lucas: Let's say a customer opens an email at 9 AM, then another at 2 PM, then a third at 8 PM. A session-aware system would treat that as one active day, not three separate 'high engagement' signals. It would reset the cadence back to normal the next day instead of escalating. Luna: Some brands are already doing this, right? I remember REI talked about their 'three-touch rule' a couple years ago. Lucas: REI's approach is a good example. They cap the number of automated emails a customer can receive per day — across all their lifecycle programs — at two. And if someone clicks through to the site, they suppress the third email entirely. It's a hard limit. Luna: But that's a cap. Not a session reset. Lucas: Right. A cap is a blunt instrument. It prevents the immediate over-send, but it doesn't differentiate between a customer who was genuinely browsing and one who was just clearing their inbox. A session reset is smarter because it looks at recency and density. Luna: How would you implement that in a platform like Marketo? Lucas: Marketo's engagement programs let you set a 'fatigue score' based on the number of touches — but that score is usually calculated over a rolling 7- or 14-day window. That's too long. If someone opens three emails today, their fatigue score might not trigger until tomorrow, if at all. You'd need a custom script that resets the count after a 24-hour quiet period. Luna: So the solution is custom, not out-of-the-box. Lucas: Most of the time, yes. HubSpot has a 'suppression list' feature that can exclude contacts who've received a certain number of emails in a given timeframe. But even that doesn't account for session behavior — it's just a hard count. Luna: What about Sephora? They're known for high-frequency email marketing. Lucas: Sephora actually tests this more deliberately. They run A/B experiments where one segment gets a 'burst suppression' — if they open two emails within four hours, the third is delayed by 12 hours. They found a 12% increase in click-through rates on the delayed email and a 5% drop in unsubscribes. Luna: So the fix is often counterintuitive — sending fewer emails leads to more engagement. Lucas: It's the classic 'less is more' paradox, but it's really about timing. The customer isn't less interested; they're just saturated in that moment. If you wait, you get their attention back. Luna: This reminds me of something I've noticed with our own show. When we release multiple episodes on the same day, listeners who binge two in a row are actually less likely to come back the next day. It's like a consumption cap. Lucas: That's the same pattern. And it's one reason we keep the show ad-free — we don't want to add to the noise. We'd rather you listen when it's useful than feel pressured to keep up. Luna: Yeah. And if listeners want to support that approach, there's a way to do it without getting more emails or ads in your inbox. Lucas: Right. It's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No upsells, no frequency boost. Just a simple way to keep this ad-free if it's been valuable. Luna: Exactly. So back to frequency fatigue — what's the simplest change a marketer could make starting tomorrow? Lucas: I'd say audit your existing workflows for any program that sends more than one email per day to the same contact. Then add a rule that checks for 'last engagement timestamp' — if the contact opened an email in the last four hours, skip the next send. Luna: That's a one-day fix. Lucas: It is. Most platforms have a 'decision split' or 'if/then' branch where you can check a field like 'Last Opened Date'. If it's less than four hours ago, route them to a holding list. Then send the email at the next scheduled window. Luna: What about customers who genuinely want high frequency? Some people sign up for daily deals. Lucas: That's a valid preference. You can segment them into a 'high frequency' list and exclude them from the session logic. But the default should be protective, not promotional. Luna: So the key is giving the automation permission to wait. Lucas: Exactly. Most marketers think speed is always better. But when it comes to communication, sometimes the fastest path to a conversion is a well-timed pause. Luna: And the data backs that up. The 2025 study also showed that customers who received a delayed email — sent 12 hours after a burst — had a 22% higher purchase rate than those who got the immediate follow-up. Lucas: That's a huge lift. So the takeaway isn't 'send fewer emails overall.' It's 'send them at the right rhythm, respecting the customer's recent interaction density.' Automation should feel attentive, not aggressive. Luna: The question is whether platforms will ever build this in as a native feature. Lucas: I think they will. HubSpot already has 'smart send' timing features, but they focus on time of day, not recency. Marketo has 'fatigue management' but again, it's a rolling window. Session logic would be a natural next iteration. Luna: Until then, it's on the marketer to code it in. Lucas: Right. And honestly, that's fine. The competitive advantage comes from understanding your customer's behavioral context — not just their clicks, but the sequence and spacing of those clicks. Luna: It's a more human way to automate. Lucas: Yes. And that's what makes the difference between a brand that feels like a helpful partner and one that feels like a noisy app you eventually mute. Luna: So next time you're reviewing your email calendar, ask yourself: are my automations pacing themselves, or just piling on? Lucas: And if you're not sure, start with that four-hour hold. It's a small change that could save you a lot of unsubscribes. Luna: I'm curious to try it on our own workflow. Lucas: Let's do it. We'll report back if we see a change. Luna: Sounds good.