Every send spends something

The lifecycle channel is the one everybody calls free, and this fortnight is when it gets spent hardest.

Look at what happens in a direct-to-consumer inbox between Christmas and the new year. Two sends on the twenty-sixth. Another on the twenty-seventh, because the twenty-sixth performed. A last chance on the twenty-eighth, then an extension of the last chance, then the new year offer, then the reminder about the new year offer. Nobody signs a budget off for any of it, so nobody asks what it costs. The month closes with revenue against no spend at all, and the channel looks like the best decision anyone made this year.

The bill arrives in January. It arrives as unsubscribes, which get read as list hygiene. It arrives as an open rate that has drifted down a few points and stays there, which gets read as the market. It arrives as the customer who now deletes on sight, and that one is never read, because no report has a line for a person who stopped looking.

I have watched enough accounts to know this is not carelessness. Permission has no price tag, so it gets treated as capacity rather than as stock. Capacity refills every morning. Stock does not.

The whole error sits in the word free. Media is not free and everybody can see why. Permission is free the way a savings account is free: no charge to hold it, and the balance can be spent exactly once. Every send takes something out. Most Decembers take out more than the first quarter puts back.

The channel did not get worse in January. It got emptier in December, and December had already been reported.