When I was working at a well-known online advertising company, an experienced manager came in and said something that stayed with me. Don't be afraid of annoying people. At peak season, we send 80 emails to each client per day.
I stared at him. 80 emails. Per day. Per client.
For most small brands, that number would be extreme. But the fear of repeating yourself is costing you far more than the repetition ever would.
Most founders and small brand owners underexpose themselves completely. They post once, send one email, run one ad, and when nothing happens, they assume the market doesn't want what they built. Often, the market just hasn't seen it enough times to remember it.
The rule of 7 in marketing
The rule of 7 is a well-established principle in marketing: someone typically needs to encounter your brand, message, or product around 7 times before it properly registers. Before they remember it. Before they act on it.
People are exposed to thousands of pieces of information every day across apps, emails, feeds, and conversations. Something that appears once in that volume has almost no chance of being retained.
You're not being ignored because your product isn't good enough. You're being forgotten because everyone is.
Being different helps. But everyone is trying to be different. Frequency is what actually separates the brands people remember from the ones they've technically seen but can't place.
"People don't read. They scan. They forget. That's not personal. That's just how attention works."
Why people don't read what you write
I had a key piece of information written clearly on my website. In the banner. On the product page. In the description. Multiple places, obvious placement. People still messaged asking about it.
My first reaction was: Why are you asking me this? It's right there. I just wrote it. But that's exactly the problem. You write something, you assume people read it, and then you're surprised when they come back with a question that tells you they clearly didn't.
That's not them being difficult. That's just how people consume information online. They scan, they catch fragments, they move on. The information was there. It just didn't land.
The answer is not to write it in bigger letters or in a more prominent position. The answer is to say it more often, in more places, in more ways, because human attention is genuinely limited. The only way through is repetition.
This is especially relevant for anyone building something new, whether that's a software product, an e-commerce brand, or a service. You know your product inside out. Your audience is encountering it cold, distracted, for approximately four seconds before they move on. 7 exposures to get one memory is not pessimistic. It's realistic.
What you write and what people understand are not the same thing
There's also a gap between what you write and what people actually understand. You spend time crafting the perfect explanation. The next day, someone emails asking exactly the question you just answered. What you meant to say and what they took away are often two completely different things. That's a communication problem, and it's yours to fix.
When someone asks a question you've already answered, at least one person was interested enough to reach out. Use that question to make the explanation clearer, shorter, or more prominent. Every repeated question is a signal that something in the copy isn't landing the way you think it is.
How many follow-ups is too many
If you send a pitch email and don't hear back, follow up. Not daily, not aggressively, but follow up. People miss things. Timing matters. A second message at the right moment can land completely differently from the first.
I received an email once from a publication that felt like a mass send. Very generic, clearly a template. I ignored it. Then she followed up. Then again. Something shifted. It started to feel like a real conversation rather than a broadcast.
That follow-up eventually led to a feature that meaningfully increased awareness. She got the feature because she showed up more than once. Most people don't.
Following up shows that you're serious. That this isn't a random blast. That you actually want this specific conversation.
The one thing people need to remember
Repetition only works if what you're repeating is simple enough to stick. Pick one clear thing. One word, one line, one idea that captures what you do. Get people familiar with that one thing first. Once they're interested, you can explain more. But don't front-load everything.
If you send a 12-page onboarding document on day one, most of it will be forgotten by day two. If you have detailed documentation, make it easy to scan. Short sections, one idea per block. The goal is for information to land, not just to exist.
And repetition works best when it reaches the right people. If you're sending to the wrong audience, it doesn't matter how many times you show up.
But even then, the worst that happens is they ignore it. Getting in front of the right people and making them remember you is the hardest part. The ones who find you annoying were never going to buy. Don't optimise for them.
