How Often to Email Your Subscribers
A question every business owner with an email list must answer is: How often will I email my subscriber list?
In email marketing, what you say isn't the only thing that matters. How often you email your list could mean huge returns or meager sales.
When I became an email copywriter and strategist, I binged all the courses and watched all the videos about how often to email your subscribers. Most of the traditional advice said to email once a week or once every few weeks.
I'm here to tell you that's trash advice.
In this blog post, we're going to go over what works in today's email marketing landscape. I'll explain industry-specific considerations, how to determine optimal frequency, and factors influencing email frequency.
When all is said and done, you'll walk away knowing just how often to communicate with your list to make the most money possible.
Importance of Email Frequency
I talk to my closest friend, Amy, just about every single day.
We chat about work, guys, life, faith, and just about anything else you can think of. Hearing from her on a daily basis isn't annoying. I look forward to her messages and calls because I enjoy her presence in my life.
Your relationships with your email contacts is similar. Your email subscribers signed up for your newsletter because they want to hear from you. They trust you, they like you, and by filling out the opt-in form on your landing page or website, they gave their consent to have you pop into their inbox.
Some people say "volume doesn't equal sales!" And they're right. Partially.
Content without a strategy doesn't get you sales. It doesn't matter if that content is being sent out once a week, or once a month. For anything you do in email marketing, you must have a strategy in place, with your ideal customer in mind.
In my opinion, a core part of that strategy is scheduling emails as frequently as possible because it keeps you top-of-mind for your ideal clients.
If you send marketing emails once a month, how would you expect your email subscribers to remember you? Or trust you? They would barely be hearing from you enough to learn your voice, your methods, or your offerings.
Sending frequency must be considered for getting the sales you want, and being the go-to brand for your customers.
Factors Influencing Email Frequency
Before you start emailing your subscribers whenever you feel like it, or at a sending frequency that feels right for you, there are some considerations that need to be taken into account.
Understanding Your Audience's Preferences
As a business owner with an email list, it's important that you get to know the preferences of the people on that list.
Maybe your subscribers are ok with hearing from you every day. Or perhaps three times a week is enough for them.
You won't know this automatically. I suggest sending out a survey. Straight up ask them how many times a week they'd like to hear from you, or if the current sending frequency is too much, too little, or just right.
You could also pay attention to your unsubscribe rates, especially if you have already changed your sending frequency. How have they varied since you implemented your changes? Have you seen any difference in engagement level too? This data is key to building a solid email strategy.
Segmenting Subscribers by Engagement Levels
When considering sending frequency, you could segment your list based on engagement level.
Now, you should be segmenting your list anyway because emailing your weekly newsletter to your entire email list isn't doing you any favors. But I digress.
Separate your list into groups depending on engagement levels. Look at your audience and ask yourself, which people are opening every email I send? Who's responding to my emails? Determine who's loving hearing from you twice a week, and who wants to hear from you every day.
Product-based and eCommerce businesses are great with this. Often times, on their unsubscribe page, they'll have an area that says something to the effect of "email me less". This gives customers the option to choose the frequency that works for them. When this happens, subscribers are more likely to stick around rather than opting out all together because you're giving them a say in the process. Autonomy here is huge.
Consider doing something similar if you're a service based business, or asking subscribers from the onset how often they'd like to receive email communication from you.
All that being said, segmentation is the way to go if you want to keep your subscribers happy and more likely to stick around.
Aligning with Marketing Goals
Before you send out a single email campaign or newsletter, you've got to know what your goals are. Without a North Star to guide your business, you'll be wandering in dark.
Think about what you want to accomplish in your business, and how you'd like email marketing to help you get there.
Are you hoping to double your revenue? Grow your list? Increase your click through rate? These questions will all play into deciding your email sending frequency.
In general, if you want more revenue, you should consider email more frequently. You'll give your customers more opportunities to buy from you and you're more likely to stay top of mind.
Balancing Frequency with Engagement
Frequency matters, but so does engagement.
Ultimately, you want a list of engaged, enthusiastic subscribers who click on your links, respond to your emails, and buy your products.
If your engagement is in the gutter (and by that I mean if you have a low click-through rate, low open rates, and low conversions), think about the following:
Reducing Email Fatigue
Remember how I just said every audience is different, and you need to learn yours? Perhaps your audience isn't responding well to your sending frequency because they're experiencing email fatigue.
In our email-first landscape today, over-communication is a real problem. The average person gets over 100 emails per day. That's a lot of marketing emails coming their way.
Having you in their inbox four times a week may bee overkill.
If this is the case, you'll want to reduce email overload by simply emailing less.
Again, the only way you'll know this is by getting to know your audience, their demographics, and their preferences. Don't guess with this; dig into your analytics, poll them, and figure out if this is indeed the case.
Maintaining Consistency
One of the hardest parts about keeping a regular weekly newsletter is maintaining the consistency.
Along with all the duties of being a business owner, keeping up the communication schedule is not a light task.
The problem is that when subscribers hear from you infrequently or inconsistently, it causes confusion.
Emailing your list once this week and three times next week isn't ideal. Customers prefer that you uphold the expectations you laid out in your welcome series or initial emails.
If you said you were going to email twice a week, stick to it. Don't be fickle in your email frequency. Pick a rhythm and stick to it for the best outcomes.
Techniques to Determine Optimal Frequency
You're not just an email writer; you're an email scientist.
And as a scientist, you don't make decisions without first looking at the data.
Before you jump to any changes in your email sending frequency, use these tools to ensure you're making the right choice for your business.
Utilizing A/B Testing
A/B testing involves sending out two slightly different versions of the same email to see what your list responds to more.
For sending frequency, what you should do is create two or more groups:
Group A will receive one email per week.
Group B will receive two emails per week.
Group C will receive three emails per week.
Make sure the groups are equal sized and represent your broader audience.
Email the groups according to the pre-determined frequency. Keep most of the features the same across groups, such as subject lines, email timing, and email design.
Run the test for about 3-4 weeks so you have enough data to work with.
At the end of the A/B test, compare key metrics like open rates, click through rates, conversion rates, unsubscribes, and spam complaints.
From there, identify which frequency moves you closer to your goals without harming the health of your email list. The best frequency is the one that drives consistent conversions (sales or sign ups), minimizes email fatigue (low unsubscribe rates), and keeps users engaged (high open and click through rates).
Leveraging Automation Tools
Your email marketing platform offers a ton of resources to help you identify the optimal sending frequency for your list.
Exactly what you have access to depends on your chosen marketing platform and your level of access (free vs. paid).
Automations included with your email service provider could include:
Predictive analytics: Some platforms offer AI recommendations based on things like past engagement behavior, unsubscribe likelihood and other email engagement metrics. From there, these tools will offer suggestions of how often to send your newsletters.
Monitoring Performance Metrics: Many platforms allow users to track KPIs like click rates, open rates, reponse rates, and conversion rates. With these nifty tools, you can easily spot patterns like "users receiving 3+ emails are more likely to unsubscribe" allowing you to create the perfect email strategy for your audience.
Automated Re-Engagement Campaigns: There are platforms that offer the ability to trigger an automated re-engagement campaign that kicks into gear when engagement drops or frequency becomes too high. In this flow, it's critical to ask subscribers how often they want to hear from you, and the chance to change their frequency via preference centers.
Industry Specific Considerations
B2B and B2C have many similarities, but when it comes to sending frequency, it's necessary that we consider how they vary.
Differences in B2B vs. B2C Emailing
There are many notable differences between these two:
Sales Cycle Duration: B2B generally have longer sales cycles, some lasting several weeks or months, while B2C have shorter durations lasting a week or a few days. In practice, this means B2B can send less frequent emails to avoid fatigue, and B2C can send more emails to encourage buying.
Content Expectations: In B2B, subscribers expect more value-driven, nurture content while in B2C email subscribers are more open to communication that includes promotions, discounts, and seasonal offers.
Audience Size: Usually, B2B have smaller, more targeted email lists while B2C have larger lists. A larger list means more testing and automations are required to get the sending frequency just right.
eCommerce Emailing Strategies
If you're an eCom business, you have much more leeway to email your audience frequency. In fact, you could send daily emails if you wanted to!
Along with regular discounts and promotions, as an eCommerce business, you could also send sequences like a welcome sequence, abandoned cart sequence, post upsell sequence, and the re-engagement sequence I mentioned earlier.
Monitoring and Adjusting Strategies
You're an email scientist who doesn't change without data-based evidence.
Before you re-structure your entire email marketing plan, make sure you do the following:
Track Key Metrics
KPIs like open rate, click through rate, and unsubscribe rates matter, but at the end of the day, there is one KPI that beats them all: the conversion rate.
You're a business trying to make money. That means your conversions, or your sales/sign-ups from your emails, is what you need to be paying attention to the most.
As you segment your list and A/B test, keep a close eye on your conversion rates. What frequency is encouraging your audience to buy more? Stick with that.
Adapting Based on Performance Metrics
The reality is, things change. Your audience will change. Their preferences may change.
Just because something works for you now doesn't mean it always will.
Be willing to adapt your email strategy based on performance metrics.
An email marketer like myself will pay attention to these for you and regularly implement changes, but if you're DIYing it, make sure you do this on your own.
Final Thoughts
Sending frequency should be based on your audience, your analytics, and what you can handle as a business owner.
Take the time to make data-informed decisions to maximize profits and meet your goals.
In general, more is better, but exactly what that means for your unique business is for you to find out!
Orrrr, you could hire an email marketer like myself to find that out for you!
If handling all these email metrics and making these decisions sounds like too much for you, but you know you want to do it, don't hesitate to reach out to me. I'd love to explore how I can help you maximize profits without fatiguing your audience.
