How often should I email my audience?

Are you wondering how frequently to email your audience?

Too little and you risk your audience becoming disengaged with your business, too much and you risk increased unsubscribes. So what is the right frequency?

I think we can agree that email marketing is a powerful tool to help you grow your business. However, there's a lot of debate about how often you should be sending emails to your email list. Should you send daily? Weekly? Monthly? Never?! This blog will clear up any confusion and give you some actionable tips for how often to send your next email campaign.

What's the right frequency?

How often you should email your list depends on a few factors. The most important one is the size of your list, followed by the type of audience you have.

If you have a small list (less than 10,000 subscribers), then sending an email once per week or every fortnight works well. If you have a mid-sized list (around 50,000 subscribers) then sending twice per week would be fine. If you are a new business starting out for the first time, try sending 1 or 2 times a month and monitor your results. What does the data tell you?

The type of content you send also has a part to play in deciding how often to email your audience, more on this later.

The number of emails you send will depend on your specific audience.

The number of emails you send to your list will depend on the specific needs and interests of your audience. 

For example, if they're more likely to open an email when it's "Tuesday Tips" day or when they get a coupon for 10% off their next purchase, then sending another email during any other time of the week would be pointless. 

Groupon and Just Eat follow this approach however it becomes hard to break free from consistent promotion-led email marketing.

Similarly, finding out how often someone opens an email isn't enough information for you to make accurate predictions about how often you should send new ones. You also need data about whether or not that person engages with those emails (e.g., purchases from you or registers interest with you).

While all this might sound complicated at first glance, once you've collected all this data from your own campaigns, in your CRM platform, you'll be able to make better decisions about when exactly is best for each individual subscriber on your list!

How does my content make a difference to frequency?

Is your content engaging, relevant and timely? Are you an expert in your field looking to solve a problem for your ideal client or are you a product-based business who wants to share new product launches or seasonal offers?
If you are the kind of business that has new, fresh, engaging content AND your audience are engaging with your content then you could take your frequency up to 3 times per week.

This is based on what your data insights are telling you, I would expect to see high engagement from your existing email marketing campaigns before you decide to up your frequency. Keep your content fresh, create content that solves problems for your customers.

So, now you know! The answer to the question is: it depends on your audience, the type of business you have and how engaged your audience are. Either way, start off with low frequency e.g. 1 or 2 times per month and monitor your customer insights. 

Need any help with email marketing?
I am running free email audit clinics where you can share 1 email campaign with me and I will give you at 2-3 tips on how to improve performance.