Email marketers of all kinds today know the importance of staying connected with your target audience. To stay top of mind The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing Frequency. you have to email your list regularly. But what is “regular”? How many emails is too much — or too little?
Email marketing frequency requires a delicate balance because if your audience doesn’t find your emails valuable, they’ll quickly unsubscribe. Striking the right cadence is critical to email marketing success. Keep reading to learn about email marketing frequency best practices and how to optimize your email calendar.
Email Marketing Trends and Consumer Preferences
As a practice, email marketing has some impressive statistics, like the famous $44 ROI for every $10 spent . Additionally, the majority of consumers across generations consider email to be the most personalized marketing channel. Clearly, there’s a lot of potential to connect with your audience.
Given these benefits, many digital marketers believe that when it comes to email marketing, more is better. In fact, according to a 2020 report (PDF) from the Digital Marketing Association , brands send an average of 26.8 emails per week, including automated emails and segmented marketing campaigns. Most people send marketing emails once or twice a week.
Unfortunately, most of these emails provide no value to consumers. DMA found that 85% of consumers find less than half of marketing emails “useful” to them . The higher the email frequency, the fewer messages are actually relevant to the recipient. Additionally, only 18% of marketers segment their campaigns, and most consumers probably receive too many emails that aren’t tailored to their tastes.
Note that higher email frequency does not necessarily lead to higher unsubscribe rates, despite multiple studies showing that “too many emails” is consistently the number one reason for unsubscribing. Some see this as further proof that more = better. However, remember that unsubscribing takes time. With today’s email clients, it’s often easier to simply delete an email than to unsubscribe. As a marketer, your frequency shouldn’t be based on open rates — or even low unsubscribe rates.
It should be based on how many of your emails your target audience actually reads and clicks on.
Email Type
To determine your ideal email marketing frequency, you have to consider the volume and types of emails your audience is receiving. Consumers are more likely to open transactional emails than marketing emails. Other automated emails, like happy birthday messages and abandoned cart reminders, add to the volume. If you’re sending both “blasts” and targeted campaign lists, it’s easy to take up a lot of inbox space.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It really depends on your combination.
Generally speaking, targeted campaigns work israel telegram data much better than email blasts because they capture the interest of subscribers. In fact, segmented emails in B2C industries, especially retail, can boost sales when the frequency is increased. This aligns with DMA’s finding that 65% of consumers prefer emails with discounts and special offers .
That being said it’s still important to consider the diminishing returns of higher email frequency . As your volume grows, fewer recipients open i will create an email contact list for any business niche. your emails, and those who do open them are less likely to click. So while your unsubscribe rate may not be increasing, you’re not generating enough value to justify the cost of sending so many emails.
Why the Right Email Frequency Is Important
We’ve seen data supporting both higher and lower email frequencies, though the results ultimately depend on your industry and audience. You also have to weigh the benefits and risks of over-sending and under-sending.
High frequency of emails
Pros: Stay top of mind and give your audience more opportunities to engage with your brand. Perfect for retailers, content creators, and other c phone number businesses that capitalize on impulse spending.
Disadvantages: Greater risk of brand fatigue or annoying your audience. It can be challenging to continually develop fresh content for all segments.
Low email frequency
Pros: Send highly customized and creative content that may be more valuable to your audience. Easier to manage. Great for service-based businesses that need to build trust with their audience.
Disadvantages: Lower recognizability may cause recipients to unsubscribe or mark as spam. ( Brand awareness is the No. 1 reason consumers open marketing emails. ) Smaller inbox presence than other brands.
Additionally, the mix of email types across our brands can influence which benefits you gain or which risks you take. For example, a marketing campaign with daily segments might make sense for a retailer, but not necessarily for a productivity app. A single email for a monthly beer club might be highly anticipated, while a weekly sales email might be ignored.
All of these different factors are why your email frequency should ultimately reflect your target audience’s interest in your brand.
Identify your audience’s buying journey
Too many email marketers treat a consumer’s opt-in as a green light to send any and all promotional content. This is a costly mistake. While “too many emails” is often the top reason for unsubscribing, “irrelevant messages” is a close second .
If you’re acquiring your list from a lead magnet (like a free ebook), your emails should follow that content. Let’s say you’re a home design company and you’re getting leads from your ebook, “10 Amazing Ways to Upgrade Your Patio.” These leads are clearly interested in outdoor living, and they may eventually be enthusiastic about booking your services. However, if you sign them up for a weekly newsletter focused on kitchen design and home gyms, you may have already lost them.
The solution is to segment your list and then deliver content at a frequency that makes sense for each segment. Someone who provided their email in exchange for a discount may not want daily promotional emails, while the leads you generated from your high-value freebie may prefer content that continues to provide them value every week.
Either way, set that expectation when you capture their email address, rather than making subscribers wait to find out how often you’ll email them. Knowing where your leads are coming from, whether it’s a newsletter signup form, or a landing page or something else, will help you confirm their interest with your marketing emails.
The fine line between consistency and spam
Keep in mind that consumers often don’t understand the legal details of CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and other regulations. They don’t care if your emails aren’t technically spam because they opted in. As far as they are concerned, any unwanted email is spam. If they don’t recognize your brand name (a risk with low email frequency), they may mark it as spam. However, they may also view excessive emails as spam—even if they know they are subscribed to the list.
That’s why it’s important to tread carefully. Spam reports hurt your reputation with your ISP, so you should be more concerned about that than your unsubscribe rate. Likewise, it’s easier to find the ideal email frequency if you understand your target audience and their buying journey.
Plan your email marketing cadence
Together, your email frequency, type mix, and timing make up your email marketing cadence. The right cadence will maintain your brand awareness, provide value to your recipients, and prevent the dreaded unsubscribe — or worse, spam reports. And of course, it will support the goals of your email marketing campaigns .
If you don’t know where to start, begin with a safe schedule of 4-5 emails per month. (This includes marketing emails only, not transactional messages.) Make sure each campaign goes to one segment of your list and that no one segment receives more than one campaign.
Then focus on your metrics . See how your open and click rates change over the course of a month. If your metrics drop after the first few campaigns, you’re probably sending too many emails. If they improve, your audience is becoming more engaged, and you might be sending more emails…until responses drop.
It may take time to find the sweet spot, but by segmenting your audience and focusing on high-value content, you can instantly achieve better performance.
Summarize
In conclusion, there is no magic number for email marketing frequency. The optimal number of emails will vary by brand, audience, and each campaign itself. Your best strategy is to be led by research and great content. Understand your target audience and what they want to see.
Then, use email marketing automation to optimize the timing of your campaigns and ensure the right prospects receive emails that resonate with them. Test and tweak until you hit your stride.
