Email marketing helps businesses stay connected with customers, promote their offerings and bring people back to their website. How often should you send these emails though?
Send too few and customers may forget you, but send too many and they may disengage or unsubscribe.
The right frequency depends on your offering, customers’ buying habits and the value of each message. For many businesses, one or two emails a month is a good starting point. It keeps you visible without overwhelming inboxes and gives you time to create worthwhile campaigns.
Some businesses, however, choose to email more often. Retailers may send several weekly messages about products, offers or abandoned baskets because deal-seeking customers expect frequent contact.
Professional services firms may do better with one useful monthly email sharing advice or updates. Copying another company’s strategy is therefore rarely effective.
A frequent sales retailer and a provider of infrequently needed services require different approaches. Quality matters more than meeting a fixed quota, so only send when you have something useful to say, not simply because the calendar says so.
Every email should offer a clear reason to open it. This could be a guide, product, update, offer, event or practical advice relevant to the recipient. Messages that merely say “remember us” soon become repetitive.
Also consider each subscriber’s relationship with your business. New subscribers may need a short welcome sequence introducing your offers and useful content. Existing customers can receive messages based on purchases, while inactive subscribers may need a different approach.
Segmentation helps, so group subscribers by interests, purchases, location or engagement rather than sending everyone the same message. This improves relevance without increasing contact for everyone.
Recent buyers, for example, may want related products or usage advice, while non-buyers need a different message.
Frequency may also vary throughout the year. Retailers may email more around major sales, events companies before an event and seasonal businesses during peak demand.
This does not mean flooding subscribers’ inboxes, but it does mean your frequency does not have to stay the same all year.
Your email performance can help show whether you are striking the right balance. Open rates, click-through rates, enquiries, purchases and unsubscribes can all provide useful insight.
If you send more emails and engagement stays strong while sales or enquiries rise, the increased activity may be working.
If open rates fall and unsubscribes rise, subscribers may be signalling that your frequency, content or relevance needs review.
Avoid judging your strategy from a single email alone. One campaign may perform well because the subject is timely or the offer is strong. Another may perform poorly simply because it was sent at the wrong time.
Reviewing trends across several campaigns gives you a much clearer picture. The aim is to stay visible while still giving subscribers something worth opening. For some companies, that may mean one strong email a month. For others, it could mean two or three emails a week.
There is no benefit in sending the most emails. Fewer relevant, useful emails can be far more effective than appearing constantly in people’s inboxes with little to say.
At Engage Web, we help businesses make email marketing part of a wider digital strategy, with campaigns designed to encourage meaningful action. If your business has an email list but you are unsure what to send, who to contact or how often to reach out to your subscribers, get in touch with our team today.
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