As of today, if you search for “email frequency” on Google you’ll get over 350,000,000 results.
Obviously not all those are questions about how often an organization should email subscribers, but quite a few are.
People, marketers, business owners, etc. want to know how often they should email their subscribers.
And I don’t know if there is a right answer.
I will say this, I think that in general most organizations could be emailing more often than they are.
And many realize this, but what gets in the way is the work or the time or the resources necessary to email more. It sounds nice to send more emails, but once you get into it for a few weeks the work can wear you down especially if it’s not your full time gig.
The question of what is the sweet spot for email frequency doesn’t have a definite answer even if there are studies available with some good info. It’s usually going to be unique to your company.
However, let’s get into some important aspects of email frequency that might be more important than the actual number of emails you send every week, month or year.
Consistency
We’re all creatures of habit.
40% of our daily activities are the same.
That’s quite a bit, but it doesn’t surprise me. I’m sure there’s a curve where some do more like 80% of the same things each day while others do 20% the same.
However it works, people like habits, routines and consistency.
Email marketing very much falls into routine and consistency with your subscribers. If you determine that you can email monthly then committing to that frequency is important. It’s the same if you want to send every week or multiple times each week.
Your subscribers will appreciate consistency and it will serve you well from a business standpoint as well. If you send an email today, then in six weeks, then in two weeks, then in six months, then in a week and so on you’re going to frustrate your subscribers even if it’s only on a subconscious level.
You can experiment your way into consistency. Start with one per month. Really commit to that. Some months it will be easy. Some will be difficult, but each time you need the discipline to send one email. No more. No less.
And it bleeds into our next topic a little bit.
Responsibility
A big part of email marketing and maintaining a consistent email frequency is determining the person or people responsible for the email.
In a small business, maybe it’s you, the owner. That’s a challenging situation because it’s easier to post something on Facebook than it is to setup an email…generally. Again, you can get a rush of energy for email and do it well for a month or two, but eventually the excitement fades and you are left needing other motivation to do the email every month.
It has to be someone or more than someone’s job to handle the email each month. If you really see it as a priority, and for most businesses it probably should be, then you need to make the commitment in terms of people that will handle the work. And they could be from inside or from outside your company.
Experimenting, Tracking
Next up on our journey of email frequency is the idea of experimenting and tracking the results.
If you start with the commitment to do one email per month you’re off to a great start and really that monthly email is a test.
You want to commit for a good amount of time; say six months. Throughout that time you’ll want to track the basic metrics like opens and clicks. Those two stats are very simple, but they will tell you a lot.
And you don’t want to do crazy things to increase those numbers. You can increase clicks on something if you turn the link into a big huge orange button. But that’s probably not something you want to do all the time. So watch for things like that in terms of manipulating the numbers.
At this point you can also start testing frequency. Commit to sending two emails every month for six months. Go back and compare your metrics with the first six months when you sent one. Maybe you got more clicks each month with two emails than with one email, but after three months the total clicks was nearly the same and not worth the extra work to send a second email each month.
There are more things you can experiment with and track. Again, you largely want to remain consistent, but it’s good to be experimenting with one thing at all times so you can learn and improve when the numbers tell you that you should.
Automation, One-Time Setup Emails
A good note here is automating part of your email program.
Many businesses have had success building customer relationships, taking people from leads to customers, by setting up one-time automated email programs.
This is something that you create one-time and from there every person that subscribes to this part of your program will get a series of emails for a set number of time. Maybe the program lasts six weeks, but for every subscriber that six weeks starts at a different time depending on when they subscribe.
And while doing this you send your regular emails.
So it’s a way to send more emails, increase your frequency while only putting in the work one time and maybe making adjustments every once in a while.
Find more on automated emails here.
Segmenting
A Final note on the subject of email frequency is segmenting.
For many businesses, small businesses, it might seem like segmenting is not important.
However, even if you have 10 subscribers there is a good chance that you can segment those subscribers.
There are a number of different ways to segment.
With 10 people you can segment by open rate or by click rate. If you have 2 people that are clicking way more often perhaps you can pull them out of the group and send them an additional email each month or each week. They’re more engaged. They want more content. Test it out and turn them into customers sooner than the other 8.
Conclusion
I’m sorry, but there is no definite answer to the email frequency question.
However, I would say that you can email at least once per month and in general most companies can email more than they are emailing right now. In general. There are some companies that should cut back, but for the most part it seems like most could send more often.
This is true especially if your subscribers really love your content. Think about Twitter. If you follow a person that shares such great content that you read every one of their updates then chances are you wish they would share more even if they share 10+ times per day.
Follow the few tips above and you should find a good place for your email program and that’s good because email remains one of the most effective forms of online marketing today.
