How many marketing emails should my business send?

First, why you absolutely should be sending marketing emails

New clients tend to fall into one of two camps when it comes to email: those that think they need to send emails practically every day, and those that are scared to send more than one a quarter because, I quote, “I hate getting spam!” 

Of the two (yes, both are wrong), the former is probably pissing off their customers, and the latter has been forgotten entirely by their customers and is therefore leaving money on the table.

The reality is that a well-run email marketing program is money in the bank. Email marketing has one of the highest ROIs of any marketing channel. It is inexpensive to run, and it is one of the most effective ways to keep customers coming back to make more purchases. We have clients who make excellent revenue on automated email flows alone. It’s even more important if you aren’t the type of business where people purchase often, because email plays a significant role in keeping you top of mind while potential customers decide whether or not to buy.  

Deciding the right email cadence for your business

Exactly how many emails a business should send depends on several factors. Let’s look at each on its own.

The key to figuring out your email cadence is understanding that you’re doing a balancing act: send too many emails, and people will unsubscribe at too fast a rate; send too few emails, and you’re not optimizing for revenue.

What is your industry?

If you’re an e-commerce store with a lot of products and potential customers, you can (and should!) send a lot more emails than if you’re a non-profit organization or a B2B company with a slow sales/donation cycle. 

Who is your audience?

The demographics of your audience matter. What age are most of your customers? I’ve found that younger generations are often more comfortable with getting a lot of emails than older folks are. Other factors play in, too. If your customer base is made up of highly independent artists who resent having to check their email, then you'd better not email them much (we have a client like this). But super-engaged tech types might be happy to get an email every week. 

How often do people buy your product or service?

How often are people likely to buy your product? If you’re selling a product people only buy once or twice in a lifetime, you’d better not be emailing them every week. On the other hand, if you’re selling something people buy every week, you could email them more than twice a week without rousing their ire. 

How big is your email list?

This one is just about the math. If your list is small (for instance, under 1000 people), you’re going to be a lot less comfortable losing people to unsubscribes than you would be if your list were 50,000. Remember, higher email frequency generally equates to higher unsubscribe rates, so you might want to err on the side of fewer emails until your list grows a bit.

How fast are you adding new emails to your list?

If you’re hemorrhaging emails (i.e., more people are unsubscribing than are joining your list), then you need to be very careful about managing your unsubscribe rates. In this case, I’d not only limit how many emails I send, but I’d also take a good hard look at your email content to see why people are unsubscribing so fast—AND look at your general marketing strategy to figure out why you’re not growing your list fast enough.

What is your email content?

Nobody wants to read your newsletter once a week! On the other hand, they might want to get a coupon for a discount every week. You can send more emails (and therefore generate more revenue) if you’re giving people information or content they actually care about!

Bonus tip: segment your list! Segmenting your list (dividing your list up into different audiences, such as “women’s clothes” and “men’s clothes”) allows you to send content that is more relevant to the customer. This means you can send more emails, because people are getting emails for things they actually want, not something they have no interest in.

Do you have seasonal sales or donation cycles?

If you get the majority of your sales or donations only once or twice a year (for instance, many non-profits have a donation boost at the end of the year and then again around some event in early summer), it’s not a good idea to email people too much in the “off” season. Try limiting the number of emails during those times, then doubling down around the times people actually donate and buy.

How many products do you sell?

If you’re a business with just a few products, you’ll bore the socks off people if you email them too much (either that, or you’re going to need to be really creative with your content to keep people entertained). 

How comfortable are you with sales and promotions?

If you’re sending great deals in every email, people will want to get emails from you much more often than if you’re just talking about a product at full price (or, God-forbid, sending a newsletter). Of course, it’s important to balance the discount with the amount of revenue you’re generating from the email.

How do you know if you’re using the right email cadence for your business?

With all that said, you’re probably still wondering how many emails you should send. The short answer? Test!

I generally recommend that you start at about one email a month to get a good baseline. Then, add another email each month or reduce your frequency (depending on the above factors), and watch your results. All of the good email marketing platforms (we generally use Klaviyo and Mailchimp) provide you with plenty of data on how well your emails are performing. Did your open rate and click rates go down when you started sending more emails? Did your overall revenue get a boost, or did it slow? Most importantly, look at your unsubscribe rate. If it suddenly bumps up a lot, or you're running way above the benchmark rate, then you might be sending too many emails. If things look good, though, you can increase your frequency yet again… until you hit the point where your unsubscribe rate is starting to overbalance the additional revenue. 

Even better? Hire a marketing consultant to help you figure out exactly what emails you need to send, when!

(Pssst. We can help with that; just email us at hello@urbansherpa.marketing).

Happy emailing,

Katie & Theron

‍At Urban Sherpa Marketing Co. we offer marketing advisory, strategic planning, and implementation services for small businesses and startups. Our goal is to make high-quality marketing possible for every business; no matter your size, we’ll help you grow your business without blowing the bank.