Am I sending too many emails? Should I be emailing my customers more? What if I annoy my customers with my emails?
We hear these questions a lot.
It’s typical for business owners to be insecure about their email strategy. After all, nobody wants to be seen as annoying or spammy.
But your audience has given you their email address for a reason—they want to hear from you.
So how do you find the balance between communicating enough and not too much? How can you tell if your email schedule is too full or too empty?
This week’s blog post is all about email frequency, plus some tips for finding the right number of emails for your business.
How Often to Send Marketing Emails
So how many marketing emails should you be sending?
Data suggests your business should send 10–19 emails a month, or 2–5 a week.
However, that range is misleading. It’s an average, not a magic recommendation that will solve your business’s email marketing problems.
There is no single number of emails that will work for all businesses. The number of emails you should be sending depends on your business, audience, and marketing goals.
Some businesses email daily. Others email monthly. Most send emails somewhere in between.
No matter your email marketing goals, you should be emailing your audience often enough that they don’t forget about your brand. The next time they need to make a purchase for your product, you want to be at the top of their mind.
Finding Your Number
Before you figure out what number of emails is right for your business, you need to answer a few questions.
- What goal are you trying to achieve with email marketing?
- What is your customer’s purchase cycle?
- What does your customer want from your emails?
If your primary goal from email marketing is to inform and update your audience about your business, your email schedule will look very different from a business whose main goal is to earn revenue. Your marketing goals inform both the frequency and content of your emails.
You also need to consider the products or services you sell. How often do your customers need to make purchases? Is this a service they may only need once in their life, or is it a consumable product they can buy over and over? The longer in between purchases, the less frequently you need to email.
Lastly, consider what your audience wants from you. Some people sign up for email lists expecting daily emails from brands, especially if those emails contain sales and coupon codes. Sign up for your competitors’ email lists to get a better sense of what your audience expects from your email marketing.
Finding the right cadence of emails for your business requires a good understanding of your audience, an intentional strategy, and a willingness to experiment.
Don’t be afraid to change your email frequency to see what happens. You may find your email marketing goals well within your reach simply by adjusting your frequency.
Am I Emailing Too Much?
Maybe you have a well-established email marketing strategy, but you’re still worried about emailing your audience too much.
The simplest way to know if you’re over-communicating with your audience is to monitor your unsubscribe rate.
Campaign Monitor finds that the average unsubscribe rate is 0.17%, but anything below 1% is fairly healthy.
If your unsubscribe rate suddenly rises, or if you’ve consistently had an unsubscribe rate at or above 1%, you’re probably emailing too often.
You also have to consider the kinds of emails you’re sending. Maybe it’s not the quantity that drives your audience to unsubscribe, but the content. Your audience may not mind more frequent emails if those emails have valuable information, interesting stories, or exclusive savings.
But if you’re only sending repetitive emails that push readers to make a purchase, without any unique offers or compelling stories, your audience won’t tolerate frequent emails.
Is your unsubscribe rate at or below 0.17%? Are you meeting your marketing goals with email? If you answered “yes,” you’re not emailing too much. In fact, you might be able to email your audience more often.
Maybe you need a little more hands-on help planning your email schedule. The good news is you don’t have to do it alone. Schedule a call today, and our team of expert marketers will help you strategize and experiment to optimize your email frequency.
