Email plays an important role in the marketing success of many small businesses.
It’s cost effective, easy to get set up, and typically delivers the highest return on investment of any marketing channel.
But getting email marketing right can be a bit of a balancing act, and one of the questions that many marketing managers and small business owners have is around how often they should be sending emails to their list.
For anyone hoping for hard and fast answers to this in this post, I’m afraid you might be disappointed.
The truth is, there isn’t a magic email frequency for optimal results — it all depends on variables such as the type of industry you’re in, your target audience and the content of the emails you’re sending out.
But what we can do in this article is look at some of the considerations you might want to take into account before you decide on the ideal email frequency for your business, and also review some stats from the Direct Marketing Association to see what the most common email frequency is.
The ideal email frequency differs between B2B and B2C businesses
B2C audiences are typically more open to receiving regular marketing emails from businesses than B2B audiences — so the frequency of your emails really depends on which audience you’re addressing.
If your subscriber list is made up of contacts from other businesses, you’ll typically have a much smaller pool of subscribers to address. So it’s really about quality over quantity — building a long term relationship with a smaller list through deeper, analytical content in your emails.
If you send overly promotional emails too frequently to a B2B audience, you’re likely to see your unsubscribe rate start to spike.
With a B2C audience, it’s still important that your emails are relevant (and we’ll talk about variation next!) — but a consumer audience is often more open to receiving more regular offers and promotions in their inbox.
You should also consider the type of content you’re sending out, and how much it varies
It’s important to make sure you’ve got the right content and/or offers to genuinely present something valuable and relevant to your subscribers with each email.
If you’ve got something genuinely valuable to share every other day — this might be the right frequency. If you don’t — it isn’t.
Let’s assume you’re a single product business. There’s only so many times you can send a promotional email offering “20% off” or “Free express delivery” for the same product, before audiences become disengaged — I certainly wouldn’t recommend a promotional email here every week!
Compare that to an e-commerce business that has 20,000 SKUs across 52 different categories. This gives you far more opportunity to mix up promotional messaging and offers so that every email is completely unique and offers something different (although you might want to segment your list — a topic for another time!)
However, I’m not saying that if you’re a single product/service business, that there isn’t a way to send more regular emails. You’ll just need to think of a more creative and engaging way to vary things.
Perhaps you could mix it up with:
- Thought leadership content: This can be a great way to position your brand as an expert in your niche. Sharing emails with links to your latest blog posts can keep your subscribers informed and engaged.
- Customer testimonials and success stories: Sharing reviews or case studies can be an effective way to build trust with your audience.
- Behind-the-scenes content: Showing off the inner workings of your business, or providing employee spotlights can actually make subscribers feel more connected to your brand.
- Polls and surveys: Consider engaging your subscribers by asking for their feedback or opinion on certain topics. Not only does this give you another opportunity to engage via email, you can also get valuable insights for your business!
- Offers and promotions: As part of your email mix, you can of course include promotions and offers for your products or services. Just not all the time if you only have a small selection of products!
With an email preference centre, you can let your subscribers decide
If we’re looking at the ‘best practice’ way of determining how often you should send emails, you might consider letting your subscribers decide how frequently you contact them through an email preference centre.
An email preference centre allows your subscribers to have choice and control over the emails they receive — often including things like email frequency and the topics they are most interested in.
Not only does this help you answer the question of “how often should I send emails?” but it also helps you improve the relevancy of your content based on user preferences.
Studies that look at the benefits of using email preference centres show an overall increase in engagement and a reduction in unsubscribes. So it’s something to consider!
Analyse your stats and consider experimenting
Outside of implementing an email preference centre, perhaps the next best barometer of how often you should send emails lies in the stats in your email marketing dashboard.
Make a note of your current email frequency — let’s say it’s one email per week.
Keep one half of your list receiving emails at that current rate.
For the other half of your database, try increasing the frequency to two emails per week and keep a close eye on open rates, unsubscribes and spam complaints.
If you monitor the stats on both halves of the database, you’ll be able to gain an understanding of how an increased frequency can impact engagement.
You might consider doing a bit of industry research
Okay, this one is a bit of a cheeky tactic — but if you want to get an understanding of how often other companies in your industry send emails, why not sign up to their email lists?
Once you’re subscribed, keep an eye on the emails that hit your inbox, and monitor the frequency and variation of content that they send.
Of course, do this with an understanding that just because someone else is sending emails every day — it doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do! But at least the research process will help you with an understanding of the range of email frequencies in your industry.
What does the Direct Marketing Association say?
If you’re a member of the Direct Marketing Association, you can gain access to their most recent email marketing reports.
For me, I have to settle for their 2017 Email Tracking Study which is a little dated — but still full of valuable stats.
In this report, they back up the previous point about B2B businesses typically emailing less frequently than B2C businesses.
Source: DMA Email Tracking Report 2017
Need support with your email marketing strategy?
Whether you’re new to email marketing, or you’ve been running campaigns for years — I’m here to help.
I can help you choose the right email platform and get everything set up correctly, or take a look at your existing strategy and offer some fresh perspectives.
If you want a quick informal chat about how I might be able to support your email marketing activity, just drop me an email.
