In my social media scrolling, I regularly see people discussing how often should you email your list. This is usually in threads expressing various levels of dismay about businesses that email their subscribers daily or even multiple times per day during launches. 

This is an article not a consultation, so I'm not here to tell you what to do. But I do want to give you some things to think about that will help you decide on an email cadence that's right for you and your business. 

If anyone is telling you that you have to email daily or that you can't email daily or you'll piss off all your subscribers they're both wrong.

Million Dollar Email, a program I enjoy and promote to my audience, teaches emailing multiple times a day during launches which many people would find appalling. But the company reached over a million dollars in yearly revenue with a list of just over 1000 people and the sales page has a mile-long string of testimonials from happy successful clients. 

Until someone offers to pay your bills, don't pay them any mind if they're telling you how to run your business or your marketing. If people are annoyed by your marketing, they are usually not your buyers. 

Why More Frequent Emails Get More Sales

There's a formula that one of my early mentors taught me that I have never forgotten: R = I/T 

Relationships equals interactions over time.

Let's think about that in terms of email. 

We've got your staunch monthly newsletter people who think that emailing once a month with a bunch of links and things to read is fine. And to be sure it's better than nothing. But if you are emailing 12 times a year, that's only 12 chances for people to get to know you better. 

Most people's inboxes are overrun, so only a fraction of those people are actually going to see your email. Now it's not even 12 times a year for someone to get to know you. I don't recommend a monthly email cadence if you want to get results and drive sales with your emails.

Twice a month is better than once a month and you've now doubled your chances for people to see you remember you and potentially take action to buy.

How Often You Should Email Your List Can Vary by Industry 

If you're in an industry like education, or consulting, where you just need to touch base and nurture the relationship once per month might be plenty. Plus it's better to have a cadence that you can be consistent with than to get too ambitious and then burnout and fall off completely.

Twice a month can be a great stepping stone on your way to a weekly email. I think a weekly email is a minimum to be able to establish and maintain a relationship with your subscribers in hopes of turning them into buyers or people who refer you to others. It gives people a decent chance to get to know you it gives them a cadence that they can depend on. They might even start to look for or expect your email if you're sending it on the same day of the week.

If you learn to write emails fairly quickly, it's pretty maintainable for the average business owner without having to become a copywriter.

You might be wondering how people who send three to five emails a week or more get away with doing that without just pissing everybody off and making all of their people unsubscribe. 

Email Relevance Increases Engagement

If people strongly resonate with what you are offering and your thought leadership because it's highly relevant, they will be interested and they will read your emails, click on your links and buy your offers.

Relevance can be temporary based on circumstance. One year you may be in the market for a house and following potential real estate agents closely. Once you buy a house, that topic is no longer relevant.

There will be times when your offers and what you're talking about are not as relevant to people and they may unsubscribe. But many of those people will come back when your content becomes relevant again. 

Allowing people to come and go from your list can relax your mindset so that you're not worried about sending more often because you can have more confidence that the people on your list really want to be there. And if it's not the right time you can encourage them to follow you on one or more social platforms and come back when they're ready.

Base Your Email Frequency on Your Results

Ideally, how often you send emails should be a combination of what you can maintain or hire someone else to maintain, and what works to drive the results you are trying to get. 

Pay more attention to your analytics and email performance metrics, and less to random people online. Chances are none of them are offering to pay your bills

In Million Dollar Systems, we report monthly on your email performance so you see which emails are driving the most opens, clicks, and sales, and we help you repurpose your best performing emails into evergreen sequences so every new subscriber sees your best content.

Don't Make this Common Email Mistake

The worst mistake is to base your email marketing decisions on how you feel about receiving email. Too many entrepreneurs don't take advantage of email marketing because they don't like getting marketing emails. 

Those entrepreneurs are losing out on a ton of potential revenue because while they are busy making decisions based on their personal preferences, their audience is buying from other people's emails.  

Keep your eye on the prize. Focus on your results. And do what works for you and your business.

If you need help with your email marketing, book a sales call to talk about how we can help you build a marketing system that will allow you to follow up with 100% of your leads 100% of the time and grow your sales by 20% in the next 90 days.