I went to a liaison meeting with the public where it was suggested I was avoiding questions, two in particular. I’d lost the sympathy of much of the crowd, mainly for answering honestly, and I wanted them back on board. I panicked, saying, ‘Ask any question you want, and I’ll be definitive.’ An experienced colleague beside me flinched.

It’s the same in email marketing. Ask anyone new to our craft what they want to know, and they’ll put questions to you where you cannot be definitive, only explanatory, and the favourite is, ‘How many emails should I send a month?’ 

‘How on Earth should I know?’ would make me flinch.

The answer is a most unsatisfactory, ‘It depends’. More specifically, it is up to you to discover what is best for you. For the companies I subscribe to, it goes from half-a-dozen a year to three a week, that’s a difference of 25 times. As the norm for email marketing, there are some constants, but they’re undependable.

For those just starting out, I’d suggest trying twice a month at first. This is unlikely to spook your subscribers. You can increase frequency later, but use a split email marketing list to check if it is worthwhile. Later, you will have sufficient data to work out which new subscribers will respond to greater frequency and which prefer occasionally. 

A product should generally be offered just once initially. If the person deletes the email, they don’t want it at that time. This means that it can be offered at a later date, with some modification, such as price, sending time or in case of products like ink refills, you’ve misjudged their usage rate. Now you know.

It is a lot of work, but there’s a lot of benefit. There is no universal frequency that works for every type of email marketing business. I remember reading that a third of companies send between 3-5 a week. That’s no use to us at all.

For most email marketing questions you want to know the answers to, the answer is, I’m sorry to say, that it is probable only you can answer it.