How often should you send newsletters?

One of the big questions in email is how often you should send.

The dull answer is that there is no single figure. You can certainly send so rarely that your recipients stop engaging, because they have forgotten you exist. You can equally send so often that they unsubscribe.

But as long as your newsletters are relevant and interesting, and your recipients engage with them, there is not much to worry about.

If you are unsure whether you have the balance right, here are three things that help.

1. Set expectations when people sign up

When someone subscribes, you can make it very clear what they are getting — both how often and what kind of content. There is a large difference between two newsletters a month and two a week.

Setting expectations can push sign-ups either way. Being clear removes some of the doubt a visitor feels while deciding, which helps. It can also put off people who would have signed up without thinking.

If you change your sign-up form and see the number of sign-ups fall, that is not necessarily bad news — provided the change made the offer clearer. The people who do sign up are far more likely to engage, because they know exactly what they agreed to. It also means fewer unsubscribes, because nobody is surprised by the volume.

It is worth repeating: a smaller number of recipients who actually engage beats an enormous list of passive ones. The second kind has no value, for them or for you.

2. Let people choose what they receive

If you send several different kinds of communication, it can pay to let the recipient choose between them — for instance with a set of topic checkboxes on the sign-up form.

If you change how often you send, you can use the same mechanism to let people opt out of the extra volume. They still get the important messages and skip the rest. Some will say they are missing your best content; at least it was their own decision.

You can also do the work for them, by segmenting.

For example: you have a newsletter that is only relevant to people in a particular area. You build a segment of those people, so everyone else is spared a message that has nothing to do with them.

Segmenting does require that you hold the right data about the recipient in the first place.

3. Use your data to find the right frequency

As a general rule, one newsletter a month is at the low end. Saying when you are sending too many is harder — as above, it depends on your recipients. So look at your own numbers.

Experiment with the volume and see how people react. Increase it for a period and watch whether open and click rates fall and the unsubscribe rate rises. If frequency was the only thing you changed, and the content stayed roughly the same, then frequency is what caused the drop.

You can also send too few. We sometimes see organisations send one or two newsletters a month and cover three or four different topics in each one. The thinking is presumably that a low frequency makes people more likely to open — but sending that rarely can work against you.

You risk recipients forgetting they ever subscribed, and over time they stop caring about your content. You also lose the chance to build your sender reputation, which strengthens when you send more mail that people engage with — and a better reputation means more of your newsletters reach the inbox in the first place. There is more on that in our guide to staying out of the spam folder.

Which leads to the practical advice: send more short emails, one topic at a time, rather than a few long ones.

In short

Send at least one newsletter a week, unless your recipients react badly to it. If you segment, you can afford to send more. Give people the option to choose what they receive, particularly if you are increasing the volume. And when in doubt, experiment, look at your numbers, and judge what works for the people on your own list.