How Often Should You Send Marketing Emails?
Written by Michael Cheney. Last updated on 16th January 2021
I've been doing email marketing for over 20 years.
One of the most common questions I get asked is how often should you send marketing emails to list.
In this free training I'm going to talk about the considerations to answer this question.
We'll take a look at;
- The wrong way to send marketing emails
- How to get people to engage with your content more
- How to educate your subscribers so they buy from you more often
- How to increase the amount of emails you send
- How to simultaneously decrease your unsubscribes
- And much, much more besides...
Let's get started.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Wrong Way to Send Marketing Emails
How To Send Marketing Emails Which Get Sales Not Unsubscribes
Using the Power of Edutainment To Send More Emails
How To Make Your Marketing Emails Entertaining
Educate Subscribers And They Will Buy From You in Spades
How Many Marketing Emails Can I Send Per Week?
Conclusion
I see lots of people doing things wrong.
They get people on a list normally using a discount offer.
Or they invite people to join their boring old newsletter.
These methods can work, but they're kind of BS.
Nobody wants this.
If you get people on a list for a one time deal, they're unlikely to open emails after they've got that one item.
If you attract discount-seekers they are going to expect that all the time.
You might have heard people talking about giving away a freebie some kind of digital product ebook video or audio etc.
This is different.
Because with this individual item you're actually attracting people who want information about that.
If you get people on your list for a discount all they want is more discounts.
You're basically filling your email list with cheapskates.
This is what most businesses do.
And it's dead wrong.
Instead;
"You should be engaging with your list and talking about what they want in a way that resonates with them."
Too many business owners smack their list over the head with offers, sales, discounts and coupons.
How boring.
Is it any wonder their email again engagement is down the toilet?
These things are complete snoozefest!
People don't engage with emails like this because it's not about them.
It's about you and your product.
Don't do this.
I hear from lots of business owners who are scared of emailing their list.
They quite often (rightly) assume that their email list does not want to hear from them.
Think about it;
Let's just say you've trained your list to expect a discount or a coupon.
If you don't offer more and more discounts in subsequent emails their interest in getting emails from you will disappear.
Instead, you need to train your list;
You need to get your content to a position where people are looking forward to it.
Seriously.
Your prospects could care less about your business, your product or your offer.
- It doesn't matter how many awards you've got
- It doesn't matter how many times you've been on TV or featured in newspapers
- It doesn't really matter how many sales your product has made
You need to talk about your prospect, not about your offer or business.
Talk about what's in it for them.
You need to be more personal and emotionally engaging in your emails.
Don't be cold and commercial.
Okay, so this is the wrong way to send marketing emails.
Now, let's talk about...
Many marketers fall into the trap of thinking, the more promotional emails, they can send the more money they will make.
This is false.
The moment you send a promotional email you have lost.
There are actually three things that your email needs to do, and selling is the least important.
Now yes, admittedly...
Generating revenue and income from email marketing is the number one priority.
BUT:-
It should not be the number one priority of the emails that you send.
The two most important factors are;
Education and entertainment.
If you can educate your prospects and give them some value for free they will reciprocate by buying your product.
If you can entertain your prospects they will look forward to your emails.
They will open them read them and click on them.
This is why most business owners are scared of sending emails;
Because their content sucks.
They think email marketing is a bad thing.
Why?
Because they equate marketing with just sending promotional emails.
But if you do this in the right way - the value is INSIDE the content of your email.
And not necessarily your product or service.
Getting people to buy from you becomes a natural byproduct of your email marketing strategy.
Rather than you telling people over and over to;
"Buy this, buy this, buy this"
Or trying to convince them to buy your product using offering discounts, coupons, and so on.
If you create what we call "edutainment" emails, people will want to buy your product.
You will need less persuasion.
You can make more sales and charge higher prices.
And, importantly, you can send emails more often and get less people unsubscribing.
You need to get out of the habit of thinking that your product or service is where the value is.
It's not..
The value, if you do this correctly, is inside your email.
When you use this combination of education and entertainment in every email you send then every time you broadcast your list, you are delivering value.
This way you are building a raving army of fans.
They love your content and hang on every word you say.
This moves away from disruption marketing (where you're trying to interrupt a prospect going about their day) to attraction marketing (where people are attracted to your content and actively seek it out each day).
They want to know what happens next in the story.
They want to read your next email.
They want to click your next link.
Okay great - now let's get into this in more detail and talk about...
Making your emails entertaining is very important.
I know this because I used to send only promotional emails.
Back in the day my email marketing approach was like everyone else's.
Bad.
I would use the same old tired subject lines.
And the same old boring marketing ideas;
SUBJECT LINE: special discount!
SUBJECT LINE: Coupon Inside. (OPEN UP)
SUBJECT LINE: This is a game changer
SUBJECT LINE: Just gone live
SUBJECT LINE: CLOSING DOWN SOON
What an absolute yawn fest!
The moment I started sending edutaining emails is when people sat up and took notice.
I started getting replies to my emails.
People would reach out to me and say how much they loved my email content.
Not only was this great for the ego, but also great for sales.
But not only that, because when people reply to your emails you are more likely to be put into the inbox rather than spam.
I show you how to do this in this detailed email marketing engagement article.
When you send entertaining emails, many cool things can happen.
People will forward your emails.
People will talk about your emails to their friends.
I've even seen people posting my emails onto social media.
I even get messages from people when they don't receive an email from me - worried that they've been taken off my mailing list!
I've got to emphasise;
Every single email still has a promotional link inside it.
Don't misunderstand this approach;
This is not as if I am sending pure content to educate and entertain my list for the goodness of mankind.
I'm doing three things simultaneously...
Educating, entertaining and selling.
This is a tricky balancing act but you can perfect it with practice.
It's all about using stories.
Essentially, turning your sequence of emails into a kind of soap opera.
This way, every day, your list is looking forward to finding out what happens next.
Using cliffhangers is one good idea.
Having common characters that you refer to in your emails is another.
Perhaps this is people in your business, nightmare customers or amazing success stories.
So every email you send should have a link to buy something and;
The content of the email is the value you are offering.
When you combine entertainment, education, and selling you have a winning combination.
Let's talk about how to do this in the next section...
Don't worry about having to be some larger than life character.
You don't need to have an amazing backstory.
You don't have to be a showman or celebrity to be entertaining to people.
You just need to be yourself.
Talk naturally - be your prospects best friend.
Talk about the news, movies, books, events and things that are happening in your life.
"Almost all the emails cramming up our inboxes have zero entertainment factor in them."
They are all promotional emails.
Their primary objective is very simple without even reading many words.
People get bored of this.
If you adopt this email marketing strategy for your business you will fail.
You will get drowned out in the tidal wave of promotional emails hitting your prospect's inbox.
To be entertaining in your emails just be different to all this;
Talk about something that's happened to you personally.
Or give your opinion on something in current affairs or...
Talk about one of your hobbies.
These are all simple ideas you can use to be more entertaining in your emails.
You may think this has nothing to do with your product or offer, but you'd be wrong.
"When people know you better they will trust you more and buy from you, more frequently."
Email Marketing is the best way to achieve this.
Let's just say you've been to see the latest science fiction movie...
You can talk about that in your email.
You can then move on and say;
"Something else which is out of this world is the package I put together on x y z."
So the sales pitch becomes a very small, but natural STEP-BY-STEP progression of the email and not the primary focus.
The entertaining content gets people to open the email and read it.
Your call to action gets them to buy.
Another thing you need to do is...
This is not about being the world's best teacher.
Don't panic.
I'm not talking about giving away the farm here.
You just need to include a short lesson or takeaway in every email you send a small snippet, or nugget of value.
Something you can give people.
"Give them a nugget which connects to your personal story or gives them information they can take action on in some way."
You then need to connect this to your offer.
For example;
SUBJECT LINE: What an idiot. I slipped on the ice this morning...
CONTENT:
I feel so stupid.
This morning I hopped on my bike as usual, and rode out of my driveway.
Unfortunately;
I hadn't checked it for ice and had assumed it would be fine.
After just two or three metres I slipped and fell, scratching up my leg pretty bad.
The lesson?
Don't make assumptions that something will be the same as yesterday, just because it's always been that way.
Things can and do go wrong, especially in business.
If you've heard of the nightmare of having your site attacked by hackers then;
Don't think it can't happen to you.
It can.
This is also something that happened to me.
I wasn't prepared.
I'd assumed I would be okay.
Fortunately, I now have the software which removed the problem and protects me from getting attacked again.
You should get this too.
This example shows that you don't need to teach an in-depth lesson.
You need to focus on teaching people what to do and not showing them how to do it.
The "how to" aspect should always be something inside the paid offer.
Okay.
So if you use entertainment, education and selling in your emails you can send a lot more emails than a business just sending promotional emails.
A question I get asked a lot is...
As many as you want.
Seriously.
Too many people get hung up on thinking they can only send one email a week.
Or they get scared about the idea of sending one every three days or even a daily email.
I've tested this exhaustively.
The more emails you send the more money you make.
Period.
"Can You Send Too Many Emails?"
I used to send one a week.
I then switched to one per day and my revenue increased accordingly.
I then ramped it up to two a day, and even three emails a day, on occasion.
Crazy, right?
No.
Not crazy.
Because each email contained a breakthrough lesson (education), an entertaining story and a link to buy something.
So I was not bombarding people with promotional emails.
Instead, I was over-delivering with value.
Yes;
"I got slightly more people unsubscribing but the three-fold increase in sales quickly made me forget about this."
If you deliver value and entertainment in every email you send you can feel proud to stand behind them.
If somebody doesn't recognise or enjoy that value and wishes to unsubscribe then good riddance to them!
What I will say is this...
If you are going to increase your email marketing frequency then - do it gradually.
I went from one email a week to three emails a day over the course of a year.
Don't switch it up too fast.
It is also a LOT of work to create entertaining, value-packed emails like this on a daily basis.
BUT:
"As long as you have enough content, stories and value to share there is nothing from stopping you from emailing every day."
People come onto your list for a specific reason.
If all you offer is a discount to encourage them to sign up then you cannot offer discounts every single day.
If they join your list to get a topic-themed freebie then you can talk about this topic every day.
And this will be exactly what they want.
Are you starting to see how powerful this approach is?