While email marketing is one of the leading and best marketing strategies used by businesses all across the world, for it to be successful, timing is extremely crucial.

In fact, one of the most widely asked questions that email marketing beginners or business owners ask is, how often should I send my customers marketing emails?

Let’s just start by saying that there is no definite answer to this question. It depends on various factors, such as your business needs, your product or service, your customers’ reaction, your business goals, and more.

Before anything, you should first know if your email marketing frequency does need a change, and here are some ways you can determine the same:

Customers Unsubscribe from Your Emails

This is the number one outcome that no marketer would want to see. And the main reason why customers unsubscribe from your emails is because you are sending them too many emails too often.

This applies to even when your subscribers flag your emails as spam. Therefore, when you notice one or both of these happening with your customers, it is about time that you change the frequency of your marketing emails.

No Evident Results

If you have increased the frequency of your marketing emails but see no evident results, then you might have to change your email marketing frequency.

In some cases, you would notice an increase in engagement and sales from one segment of your customers, while the second half of the segment choose to unsubscribe due to the increased frequency.

This will actually counteract the positive results you obtain from that one portion of your customers. Here, you must think about a different strategy to use, which most often happens to be segmentation.

Drop in CTR

When you send too many emails that are of no benefit to your customers, the immediate result would be a drop in your click-through rates (CTR).

With CTR for businesses in certain industries being as low as two percent, one of the effective ways to improve the same is by knowing how often to send your customers marketing emails.

So, what is the effective frequency for marketing emails?

As mentioned earlier, this depends on a variety of factors. Some of the most prominent factors are as follows:

✓ Prevalent Industry Practices

Firstly, look at what others in your industry are practicing, and this includes your competitors as well. Find out how many emails they send in a day, in a week, and in a month.

In general, from the findings of different studies, there are some guidelines that you can follow:

• Around 18% B2B companies send marketing emails to their clients once a month, and this percentage comes to 3% for B2C businesses.
• 37% of both B2B and B2C businesses send twice to thrice a month.
• 25% B2B companies and 30% B2C companies send emails 4 to 5 times a month.
• 7% B2B companies and 11% B2C companies send out emails 6 to 8 times a month.
• 5% and 14% B2B and B2C companies respectively send marketing emails more than 8 times a month.

When you analyze the strategies used by your competitors, stay away from simply copying theirs and implementing it for your business. Your email marketing strategy should be customized based on your needs.

✓ Purpose of Your Emails

When you send out a marketing email to your customers, you must be aware of its main objective.

Whether you are looking to make the recipients sign up for your services or purchase a product, or you just want them to complete a survey or fill out a form, knowing the purpose of your email really matters to decide on their frequency.

✓ Type of Product or Services You Offer

Another factor that largely contributes to determining the frequency of your marketing emails is the type of product or services you offer.

For instance, if you offer flood cleanup services, most of your marketing emails should be sent out during the winter months.

✓ Let Your Customers/Subscribers Decide

Ultimately, the best way to decide how often you should send marketing emails to your customers is to let them decide the same. You can have them choose this when they subscribe for your newsletters.

This not only gives them control over your communications, but also enables them to engage with your company. In addition, it also shows them that you care about and respect their needs and preferences.

And on the business front, letting your customers decide eliminates the need for you to perform segmentation.

Since there is no single answer to the question, you will have to test different strategies to find out what works for your company and target audience.