The 'how often' question gets endless conflicting advice, most of it missing the point. The real rule isn't a number — it's whether each email is worth opening. Frequency only becomes a problem when the value drops.
Send as often as you're useful
If every email teaches, entertains or genuinely helps, people happily hear from you weekly or more. If they're thin filler, even monthly feels like too much. Judge the value, not the calendar.
Pick a rhythm you can keep
Consistency beats intensity. A steady note every two weeks that you actually sustain builds more trust than a daily blitz that burns out in a month. Choose the pace you can hold, and hold it.
Pick a Rhythm You Can Keep for Six Months
The right frequency is the one you'll still be sending in half a year, so start from what's sustainable rather than what's ideal. For most people running a business alongside other work, that's once a week or once a fortnight. Weekly keeps you present without becoming a second job; monthly is usually too sparse for anyone to remember who you are between sends.
Sustainability comes from batching, not willpower. Set aside one session to draft three or four emails at once and you remove the weekly "what do I even say" tax that kills most lists. Keep a running note on your phone of questions customers ask and offhand ideas; a baker might bank a seasonal flavour, a storage question, a behind-the-scenes photo and a restock over a fortnight, then turn them into a month of emails in an hour.
Consistency beats volume. A predictable weekly note people come to expect outperforms a burst of daily emails followed by three silent months, because the silence is what makes the eventual pitch feel like a cold call.
Read the Right Numbers Before You Change Anything
Unsubscribe rate is the number everyone watches and the one that misleads most. A few unsubscribes after every send is healthy — the list cleaning itself of people who were never going to buy. The figure worth watching is whether they spike on a particular kind of email, which tells you the content missed, not that you emailed too often.
Better signals are replies and revenue per email. If people write back, you're welcome in their inbox and can comfortably send more. If a send earns nothing and prompts no replies, the problem is usually the message, not the frequency — sending it less often won't fix a weak email. Track the total revenue a month of emailing brings, not the open rate of any single one.
When you do want to test more frequency, change one thing and give it a month. Go from fortnightly to weekly, hold it for four sends, and compare unsubscribes and sales against the previous month. Many people find doubling frequency barely moves unsubscribes but noticeably lifts sales, simply because more sends means more chances to catch someone at the right moment.
Know When to Break Your Own Cadence
A steady rhythm is the baseline, not a rule you can never bend. During a launch, a sale, or a genuinely time-sensitive moment, emailing three or four times in a week is not only acceptable but expected — people understand a deadline warrants more contact. The mistake is treating your calm weekly cadence and your launch cadence as the same setting.
The one pattern to avoid is going quiet and then reappearing only to sell. If a list hasn't heard from you in two months and the next email is "buy my thing", the unsubscribes and spam complaints are earned. Warm the list back up with a useful, non-selling email or two before you ask for money, so the pitch lands on people who still remember why they signed up.