How Many Emails Should You Send Per Week?

How many emails should you send?

A lot? A little? Let’s talk about it.

You should send at least two emails per week, and as many as seven times a week if you have the skill and bandwidth. Many experts will tell you not to email too often. But if you write great emails, people are happy to read them, and you will get a higher open rate.

You’re about to learn the simple math behind why you should send more emails, and how a high-volume strategy lets me engage me with my audience 9 times more often than my competition.

Let’s start with a surprising truth:

People Want to Read Emails

Let’s start with basic logic.

When you sign up for an email list, you are saying “I want emails from this person.”

And think about the concept of double opt-in.

When someone double opts in to your list, they are:

• Filling out an opt-in form
• Checking their email
• Clicking a link in an email

If someone’s willing to do all that, they want your emails.

Now let’s move onto another not-so-obvious truth.

You Can’t Send Too Many Emails (unless they suck)

The average person gets 78 emails a day.

So email inboxes are overloaded, right?

Wrong.

If you’re like me, you join lots of email lists, but you rarely unsubscribe.

Why? Because we’re lazy.

Instead, we become blind to certain senders. We just look past them in the inbox.

I’m on 100+ email lists right now.

Out of that 100 email newsletters, there are about 5 that I read like clockwork.

Why?

Because those emails are part of my routine.

Your mission is to counteract “inbox blindness” with emails that people want.

So your emails become part of your readers’ routines.

When you write great emails for a targeted audience, you can send a lot more emails than you think.

That means you have to write killer subject lines and write compelling content that keeps people wanting more.

And think about other media formats.

Many big YouTubers post multiple 20+ minute videos per week. Joe Rogan publishes multiple 3-hour podcasts per week.

So why can’t you send 5 emails that take 2 minutes to read each?

This is why I do not recommend limiting yourself to a weekly newsletter.

So let’s talk about that.

Why Emailing Once a Week Is Not Enough

Many email marketing experts will tell you to write a weekly newsletter.

But think about the math.

If a person misses one email, they go two weeks without reading your content.

If they miss two emails, that’s three weeks without engaging.

At that point, you’re pretty much forgotten about.

In fact, some readers may mark you as spam!

I email my list every 2 days, or 3.5 times a week.

The average guy on the street will tell you that’s too much.

Until you see my open rates.

The average email open rate is 21.5%.

Most my my emails get 60%+:

I’m sending 3 times as many email as the average person and getting a 3-times bigger open rate.

That means I’m engaging with my audience 9 times as often, which is great for my email deliverability.

(speaking of this, I gotta work on my “10 Commandments of Email Marketing” email)

And people thank me for my emails:

Here’s another message I just got on Instagram of all places:

Because my emails are entertaining and easy to read – even the long ones.

So some people look forward to receiving my emails.

The Math of Sending More Emails

You saw above how me sending more emails means I get 9 times more engagement that people who send weekly.

So let’s look at a little table.

Assume you have

10,000 email subscribers

40% open rate (4,000 opens per email)

5% click rate (500 clicks per email)

Here’s how many email opens you would get at different frequencies:

I used simple numbers to illustrate the math for you.

But you see where I’m going with this, right?

Getting 2,000 clicks instead of 500 will make you more money 100% of the time.

The Return on Investment of Sending More Emails

Industry data shows that sending more emails makes you more money.

Your return on investment of your email marketing goes up when you send more emails:

And then there’s just the question of standing out to your potential customers:

Why Sending Frequent Emails Makes You Stand Out

According to Databox, over 40% of email marketers email their list just once per week.

And many email just once per month, or once every two weeks.

Less than 40% email daily or several times a week.

So more than 60% of email marketers are giving up sales and engagement because they send too few emails.

• Think about what happens when you send frequent emails:
• Frequent communication with content, promotions, and special offers, you stand out big time.
• You are viewed as a thought leader because you’re full of ideas
• You prove you are passionate about your industry
• You drive more back-and-forth discussions with your audience
• You avoid the email inbox blindness which I described above – when you no longer stand out in the inbox.

Does Sending a Lot of Emails Cause Unsubscribes and Spam Complaints?

Infusionsoft says that “The No. 1 reason people unsubscribe from emails is that they get them too often from a single sender.

That’s funny.

Because I’ve found that the No.1 reason people buy is because they read your emails.

The reality is that if you send great emails and set expectations up front, people will not unsubscribe from your emails as much as you’d think.

Yes, you’ll get a small uptick in unsubscribes and even a few spam complaints, but people who unsubscribe were never going to buy or even be real fans.

As you know, I pride myself in writing fun, digestible emails.

And when you join my list, I let you know you get emails from me every 2 days at 12 p.m.

You can unsubscribe at any time, which I’m fine with.

Because if people don’t like my emails, they’re never going to buy from me.

That’s why I never worry about people unsubscribing from my list.

And if you stay on my list with so many email sends, then I know you’re a real fan.

Plus, most email sending providers like ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit and MailChimp charge you by the contact.

I want to pay less money for a highly-engaged list. Not more money for a big list with low engagement.

I don’t worry about spam complaints because they’re so rare.

I’ve sent as any as 7 emails in one day to a list and there were almost no spam complaints.

How Many Emails Should You Send Per Week?

If you are an online content creator, send at least 2 emails per week to avoid having half or more of your list go 2 weeks without hearing from you.

Let’s say you send a weekly newsletter on Fridays.

I’d add a second email on Tuesday.

And I’d send 3-4 emails per week if you have the bandwidth.

If you run a brick & mortar business like my favorite plumber, I’d go once a week.

By the way, most of my emails are 100% automated using my “write once, send forever” strategy.

So let’s talk about email automation:

Automated Emails vs. Broadcast Emails

Now there’s the question of HOW do you get all these emails out? How do you get enough good email ideas to get real volume to your list?

I’ll show you how I do it. First, understand that there are two email sending methods.

• Automated Emails: preprogrammed emails that go out on a certain schedule, like every 3 days, or on Saturdays
• Broadcast Emails: one-off emails you manually write and send

I use a mix of automated and broadcast emails in my ActiveCampaign account.

I write a lot of automated emails to keep messages flowing to my list.

But I don’t stop there.

Because my Sunday email marketing newsletter is written as a fresh broadcast email each week.

So I turn those emails into automated emails later on.

This way, I always have a full pipe of messages going out like clockwork.

Never, ever let a good email live once. Use automation to send it over and over until the end of time.

So how many emails do you send per week? After reading this, are you planning on sending more? Let me know in the comments below!