One of the questions I (and anyone with a background in email marketing) gets asked the most often is “what's the best frequency to send emails?”.

And unfortunately, there's no simple one-size-fits-all answer.

Anyone who tells you that the “best” frequency for everyone no matter what their situation is daily or weekly or monthly or whatever is either trying to sell you something, or they've just not got a lot of varied experience.

But over a decade or so of sending an awful lot of emails (and advising and helping on an awful lot more) I've picked up a few interesting observations.

Firstly, every survey I've seen where people are asked if they want more or fewer emails has come back overwhelmingly “fewer”.

Yet at the same time, I've never seen a case of someone decreasing their email frequency and making more sales. Or even getting better engagement.

And I've seen many, many cases where people have increased their email frequency and got more sales, more clicks and more engagement – including myself.

So the first conclusion is that email frequency is one of those unusual cases where customer opinion is not a good guide to what to do.

Even direct feedback to you isn't a good guide either.

People's tolerance for email frequency is very variable. Some are at the very limit already and even a few more emails will push them over the edge. But most won't even notice.

So if you increase the frequency of your emails what happens is the people for whom it's now too much will complain.

But the people for whom it's now the right frequency and will get you better results than a lower frequency aren't going to email you and say “hey, I'm glad you're emailing more”. You'll only notice the difference in terms of actual results. 

(And in fact, you may well get better results even from the people who say they want fewer emails).

And truth be told, our emails are only one tiny part of our subscribers inboxes – so an increase from us rarely makes much of a difference overall.

That said, you don't want to be the straw that breaks the camels back. And I wouldn't recommend immediately jumping from a monthly newsletter to a daily email. The difference will freak out your subscribers and there's a good chance you won't be able to keep it up anyway.

So what do I actually recommend?

Firstly, it's worth remembering that frequency is a function of value. If your subscribers find your emails really useful, you can send more.

Secondly, the people most likely to buy from you are likely to want to hear more from you rather than less.

Of course, we've all got stories of clients who barely opened an email for years, then popped up and bought a huge project. But those are the exceptions rather than the rule.

By and large, people who find your content useful and relevant and like your style are the most likely to buy from you, and they're the most likely to want to get more of your content.

Thirdly, your subscribers are likely to be at their most enthusiastic and open to receiving more emails just after they've signed up.

Most normal people don't sign up for “get my free report on the solution to problem X and my regular emails on how to implement it” and then think “well, I hope he doesn't send me too many emails about that thing I wanted I just signed up for”.

That means you can send emails more frequently in your “welcome sequence” of initial emails than you might later.

Fourthly, the biggest issue isn't really frequency, it's time.

I find it easy to squeeze in 5 or 10 or 30 minutes here and there to browse the web, read the sports pages and watch a couple of TV shows every week. I find it really hard to imagine finding 2 hours and 43 minutes all in one go to watch the latest Bond film.

So it's better to send short emails more frequently than a really long email once in a blue moon. (And yeah, I know this email breaks that rule – sorry!)

And finally, the best email frequency is…well, it's a process not a destination.

Bearing in mind the previous points hint that you can probably get better results by emailing more frequently, I would start by trying to email just a bit more often.

If you currently email monthly, try every two weeks.

If you email every two weeks, go for weekly (generally speaking I find weekly is a good default for most people). 

If you're emailing weekly, throw in the occasional additional email midweek.

Track your results.

Are you getting more clicks to your website and (eventually) more sales? Or more enquiries or more email replies.

If it works, increase a bit more.

Then a bit more.

In theory, stop when your results stop improving.

In practice though, nine times out of ten, you'll run out of the capacity to write more frequently well before your results stop improving.

Personally I've settled on twice a week.

I did monthly a long, long time ago.

I got better results from weekly (and was able to keep up the habit easier).

I tried emailing 3-4 times a week. It got better results than weekly (not 3-4 times as good, but definitely better). But I struggled to keep it up – I was spending too much time writing emails and not enough time on my other marketing.

So I've settled on twice a week.

It's a habit I can keep up. And it gets good results for me.

You have different clients to me with different expectations and different inboxes. Your answer will be different to mine.

But gently tweaking over time works for everyone.