All About Email Marketing Frequency, Timing, and Metrics

Krista Neher

Jun 27 2023

All About Email Marketing Frequency, Timing, and Metrics

At our live four-day Boot Camps, we dive into email marketing. In every session over the years, we are asked the same questions about email marketing frequency, timing, and metrics.

“How often should I send emails?”
“What is the best time of day to send my emails?”
“How do I know if my email was successful?”

Frequency

While you can find industry averages about email frequency and dates/times to send, the reality is that different audiences respond differently. The key is to send emails when you have something interesting and valuable to say.

For example, I happily open daily emails from a business expert with great content, but I wouldn’t want daily emails from a retailer. The point is – to test what is best for you and let that guide your decision.

Most email newsletters start with a monthly frequency. Also, if you use autoresponders or have sales reps emailing, try to keep track of the total number of emails you send to people.

To determine your email frequency, think about C.A.R.:

Content

How often do you have relevant content?
What is realistic for you?
How often do customers want to hear your messages?

Averages

What is the average for the industry?
What do most people expect?

Re-evaluate

Test and learn

Timing

The next question we answer is all about timing. You want to think about the best time of day to send them. Some suggest that emailing in the middle of the week is best because people are active at work but caught up from the weekend. Others suggest sending it on Sunday because it is the date that the fewest emails are sent.

The best time to send emails depends on a variety of factors, including:

Your product and when it is relevant to people
When your audience is receptive
If it is personal or business
When your audience is online
When they have time or are less inundated

That being said, the best way to know when to send is to test, test, test. Evaluate your emails to determine when you get the best open rates.

Metrics

The only way to know how your emails are performing and to improve them is to analyze your results and optimize based on what you find. Too often, we put marketing on autopilot and don’t spend the time to check if what we are doing works or invest some effort to determine if we could do it better.

Build analysis into your plan for emails. Before sending an email, just take a few minutes to look at previous email performance to understand what worked and didn’t.

Most businesses look at a handful of key metrics to assess the performance of their emails:

Open rate – the percentage of people who opened the email.
Click rate – the percent of people who opened and then clicked on something in the email. You may also look at clicks on specific links or calls to action.
Negative feedback – unsubscribes or your email marked as “spam” is considered negative feedback. Most emails generate some negative feedback but look for trends (above or below) at your normal rate.

When it comes to metrics, marketers always want to know what is a “good” open rate or click rate. While there are averages that exist, the most important thing is that yours is improving.

Want to improve your skills? Check out our Email Marketing course to get your emails from spam to land!

Email Marketing, General

All About Email Marketing Frequency, Timing, and Metrics