How often should you send marketing emails?

According to a Databox and Seventh Sense co-sponsored research study of email marketers, 33 % said the most common frequency, or email cadence, was a weekly rhythm. The next most frequent response was “multiple times a month” at 26%. The factors that influence whatever cadence an email marketing program employs are subscriber engagement, the email’s objective, and timeliness of the offer.

Best Day of the Week

HubSpot Blogs surveyed three hundred email marketers and found that emails sent on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday get the most engagement. Within that group, emails sent on Tuesday between 9:00 am and Noon produced the greatest engagement.

A Real World Example

In my promotion of financial industry webinars, I employ Active Campaign’s lead scoring capabilities to guide my email cadence. I assign different numerical values to a range of subscriber actions such as email opens, clicks, web page visits, purchases, etc. This generates subscriber engagement segments that I then use to direct email send frequency.

For instance, in a recent promotion of 9,000 highly engaged subscribers defined by a combination of their total engagement score, interest tags generated by clicks within the email and other personalization data, the open rate was 89.2% with a click rate of 84.2% and a click-to-open rate of 94%! The email was sent at 1:00 pm Monday. 😁

The exact same email sent to a broader but less engaged subscriber segment on Tuesday morning produced an open rate of 17.26%, a click rate less than 1%, and a click-to-open rate of 2.24%. The open rate was likely influenced by the email’s timing (confirming the findings about Tuesday) but the click rate was predictably lower based on the overall subscriber engagement score. 😞

According to HubSpot , the average open rate for the finance category is 23% with a click through rate of 6.8%. The industrial segment includes accounting, banking, capital markets, financial services, investment banking, investment management, venture capital, and private equity.

Each email marketer needs to find their own cadence by employing their ESP’s analytical tools. However, starting off with a weekly schedule on Tuesdays will provide a decent baseline going forward.