How Often Should You Email Your Subscribers? — A Data-Backed Guide (2025)
Knowing how often to email your list is one of the most common and contentious questions in email marketing. Too often and you risk unsubscribes and complaints. Too seldom and you miss revenue, relevance, and the chance to build a relationship.
This guide gives you a research-informed, practical playbook for setting frequency by audience, industry, and campaign type — plus a ready-to-use 90-day plan, concrete benchmarks, and pro tips I’ve learned from building email programs that scale. Wherever I make a data claim I back it with recent benchmarks so you can act confidently in 2025.
Executive summary — the short answer
There isn’t a single “right” frequency for every business. However, the safe, high-return ranges you should test first are:
- Newsletter / content brands: 1× per week to 1× per month.
- Ecommerce / retail: 2–5× per week for engaged shoppers; automated flows (welcome, cart, post-purchase) in addition to broadcasts.
- SaaS / B2B: 1–4× per month plus onboarding and product-usage automations.
- Creators & podcasts: 1–2× per week for heavy-engagement audiences.
These ranges are supported by industry benchmarks and consumer preference studies (examples and sources below). Use them as starting points and then optimize for your audience using segmentation, engagement signals, and RPR (revenue per recipient).
Why frequency matters (and what most people get wrong)
Frequency is not just about volume — it’s about relevance and timing.
- Sending too often with low relevance leads to unsubscribes and spam complaints.
- Sending too infrequently makes your brand forgettable; subscribers disengage or forget to whitelist you.
- The sweet spot is where value delivered ≥ annoyance caused.
Benchmarks show consumers actually expect regular promotions: one survey found 61% of consumers want promotional emails at least weekly, and a significant subset even wants daily offers. That doesn’t mean blast everyone every day — it means you must match frequency to intent and segment.
Data & benchmarks to guide your decision (2024–2025)
Here are reliable industry references I use when recommending starting frequencies:
- Klaviyo Benchmarks (2024 / 2025): Detailed by industry and campaign type — helpful for setting per-industry expectations. Use their open/click/revenue benchmarks to judge if your frequency is working.
- Brevo Marketing Benchmarks (2025): Aggregates billions of emails and is useful for regional and industry averages post-Apple Mail Privacy changes. Use these to set deliverability and unsubscribe targets.
- Mailchimp Benchmarks: Great for broad averages across many industries for opens, clicks and unsubscribes as you scale.
- Omnisend analysis (2025): Reports that many companies send 2–5 weekly messages to engaged subscribers, especially ecommerce. Use this for commerce frequency planning.
- Consumer preference studies (Beehiiv): Show that many subscribers welcome weekly promotional contact, correcting the “everyone hates emails” myth.
Use those benchmarks to compare open rates, unsubscribe rates and revenue per recipient (RPR) as you experiment.
A practical decision framework — 5 steps to pick your frequency
1) Start with business purpose
Ask: are you primarily educating (content), selling (ecommerce), onboarding (SaaS), or retaining (subscription)? That sets the baseline frequency.
2) Segment by intent
Never send the same frequency to all subscribers. At minimum, separate:
- New subscribers (welcome cadence)
- Engaged subscribers (favored, higher frequency)
- Customers / buyers (transactional + promotional)
- Dormant users (lower frequency + re-engagement attempts)
New subscribers should receive a welcome series (3 emails in the first 7–10 days). That’s not optional — welcome sequences outperform one-off opens and tend to have the highest engagement.
3) Use behavior to increase or decrease frequency
Let actions dictate messaging. If someone browses product pages or clicks your links, ramp up relevant messages. If they ignore five consecutive campaigns, reduce frequency and try a re-engagement flow.
4) Measure business metrics — not vanity metrics
Track CTR, conversion rate, unsub rate per send, and most importantly Revenue Per Recipient (RPR). If increasing send frequency boosts RPR and keeps unsub rates low (e.g., <0.3% for ecommerce campaigns per campaign average), it’s probably working. Use platform benchmarks (Klaviyo, Brevo, Mailchimp) to compare. Klaviyo+1
5) Iterate quickly with controlled experiments
Test frequency on random segments. For example, test weekly vs. twice-weekly for 8 weeks, and compare RPR, CTR and churn. Always test with statistical care and long enough to see behavior changes.
Practical frequency playbooks (by business type)
Ecommerce / DTC
- Engaged buyers: 2–5 emails per week (promos, product drops, content).
- General list (non-buyers): 1–3 emails per week.
- Automations: Immediate welcome, abandoned cart (1–3 emails), browse abandonment, post-purchase (3 emails).
Why: Omnisend and industry reports show many ecommerce programs send multiple weekly emails to engaging shoppers and support strong recovery via automations.
SaaS / B2B
- Trial users / onboarding: 3–7 onboarding touches in the first 14 days.
- Existing customers: 1–4 emails per month (product updates, case studies).
- Automations: Onboarding workflows, feature announcements, renewal reminders.
Creators / Newsletters
- High-value newsletters: Weekly is the most common cadence that balances engagement and production workload. Many creators succeed at 1× per week with a focused voice and consistent value. Consumer surveys support weekly expectations.
Local services / Brick & Mortar
- Customers: 1–4 emails per month (appointment reminders, local events, promos).
- New leads: 3-email welcome then monthly nurture.
Testing matrix & sample A/B experiments
- Test A: Weekly vs twice-weekly on 10% random sample — measure 8 weeks, compare RPR and unsubscribe.
- Test B: Engaged segment (clicked in last 30 days) send 3× weekly vs 1× weekly — measure purchases and spam complaints.
- Test C: New subscribers: 1-email welcome only vs 3-email welcome series — measure first 30-day revenue.
Run one test at a time and let statistical significance settle before concluding.
90-day action plan (step-by-step)
Week 1: Audit your list, segment into (new/engaged/buyers/dormant), authenticate your domain (SPF/DKIM).
Week 2: Build a 3-email welcome series and enable UTM tracking for email links.
Week 3–4: Launch a frequency A/B test on the engaged segment (weekly vs twice weekly).
Month 2: Analyze results (RPR, CTR, unsub) and adjust send cadence accordingly.
Month 3: Implement refined cadence across segments; introduce preference center so subscribers choose email frequency.
Pro tips from the trenches
- Preference center > guesswork. Let subscribers choose daily/weekly/monthly. This reduces churn.
- Quality beats quantity. If you can’t add clear value every send, don’t send.
- Automations are priority one. A few automations (welcome + cart + post-purchase) outperform extra broadcasts.
- Monitor unsubscribe per send. If it drifts up, dial frequency back for that segment. MailerLite and Brevo offer benchmarks to compare.
Quick reference table: starting frequencies
| Business type | Starting frequency (engaged) | Starting frequency (general list) |
|---|---|---|
| Ecommerce / DTC | 2–5× weekly | 1–3× weekly |
| SaaS / B2B | N/A (onboarding: daily touches) | 1–4× monthly |
| Creator / Newsletter | 1–2× weekly | 1× weekly or 1× monthly |
| Local services | 1–4× monthly | 1× monthly |
| Nonprofit | 1–4× monthly | 1× monthly |
Final thoughts
There’s no one-size-fits-all number, but the process—segment, test, measure, iterate—is universal. Start from the benchmark ranges above, prioritize automations and welcome sequences, and use revenue per recipient as your north star. Do that and you’ll find the cadence that grows your business rather than hurting it.
By a 10-year veteran blogger, marketer & digital strategist
