Newsletters are a great way to keep your customers informed/engaged and to keep your brand top-of-mind.
But you might be wondering (like everyone else)—how often should you send out your newsletter? How do you determine the optimal newsletter send schedule?
The reality is, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Everyone’s frequency, timeline, and goals will be different.
But, let’s review the basics, and get you to the position where you can make the best decisions for yourself.
Why Send a Newsletter?
Regularly sending out newsletters to your opted-in subscriber database offers a variety of key benefits that really can’t and shouldn’t be overlooked.
How often you choose to send your newsletter will depend on the
- purpose (both why are you sending and why are they reading),
- content of your newsletter,
- the preferences of your audience.
Like everything else in life, consistency is key. By sending out a well written, engaging newsletter on a regular schedule, you provide a reliable source of contact with subscribers and keep yourself top-of-mind. This can be an effective way of re-engaging/nurture sales leads who may have become inactive over time.
Regular communication also helps build strong relationships with customers through openness and transparency, which can lead to increased customer loyalty and brand trust.
Establishing Frequency and Timing
Deciding when to send your newsletter is important as what you write in it. If you send too often, people may start tuning out, but if you don’t send enough, then you’re missing opportunities to stay top-of-mind.
To make sure your newsletter schedule is just right, there are a few key factors to consider:
Audience preference
The time of day and day of week you choose to send your newsletter should be a data-driven decision.
You’ll need to experiment a little, starting off by using best judgment. Compare the engagement rate of Friday at 10am vs Tuesday at 2pm etc. Eventually, there will be a winner.
Here’s a good place to start your testing:
Subject matter
Your subject matter can guide how often you should be sending newsletters—if there’s only one big topic you cover in a month, then that’s probably the day you should send the newsletter. On the other hand, if you have multiple subjects or stories that need addressing in each month, then consider spliting up your content into several issues rather than rattling off all of them in one big behemoth.
It also pays off to pay attention to whether certain topics are more time sensitive than others and prioritize those for immediate delivery over less timely content by spreading out the frequency accordingly. This will help ensure your readers get updates as soon as possible but without bombarding them with emails each day.
Also, no one wants 8 emails a month on your newest 10% discount. Focus on creating good, interesting, content and sprinkle in a few sales emails here and there.
https://xkcd.com/1873/
Define the Content Strategy
Once you have established the right frequency for your newsletter, it’s time to focus on content.
The quality, consistency and tone of your newsletter will all play a key role in how your readers engage with it. Take some time to define what topics will be featured in each issue—will it include industry updates, helpful tips, company news or spotlights on customers?
Additionally, consider what format you’ll use: articles and images, infographics, stories or videos?
Creating an optimal send schedule is all about striking a balance between delivering valuable, quality content and ensuring that your subscribers do not become overwhelmed by too many emails.
Start by thinking about the types of content you can create and how often. For example:
- Feature an article every other week
- Include helpful tips once per month
- Introduce a customer spotlight every quarter
Defining these parameters will help establish a consistent cadence while maintaining interest from your readership.
Optimizing Your Subscriber Database
Now that we’ve discussed how often to send a newsletter, let’s talk about optimizing your subscriber database. This is one of the key components to sending newsletters effectively.
Improving your email marketing performance starts with understanding who’s on your list and segmenting them accordingly. That means segmenting them by topics they’ve expressed interest in, or demographics such as age or location.
Segmentation tool
By using tools like Mailchimp, Active Campaign, or Klaviyo, you can easily organize your subscribers into segments and target them with relevant emails.
This will also improve the way your messages look in different inboxes, as well as adding personalization elements like first names and subscriber-specific preferences.
Automated drip emails
Once you have segments setup, you can send automated emails based on any interactions that a subscriber has had with your company—such as abandoned carts or special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries. These automated emails are even more effective if they’re personalized to the individual recipient’s interests and preferences.
Segmenting your subscribers will help you get better insight into how people are engaging with your business, enabling you to make more informed decisions about how often to send a newsletter — and what to include in it — for maximum engagement!
Consider Your Audience’s Behavior
When you’re planning your newsletter send schedule, it pays to keep your audience in mind. Every audience is different, so your newsletter send schedule should be tailored around their particular wants and needs.
For example:
- If you have a tech-savvy audience of heavy email users, they may appreciate a higher frequency of newsletters;
- If your audience are busy professionals who rarely check their emails, or work in roles where they have to be available for customer conversations, then you may want to reduce the frequency.
Do some research on the habits and preferences of your target audience—you can find out more from data-driven tools such as surveys and analytics tools—and then use this information to create a newsletter send schedule that works for both you and them. This way, your newsletters won’t be too much or too overwhelming for them to handle.
Analyzing Your Newsletter Performance
The last part of creating an optimal newsletter send schedule is analyzing your newsletter performance. It’s important to pay attention to how well your newsletters are doing so you can decide if you need to make any changes.
The two key metrics you’ll want to pay attention to are open rate and click-through rate:
Open Rate
Your open rate is the percentage of people who opened your email out of the total number of emails that were sent. It’s a good indicator of how interesting and relevant your subject lines are, and whether or not people feel compelled enough to click through.
Click-Through Rate
Your click-through rate is the percentage of people who clicked on a link or took an action after opening your email out of the total number of emails that were sent. This tells you whether or not the content in your email was interesting enough for people to engage.
Pay attention to both these metrics over time, and if it looks like they’re going down, it might be time to switch up which type of content you’re sending in your emails—or even consider changing your send frequency.
Conclusion
Everyone’s ideal newsletter schedule will be different, but there are some general rules of thumb that you can follow to make sure you’re sending the right amount of emails to your list. Start with testing timing: what works for one list may not work for another, and your subscribers’ engagement levels will tell you if you’re sending too often or too infrequently.
Next, it’s important to keep track of your open and click-through rates, which can inform you about the effectiveness of your content, subject lines, and send schedule. Regularly experiment and and adjust your send schedule to be sure that you’re sending out newsletters at the optimal times.
By creating a newsletter send schedule that works for your subscribers and business, you can make sure you’re sending the right messages at the right times to get the best results.
