How often is too often?

In today's Mailbites, we talk about email frequency, the question every brand wrestles with, and why "how often should we send?" is the wrong question to be asking in the first place.

Now, onto today's story.

The Story

"How often should we email our list?" is one of the most common questions I get, and people always want a number back. Twice a week. Three times. Daily. The honest answer is that the number isn't the point, and chasing one is how brands end up either annoying their list or leaving money on the table.

Here's the reframe. People don't unsubscribe because you email too often. They unsubscribe because you email too often without being worth it. Nobody complains that their favourite newsletter shows up too much. They complain about the brand that sends a fourth "last chance" in a week with nothing new to say. The tolerance for frequency is set entirely by value, not by a calendar.

Which means the real question isn't "how many emails?" It's "do I have something worth sending?" A brand with genuinely useful, varied things to say can email daily and grow. A brand recycling the same promo can email weekly and still bleed subscribers. Frequency is downstream of value, every time.

That said, a few practical guardrails help:

• Watch the right signal. The number that tells you you've crossed the line isn't unsubscribes alone, it's the slow climb in spam complaints and the fade in clicks. Those move before the unsubscribes do, and they hurt more.
• Let people choose. The most elegant fix for "too often" isn't sending less to everyone, it's letting the people who want less say so. A simple "get fewer emails" option saves a subscriber who'd otherwise have left entirely.
• Vary the diet. Frequency feels heavier when every email is a sale. Mix in things that aren't asks, the genuinely useful, the entertaining, the story, and the same number of sends feels lighter and lands better.
• Earn the right to ramp. New subscribers and engaged buyers tolerate more. Lapsing ones tolerate far less. Frequency shouldn't be one global setting; it should bend to how engaged someone actually is.

So stop asking how often to send. Start asking whether the next email earns its place in the inbox. Get that right and you can send more than you'd dare. Get it wrong and even once a week is one too many.

Until next week,

Ani