What to Expect When You Email Your List More Often

Usually when I tell people that I email my list every day, they look at me like I’m nuts for a few seconds…

“Really?”

Almost invariably the next question that pops out of their mouth is:

“How does that affect your open/click/unsubscribe rates?”

The natural assumption is that you’ll burn your list out if you email more often, “engagement” (aka opens, clicks) will go in the toilet and unsubscribes will go through the roof.

That’s not what actually happens.

Here’s what DOES happen when you start emailing more often:

– Average open rates decline a bit.

If you’re used to getting a 35% open rate on your weekly newsletter, you might see that drop to 25% with increased frequency.

BUT…

Over the course of a week a higher percentage of your subscribers will read at least one of your emails.

So you end up reaching MORE people than if you had only emailed once that week and received a “better” open rate.

– “List churn” DOES increase somewhat—meaning that you’ll see more unsubscribes in a given week.

But it’s not nearly as much of an increase as you’d expect. If you’re used to losing 20 subs a week from sending out your weekly newsletter, you might see an extra 10-20 people drop off if you email 3-5 times.

In general those subscribers were the ones who were kinda lukewarm on your topic anyway.

– The people that DO stick around are more engaged.

Frequent emails have a polarizing effect.

Your subscribers are either REALLY into you… or they leave.

I average 3-10 replies per *day* from subscribers to this list—and it’s actually a pretty small list!

This translates to multiple coaching and consulting opportunities for me every week (which I have to turn away, since I’m not taking that kind of work on right now).

So…

Should YOU be emailing daily?

Maybe, maybe not.

I don’t think daily is appropriate for every single market.

But you almost certainly *would* benefit from sending more emails than you are today.

Related posts:

  1. How often should I email my list? (case study) One of the biggest “controversies” in email marketing is this: How often should I mail my list? The gurus are all over the map on this. On one hand, you have guys like Matt Furey and Ben Settle who take an aggressive approach—emailing every day, sometimes even multiple times per...
  2. What Is A ‘Normal’ Unsubscribe Rate for an Email List? Several years ago I moved my still-tiny “Sublime Text Tips” email list from Aweber to MailChimp. MailChimp had a feature where they’d send you a daily email update on your list growth. Seemed cool, so I set it up. Every morning I’d get a message: 4 New Subscribers 4 Unsubscribed...
  3. Why ‘Average’ Email Open Rates Are Meaningless Last week I tried an interesting experiment with the Simple Programmer email list. Over the course of 2 days, I sent out 3 “broadcast” emails with just one major difference between them. And just check out the difference in open rates: Email #1 got an abysmal 1.8% open rate (yes...
  4. Afraid of ‘Pruning’ Your Email List? Do This Instead Should you ever delete email subscribers? I raised a ruckus a few months back when I described how I “terminate” subscribers who show no signs of life. It’s a controversial stance. Since email is essentially “free” to send, why wouldn’t you want to keep as many subscribers as possible? The...