How Often Should You Send Newsletters
- Updated on
- By Maliha
It was a time of big changes in my business.
I had recently pivoted from mostly a Canva-related business to content and growth strategy for bloggers and newsletter writers.
That there were creators sending daily emails and absolutely killing it… fascinated me.
So I decided to give it a try.
It’s now been almost a couple of years since I started my daily email saga, and I must say, it’s been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Not just for my business, but for almost every aspect of my life.
Daily emails, you see, are grounding for me.
I’m not a very grounded person, sadly. Without going into details, let’s just say that…
I hate routines. But without any routine, my life falls apart. So I must find routines with tasks I enjoy doing daily.
When I had a 9–5, I had a routine. After I quit, many amazing things happened (such as this blog and the income that came with being a content creator), but at the same time, my chronic depression got worse. Because I had zero routine to speak of when I started working for myself.
I almost forgot what it was like… being on some type of schedule.
I forgot how good it felt to have something to do every day that I actually enjoyed doing.
Daily emails were not even on my radar because…
What if people unsubscribed in droves?
Who would buy my courses then?
What if my income tanked???
A significant part of my income comes from selling courses and workshops, and pretty much 99.99% of my buyers are my newsletter subscribers. And without a 9-5 covering my base expenses, I was scared to pull that daily email trigger.
But then I came to know a Josh Spector (on Twitter, of all places), who sends a daily curated email, and I loved it.
Though I must say, Josh’s approach isn’t really my style. I don’t like to curate. I tried, but it didn’t stick.
So, when Josh linked to another daily emailer—John Bejakovic—I subscribed and immediately fell in love.
I wanted to do what John was doing.
Every single email John sends is like a little story with a strange gravitational pull… it pulls you to him, and in turn, everything he sells, that Pied Piper…
Anyhow.
Inspired by John, I decided to turn my twice-weekly newsletter into a daily newsletter, and though I was a bit scared at first… of losing subscribers, sales, reputation, and worst of all, my love for writing… it did the opposite.
Sure, I lose some subscribers every day, but it means that those who stay are more aligned with my offers than ever.
Sales aren’t any fewer than what’s expected after a pivot, and my love for writing has only grown (because I believe I’ve actually become a better writer since I started sending daily emails!)
So, with that, let me introduce the topic of this post:
Should you be sending daily emails to your newsletter subscribers? And more importantly, how often should you email them?
Turns out, it’s not as straightforward an answer as most expect of me.
Let me lay out some facts and factors that play into figuring out whether or not you should be sending a daily email.
When NOT to send a daily email
I believe I’ve already established that I love daily emails. But that doesn’t mean you should start with daily emails.
The most important factor behind doing anything daily is whether you can sustain it.
Writing can be super frustrating for me. Yet it is also one of the things I enjoy the most in life. Once I got going, there was no question in my mind that I was, in fact, doing the right thing.
The frustration doesn’t come from not wanting to write; it almost always comes from feeling unable to create the most beautiful writing I am capable of.
I get stuck on sentences, on word choices, and on the narrative, too.
When I write emails, I don’t just want to link to stuff.
I want to hold my readers’ attention; make them feel something. And yes, eventually lead them down the path of a buyer’s journey so they’ll get everything I sell.
What can I say… I’m a writer, but also a business owner through and through. Gotta make ’em sales!
So, my question to you is this:
Do you like writing enough that you can sustain a daily email writing habit, even when writing gets tough?
If not, you’re not ready to send a daily email.
Start where you’re at. Otherwise, instead of daily emails benefiting you, they will do the opposite. They’ll burn you out and maybe keep you from emailing at all. (I’ve seen that happen!)
Don’t let writing become a chore you hate.
It’s a sacred act (at least, that’s how I feel about writing most days). Treat it with respect. Nurture it. You may not like writing today, but if you continue to write, one day you might come to love it to the point where you can start sending daily emails… happily.
But only if you keep at it.
If you force daily emails before you’re ready, chances are that you’ll come to hate writing altogether.
Like most skills, writing requires practice. To get better at it, you want to challenge yourself, push yourself just a bit harder until you’re a tad outside of your comfort zone… but not so hard that you end up in the middle of a foreign desert, lost and thirsty and hating your life.
A good newsletter frequency for beginners
At the very least, you should send one email per week. That’s not hard to do.
Look, times are weird. We get a bazillion emails a day, which means two things: People don’t want crap emails, and they have a hard time remembering who you are.
Which leads to two things:
- You’ve got to learn to write better emails
- And, this is relevant to our section header: you gotta send at least one email a week, or people, bombarded by so many emails, will simply forget who you are.
People could get away with sending a biweekly or even a monthly email back in the day, but I really don’t see that happening anymore, not unless you’re already famous.
So get into the habit of a weekly email, then increase your frequency from there.
Maybe one day you’ll love email writing enough to send a daily email, but even if not, you could still send twice- or thrice-weekly emails, and that is still better than sending emails less often.
The thing is, you don’t want people to forget you.
And trust me, they will forget!
They may even mark your email as spam because they forgot they willingly subscribed to your newsletter.
Not your fault, but there really are so many spam emails out there that people don’t have enough patience to figure out whether they actually subscribed to your newsletter or not.
You don’t want to risk that, which is why I don’t recommend sending fewer than one email a week.
Are there really no consequences to sending daily emails?
Not if your daily emails are good, no.
It doesn’t matter what niche you’re in.
It doesn’t matter whether you sell something or not (I include a paid offer in almost every email I send).
The only thing people care about is whether your daily emails are interesting.
Let me tell you what does NOT happen when you send a daily email:
- Most people do not unsubscribe (unless they were never your ideal audience to begin with, in which case, good riddance)
- Your sales do not go down
- People don’t get mad at you (unless they belong in the same category as the nonideal subscribers I mentioned above)
And the three things that do happen when you send a daily email (provided they don’t suck):
- People who don’t like your style (some won’t by default, no matter how wonderful your emails are) will unsubscribe… and that’s a good thing (I know I’m repeating myself, but it’s worth repeating so you’re not scared of unsubscribers)
- People who like you will become true fans. The fact that you show up daily in their inbox in itself gives them assurance that you’re not a flake… that you’re not just here to make a quick buck and then disappear
- There are also some people in the middle… people who probably don’t know whether or not they want daily emails from you… but if they like what you’re sending, they might decide that you’re worth having in their inbox… so basically, you’ve successfully converted doubters into cheerleaders
So yes, daily emails, as long as they’re interesting for your readers, do not have any negative consequences.
So, the verdict on email frequency is…
At least once a week, with the goal of increasing this frequency over time, and if possible, get to daily.
Aside from you being able to handle emailing at any frequency… what’s more important is that your emails are worth your readers’ time.
So, learn to write better emails.
Emails that get people sending you notes like these:
Yours is one of the few emails I read consistently. Might actually be just you, Throssell, and Bejakovic right now. — GC Tsalamagkakis
GC is an email marketer and copywriter. So words like that from him are… the height of any praise I’ve ever received. Also… did he just put my emails in the same caliber as John Bejakovic’s and Daniel Throssell’s emails??? 😮😮😮
And then this…
Your newsletters are dope as fuck btw — Rasmus Gullaksen
Why, hello, yes! Thank you, Rasmus!
And again, from a Vault member this time…
I open every email from you! — Rachael McLain
If you want to write the kind of emails people actually look forward to opening and reading, that’s precisely what I teach in my Write Without AI workshop.
It’s a quarterly, live, cohort-based 4-week workshop where I help folks write 20 different kinds of emails that are focused on storytelling and selling with said story. If you want to join the next cohort, join us here (or join the waitlist).
