HOW OFTEN SHOULD I BE EMAILING MY LIST IF I DON'T WANT TO BUG PEOPLE OR BE SPAMMY?
Surprisingly, more frequently is better!
As a solopreneur business owner, all of the tasks fall on your shoulders. And one of those tasks is email marketing. And if you are struggling with knowing how often you should be emailing your list or could be emailing your list, or shouldn't be emailing your list, you're not alone. That is a common, common "wonder" people are always wondering.

I bet you've actually heard a few answers to this question, though. Probably both extremes. One of them is "don't email too much because you'll upset people or they'll think that you're spamming them." And the other extreme of course is "email daily. You need to email every single day. You need to make an offer every single day. This is how you do it. If you can't do that, then they're not the right people. And if they don't like it…"

I'm sure you have heard both of those things. But here's the real question. Which one should you listen to? Which one should you ignore? I also bet that you hear a lot of "do this" or "do that" with absolutely zero data backing the action that the person is telling you to take.

Meaning they tell you what their opinion is or what they think or did to be successful with this. But do they ever actually give you the data that supports what they're saying or did they just give you anecdotal evidence? See, data is important. Data tells us what works and what doesn't. Most gurus and experts, they don't have the data.

They have industry norms, or they have preferred norms, or they even have their own anecdotal evidence. They might even have a few dozen customers and clients that maybe support what they're saying, but it's all opinions. It's not enough data or real data to actually guide you in your decision. So you want to make marketing and advertising decisions from real data, not personal feelings or anecdotal evidence.

So let's dive into how often you should be emailing your list.

I'm Christina and I help solopreneur business owners simplify their marketing so that they make more sales and keep their sanity. In other words, increase revenue and reduce overwhelm. And the question of how often should I be emailing my list comes up a lot, like a lot.

And while I can tell you the exact number that's ideal for the algorithms - and I'm going to tell you that - that's not what you really, really want to hear. And honestly, there's some nuance around that number, even with the data. I think what you're really asking me is, "How on earth do I keep up with all of the things I'm supposed to do? Please, please tell me that I do not have to do a ton of emailing. Please tell me that I don't have to look like everyone else that launches and sends a million emails. Please tell me the easiest and simplest way to do my email marketing so that I can increase my revenue and reduce my overwhelm. And I don't appear spammy to people. I don't have time for all of the fluff and I really don't want people to feel about me the way I feel about getting slammed with emails."

Is that what you're really asking? Because that's what I'm going to answer. So why email is important is because it is the real estate of your business. The email that you have, your email list is your asset. This is huge. This is your asset. Now, just to give you some real numbers here, email is not dying. When you look at social media and you look at Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or TikTok, or any of those things, typically one out of a thousand people of your following are going to see what you've put on those platforms. One out of a thousand, but with email, from the last known open rate averages, about 180 out of 240 people out of a thousand are going to see what you created and what you're sending out. Those are big differences.

Social media, is fabulous, fabulous for building your audience. Email marketing, email is the best hands down for you to own and for you to actually connect and relate to your audience so that they want to actually buy from you. So the data shows, when it comes to frequency of email sending, the data actually shows that you can send too few emails. That sending too few emails is harmful, but sending too many emails, that's not harmful. Now there's some caveats around this. And let me explain.

So first of all, this data comes from a HubSpot/MailChimp collaborative report over the course of about six years and 30 billion emails. They got together and they put together this whole report called the science of email marketing. It is no longer available, but you can get a lot of this data, more current from Litmus.

And 30 billion emails shows that if you send three or fewer emails within a one month span, you're unsubscribe and report to spam rates skyrocket. People don't remember who you are. It's inconsistent enough for them to go unsubscribe or, or report to spam, regardless of how valuable what you're sending them is.

Now the data does show that you can't really send too many emails. Shocker of all shockers. You can, you can send an email a day. You can send two emails a day. There's a caveat. As long as you're sending as what you're sending them is what they want to read. As long as what you're sending them is what they want to read.

I guess, if you just like randomly hit people with too many, yeah, it would be too much. But the data shows that the more you send there is not a negative reaction. There's not a negative response. In fact, the more you send the lower your unsubscribe rate is, the lower your report to spam rate is, and the higher your click and reply rates are.

So in other words, the more emails you send, the more your list is engaged with you. Isn't that interesting. Now there's a little bit of nuance around this. If all you're doing is sending the same email every single day with the same subject line, clearly that is not going to work in this case, right?

But just remember if you send too few emails, you're actually going to have higher unsubscribe rates and higher report to spam rates, but you really can't send too many emails. So I just want you to be around that. When you send at least one email per week, all the way up to daily emails, sometimes even twice a day emails, your opens, clicks and replies are higher.

It's more engaged. But here's where the nuance lies. We know you don't want to send less than three emails in a one-month period. We know this, we know this from the data because that's just dangerous for your business. It's dangerous for your list. It's dangerous for your email sender reputation. So what's the reality? What can you keep up with? What's a good combination between sending daily emails, like that's an extreme, to making sure that you're not sending less than three. What can you be consistent with? Because here's the reality. Consistency is what's most important. Consistency is what is most important. Content is second. Consistency is number one. Content is number two.

In other words, when you are consistent with what you send, you're going to get people opening, reading, and responding to your emails. Consistent. And then, make sure your content is relevant to what they want. Right? So my best piece of advice for you is to commit to sending one email per week. That puts you right at four per month, five per month on a five week month. But right at four per month, you're over the negative number of three and you're not doing it every single day.

This is consistently sustainable for you - one per week. So every single week, you just pick a day and time and send it at the same day and time, every single week. And you reach out to your email community. So that gives you the best possible position in the email algorithms and in their inbox without being too few in sending emails and without overwhelming your already busy schedule.

Now there's a few key points that I want to make here about this. Pick a day and time that works for you. Don't worry about the best time of the week to send, the best day of the week, best time. Don't worry about that. Don't worry about that because those, that data, yeah, it's there, but it's so nominal that what is more important? That you send an email at the same day and time, every single week. That is actually more important than what day and time it is. So you pick a day and time that works for you. For me, it's Wednesdays at noon, my time. Wednesdays at noon, my time is when my emails go out.

The next piece is, keep it consistent. You need to stay consistent. You need to email your people every single week at the same day and same time that you pick, you need to stay consistent. Think about this like dating. You are dating them, you're dating each other and you need to show up. You need to show up, right? The next thing is, keep your emails simple. Keep them simple. Don't try to do these big fancy newsletters. Don't try to do all these things.

Keep them simple. Remember our attention spans, well, they're horrible. And you want to keep it very, very simple and clear for them. Keep your email focused. Choose one thing to email about. Don't try to choose 10 products to sell or three different blog posts to point people to or five different things to sell. Don't do that. Just keep it focused.

Pick, pick one focus for the week. What's your focus for the week. You want to drive people into your Facebook group. You want to have people open, go read a blog post. You want to have people open something. You want to have people reply. Keep that email focused, keep it relevant, stay relevant to why they're on your email list.

Who is it you serve and how do you serve them? What is your, your core positioning here? What is that? Keep it relevant. Keep the emails relevant. So make sure you're talking about why they came onto your list. Not say, Hey, you came onto my list for that. But the reason that they came on for your list.

For me, people come onto my list initially because they really want help with their email. Now what I help with, I'm a solopreneur, small business consultant. I help solopreneurs small business owners increase their revenue and reduce their overwhelm. We actually do that through looking at their marketing. So we help them simplify their marketing. I help them simplify their marketing.

But the reality is, is that email is the core. So that's what I talk about in my YouTube videos. That's what I'm talking about with my emails. That's what the majority of my trainings are because email - your database - is the core of your business. It is the number one asset your business can have. And it is the asset that is the easiest to grow.

And it is the asset that is the easiest to leverage. And so that's what I focus on, but I am a solopreneur, small business consultant. I help people increase their revenue and reduce their overwhelm. But again, the path to me is through email because that is the most powerful piece. It is the piece that most people can relate to, the most frustration that they have.

So when I talk in emails, that's what I talk about. When I talk on YouTube videos, that's what I talk about. So keep your emails relevant. You also need to keep your emails relational. You need to reveal pieces of you in your emails. And here's what I mean. I'm going to use this example.

I got a cat in here. He's over here somewhere. And every once in a while you might hear him meow. Well, guess what - he is part of my life. He's just very vocal today and I don't know why, but I would share things like that in my email. I would share pieces like I've got a cat doing this, or, oh, there he is up there. I've got a cat doing this. I have to keep certain plants in my office because he wants to eat them all the time. And if I leave them loose, he will eat my plants. So I know these are weird and completely unrelated to email marketing. But when I am sending an email, I always try - on my weekly email - I always try to make a relational connection with people. And the only way people can relate with you is if you reveal something personal about yourself,. It can be silly. It can be weird. It can be whatever, but, and - micro, micro moments, micro things. And actually, as I'm thinking about it, one of my emails in the future is probably going to talk about him, him interrupting my YouTube videos.

I'll probably put that in there. But the point is is that you need to keep your emails relational. Now I'm not talking about launch emails. I'm not talking about flash sale emails. I'm talking about your weekly email, where you're building a connection. You're dating your audience. You're dating your email list. So you guys can get to know each other and that they want to,

so that they want to buy from you. That's the whole point of this. So pick a day and time that works for you. Keep it consistent, keep it simple, keep it focused, keep it relevant. Keep it relational. Now what I've done is I've created the perfect email template. It is a template to show you how to structure your emails.

 Written by Christina Ethridge - the founder of Leads and Leverage, helping overwhelmed business owners eliminate the marketing chaos and get more customers. Simplify your marketing & bring in more sales. 
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Leads and Leverage
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