This is is a very common question, but that doesn’t make it any easier to answer. Here are my thoughts on the subject:

Getting the frequency of your emails right is essential to making your email marketing campaign a success. If you send your emails too frequently you risk loosing valuable readers, they will get tired of seeing your email in their inbox and might unsubscribe, stop reading it, or worse still mark it as spam.

But, on the other hand, sending your emails too infrequently will probably loose you a lot of potential sales. Choosing the frequency is a fine art, my tips are:

• Consider your target market. If you are selling something that people will need very frequently, sending an email weekly is probably likely to be most effective. But, if you’re selling holidays you probably need to be a little more creative about when you send your emails.
• Don’t let your customers forget you. If the gap between emails is too long, your customers will forget about you and are less likely to buy from you.  They are also more likely to mark your email as spam.
• A little and often. Make your newsletters short and sweet; don’t make your customers read a novel - because they probably won’t. Instead, give them a little text, and a small selection of products every few weeks and watch the sales pile in.

So, the answer to the question - every 1-2 weeks for most markets is about right. Ultimately, you will only find out what works best if you try varying the frequency subtly and watching how your sales are affected.

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