In sixth grade, I ran a science fair experiment about what happens when you water plants with things other than water.
I set up several conditions: plain water as the control, plus boiling water, salt water, orange juice, milk, vegetable oil, and Coca-Cola. I measured each plant at the start and end, counted the leaves, and rotated them in the kitchen window at a set cadence so no single plant had an unfair advantage when it came to light.
My hypothesis was that water would win. Orange juice and milk would probably fare okay. Everything else would wither.
The specific results are a bit hazy, but one detail has stuck with me for 30+ years because it was so unexpected.
The plant fed Coca-Cola grew the most.
I’ve been thinking about that experiment a lot lately, because the “best practice” answer and the actually-right-for-your-situation answer don’t always match. And nowhere is that more true than in email marketing.
How often should you be sending a newsletter?
It comes up in almost every workshop I teach and in nearly every intake call I take. And there’s so much conflicting advice out there – send weekly or daily or you’ll be forgotten, don’t send too often or you’ll annoy people, monthly is fine, monthly isn’t enough – that most people end up either defaulting to someone else’s rule or end up paralyzed with indecision or fear of doing it wrong.
So a while back, I ran an informal poll to my Automate with Heart newsletter subscribers and asked my list one question: how often do you send a newsletter or marketing email?
Forty-five people responded. Over half said about weekly. Around a quarter said every other week to monthly. The rest were split between more than weekly and less than monthly.
But here’s what was more interesting than the numbers, it was the reasoning behind them.
Three pretty distinct patterns showed up in the people, particularly among those who responded that they send their newsletters weekly:
One group fell into a weekly cadence because someone told them to, or because they’d read it was best practice. They couldn’t point to a reason that came from their own business.
A few couldn’t remember the original reason at all – they’d been doing it long enough that it had simply become habit. Which, interestingly, turned out to be its own kind of reason. The cadence created accountability, the accountability created consistency, and the consistency built something real with their audience over time.
The third group had made a deliberate choice, and could tell you exactly why. Some knew they wouldn’t sustain weekly, so they didn’t try. Others found a middle ground that fit their capacity and their audience. A few had been doing monthly for years and knew their readers genuinely looked forward to it.
What struck me about that last group wasn’t just that they were more intentional. They also seemed more at ease – and more confident – with their decision.
That’s what I’m actually trying to help my clients get to. Not a number I hand them, but a cadence that fits their business and how they actually work.
What goes into finding the right email cadence for your business?
Whether it’s answer whether or not to have your double opt-in turn on, if you should resend your unopened newsletters, or how often you should email your list, I never give a one-size-fits all answers when it comes to email marketing.
(Well, with the exception of using consent-based practices in email marketing. That applies across the board!)
Instead, when I’m working through this with a client, I look at it through multiple lenses.
- What is your business model?
- What are you selling?
- How many clients do you need in a year?
- Who is your primary audience – and do you have more than one distinct group?
- What is the urgency of your people’s needs?
- And what will you realistically sustain?
Those questions intersect differently for everyone.
I find Dr. Michelle Mazur’s framework for expertise-based businesses really useful here. She breaks them into three categories:
- High-touch businesses working with organizations or C-suite clients who need a handful of engagements a year and largely get them through referrals
- Scalable service providers like coaches and consultants working with 20 to 40 clients a year who need to stay visible to people who aren’t ready yet; and
- Leveraged model businesses – memberships, courses, digital products – serving higher volumes of clients.
Each model tends toward a different cadence.
For a high-touch business, quarterly to monthly is probably plenty. Emailing more than that may actually work against you.
For the scalable and leveraged models – where most of my clients land – the right cadence varies much more, even for people in the same category.
Take two of my clients, Steve and Alex, who both have leveraged businesses but are selling to very different audiences.
Alex supports medical writers at several career stages through a membership and digital products. She was already writing weekly before we worked together – that didn’t change. What changed was who was receiving what, and when, based on where each subscriber was in their career.
Steve sells prep courses for professionals studying for the exams that let them advance in their field. A monthly cadence makes more sense for him – his audience only needs his courses at very specific moments. Part of our work together was getting him from sporadic, occasional sends to a reliable monthly rhythm his subscribers could actually count on.
And then there’s Chelsea, who runs a private practice and has several distinct groups of subscribers. She doesn’t send to everyone at the same cadence – and getting the cadence right for her wasn’t just about frequency. It was about building a system that made showing up for all three audiences feel manageable instead of overwhelming. She now emails each group differently because her setup finally makes that possible.
The piece to newsletter frequency nobody talks about enough
For anyone juggling multiple audiences – or just a very full life – sustainability matters more than frequency.
A monthly newsletter sent like clockwork is worth far more than a weekly one abandoned after six weeks. Consistency over time builds trust. And trust is what actually moves people to work with you.
Which brings me back to the Coca-Cola plant.
The point of that science fair experiment wasn’t to prove that you should water your plants with soda. It was that the expected answer and the actual answer aren’t always the same – and you won’t know which is which until you look at your specific conditions.
The best email cadence isn’t the one that’s trending in someone’s online course. It’s the one that fits your business model, your audience, and what you’ll actually stick with.
If you’re not sure whether your current cadence is working for you, or whether your setup even makes it possible to show up the way you want to, that’s exactly what I help people sort out. Download the services guide to get a full picture of how I work, or book a zero-pressure meet and greet and let’s figure out what actually makes sense for your business.