Do you know how your subscribers feel when they get three back-to-back emails in a week but then nothing for a month?
Ghosting on your subscriber isn’t a great practice, and neither is bombarding them with emails. So, you need to maintain a consistent communication chain with your subscribers to keep them engaged and informed. To do that, you need to have the right email cadence.
This guide will help you find the right email cadence for your email campaigns.
What is email cadence?
What is the difference between email frequency and email cadence?
Why does email cadence matter?
How to find an email cadence that works for you?
Email cadence best practices for better email marketing and higher engagement
Way forward
What is email cadence?
An Email cadence is the frequency and timing of emails sent to subscribers. Optimizing cadence for engagement and business goals depends on factors like industry, audience, and email type. Ideal cadence improves email engagement, click-through, and conversion rates.
Cadence is about a rhythm, a flow, or a pattern of events that unfold one after another. In marketing, email cadence is a sub-part of sales cadence which is about creating a flow or a pattern of emails that gets you higher engagements by including:
- The right frequency
- Optimal send timings
- Right email content
It is about strategically devising an email marketing plan that provides value and engages users.
Some people might confuse cadence with email frequency. They’re closely related, but the former is a much broader concept than the latter.
What is the difference between email frequency and email cadence?
| Email frequency | Email cadence |
|---|---|
| It is the number of emails sent in a given period. For instance, if you send two promotional emails in a week, two will be the email frequency. | It is a broader term and encompasses the frequency, timing, intervals between email send, and pattern of emails sent. For instance, you might have an email flow where you send a welcome email after someone signed up and then send two onboarding emails after two days. |
💡 Related guide: A Complete Guide to Creating Engaging Onboarding Emails
Why does email cadence matter?
Email cadence matters due to the following reasons:
✅ Helps increase user’s engagements
As per DMA 2021 study, 41% of marketers report sending emails daily or more to their users, but only 18% of subscribers report receiving emails at this frequency. Then where are the rest, 23%, going? Most likely in their spam folder. 😥
Having the right email cadence ensures that you send relatable and valuable emails the amount users want. So, it will help increase user engagement by improving email metrics such as - open rates, click-through rate, deliverability/inbox placement rate, etc.
✅ Enhance brand awareness and reputation
If users are getting fewer emails from your brand, say once per month, then chances are they will forget that you even exist.
On the other hand, sending too many emails will make your brand spammy and annoying. Hence, users will unsubscribe or mark you as spam damaging your reputation.
So, the correct email cadence will ensure that users are aware of your brand while maintaining your brand’s reputation.
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How to find an email cadence that works for you?
Email cadence depends on various factors such as your industry, product, campaign type, audience, etc. So many variables influence your cadence, and while it might take some time to identify it, you can start with defining your goals and then move forward with that in mind:
1. Define your email marketing goals
Before you go and decide on the specificity of email cadence, you need to be crystal clear about one thing - What do you want to achieve through your email campaigns?
Go on, think about it.
Each email campaign is different, and so is the goal behind it. Right? You want to boost your session booking by 10% for a holiday email campaign, but how will you figure out your email cadence if you can’t identify this goal?
2. Understand and map your user’s journey
You can’t reach your destination without signposts if you don’t know the direction. In the same way, you can’t find the right cadence if you are unaware of where users are in their buyer’s journey.
Mapping your buyer’s journey will help you know all the touchpoints users go through while interacting with your brand and what kind of cadence will help them move from one stage to another.
For instance, someone who just signed up for your newsletter is getting to know your brand as they’re in the initial stages of the buyer’s journey. So, the types and frequency of email will be very different for them compared to regular users.
3. Setup preference center
Preference centers allow your subscribers to decide what kind of email they want to read and at what frequency.
For example, in research it was found that 86% would like to receive promotional emails at least monthly, 15% would like them every day. So, if you send daily emails to people who only want monthly emails, they will likely unsubscribe or mark your email as spam.
Read about How to Create Powerful Preference Center to Retain Your Valuable Subscribers.
4. Collect user’s feedback via surveys
What other way to find users’ preferences than asking them directly? You can send out surveys and forms to ask users what kind of email they want to receive? How many emails do they want to receive?
And to ensure that you get the highest response on your survey, you can use AMP emails by Mailomodo, which reduces friction and generates the highest conversions.
5. Test, test, and test
I can’t stress this enough - There is no better way to find the right cadence than experimenting with your email content, frequency, send timings, etc.
A/B test different email frequencies on the segmented audience and monitor the timings, content that gets you the highest engagements and conversions. While conducting the test, you should have a clear idea of what you want to achieve via this testing.
For instance, you can create two email flows with slightly varying frequency content, send timings and monitor which one generates better results.
6. Monitor email analytics
How can you determine where users are in their journey? How will you know which test email flow garnered the best result? Or how will your track you unsubscribe, spam rates, etc.?
The answer is - your email metrics. Email analytics is the pillar behind finding the right cadence.
Email cadence best practices for better email marketing and higher engagement
When you are deciding on your email marketing cadence, follow these best practices to get the desired results:
A/B tests only one variable at a time to avoid skewed results.
Run tests for adequate time to collect relevant data and then analyze it.
Constantly clean your email list by creating suppression lists via sunset policy.
Give users an option to opt down rather than entirely opt-out by creating email preference centers. Include relevant options in your preference center. For instance, if you send three different kinds of emails, you must include three options giving users the option to choose.
Create a logical and consistent email automation flow covering all the users’ touchpoints.
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Way forward
Just finding the right email marketing cadence isn’t enough. As users’ preferences shift, email client policies change, your email cadence must adapt to these shifts and updates.
For example, the recent Apple MPP created a dramatic shift by rendering open rates a vanity metric. So, if you used opens to track deliverability and engagement, your email cadence might not get you accurate results.
Besides your email cadence should a part of your sales cadence to get results on your marketing campaigns.
