There is no universal right number, but there is a right way to decide. How to pick a cadence, what changes it, and what it costs at each level.
The honest answer: as often as you have something worth saying
Every small business owner asks this question, and the honest answer is unsatisfying: it depends on what you have to say and on how much of your audience's attention you have earned. A daily email from a news publisher is welcome; a daily email from a plumber is not. What we can do is give you a way to decide, a default to start from, and the arithmetic for what each option costs.
Start by separating two kinds of email. Campaigns are the messages you write and send to many people at once: newsletters, offers, announcements. Automations are the messages that go to one person because of something they did: a welcome series, a cart reminder, a post-purchase thank you. The cadence question is really about campaigns. Automations send themselves at exactly the right moment for each person and should run regardless of how often you send campaigns.
A default that works for most small businesses
If you have no data yet, start with one newsletter a month plus automations. Monthly is often enough that people remember who you are, rare enough that you can make each one good, and sustainable for an owner who also runs the business. Pick the same week every month and schedule it, so it goes out even when the month is busy.
Then run two automations: a welcome series for new contacts, and one flow that fits your business, such as post-purchase for a store, a booking reminder for a service, or a win-back for customers who have gone quiet. These do most of the revenue work in email, and they do it without adding to your writing load.
Move to twice a month when two things are true: you have more to say than fits in one email, and your open rate holds when you add the second. Move to weekly when the newsletter has become something people mention to you. Most small businesses settle between monthly and weekly and stay there.
What should change the number
- Purchase frequency. If customers buy from you weekly, weekly email is natural. If they buy once every few years, as with a roofer, a monthly or quarterly note that keeps you in mind is plenty.
- What people signed up for. If the form said "weekly tips", send weekly tips. If it said "occasional offers", a weekly newsletter is a broken promise and the unsubscribes will tell you so.
- Season. A garden center can send weekly in spring and monthly in winter. Tell people the rhythm changes and nobody minds.
- Your capacity. A cadence you cannot keep is worse than a slower one you can. A newsletter that arrives on the first Tuesday of every month for two years builds more trust than one that arrives in bursts.
- The numbers. Unsubscribes and spam complaints rising across several sends mean you are over the line. Opens falling while unsubscribes stay flat means the content is the problem, not the frequency.
Signs you are sending too much, and too little
Too much shows up quickly. Unsubscribes rise with each send. The spam complaint rate in your postmaster tools creeps up. Opens fall for every campaign, not just one. Replies turn from questions into "please stop". If you see two of these together, halve the cadence for a month and watch.
Too little is quieter and more common. The list grows but nobody remembers joining it, so the next email you send after a long gap gets marked as spam by people who forgot who you are. New contacts receive nothing for weeks and go cold. The welcome series fixes the second problem on its own. The first is fixed by a regular, modest cadence that never leaves a gap longer than six weeks.
There is also a deliverability reason not to go quiet. Mailbox providers trust steady senders, and a domain that sends nothing for three months and then sends to the whole list looks, to a filter, like an account that was just compromised.
What each cadence costs
On Brainito the price follows the emails you send, not the contacts you hold, so the cadence decision and the cost decision are the same arithmetic: 25 credits per 1,000 emails. For a list of 2,000 contacts:
- Monthly newsletter: 2,000 emails, 50 credits a month.
- Twice a month: 4,000 emails, 100 credits a month, which is exactly the 100 credits for $5 pack.
- Weekly: about 8,000 emails, 200 credits a month, a third of the $20 plan's 600 credits.
- Welcome series on top: three emails per new contact, so 100 new contacts a month adds 300 emails, about 8 credits.
Plans start at $20 a month, cancel any time, and credits never expire, so a quiet month does not waste what you paid for. The email marketing pricing guide walks through how this compares with tools that charge for the list whether you email it or not.
A plan you can start this week
Decide the day of the month your newsletter goes out and put it in the calendar. Write the first one as a letter from the owner: what is new, one useful thing, one offer. Switch on the welcome series and one more flow. Then do nothing to the cadence for three months except read the report after each send.
After three months you will know whether people open, whether they unsubscribe, and whether you have more to say than one email holds. Adjust from there. The businesses that do well with email are rarely the ones that found the perfect number; they are the ones that picked a sustainable one and kept it. If you want the four-screen campaign flow and the automations ready to switch on, Brainito's email marketing is open on a free account with 50 credits to start.