One of the most important decisions you’ll make in your email marketing strategy is how often to email your list. Send too few, and customers will forget you exist. Send too many, and you risk fatigue and unsubscribes.
But here’s the truth: consistent emailing is the backbone of email marketing success. Customers don’t buy from brands they don’t remember. By showing up in the inbox regularly with valuable content, you build trust, establish credibility, and—most importantly—stay top of mind. People trust what’s predictable. Even if they might not read every email, they appreciate the rhythm.
The question is: how many emails per week is the right number for your brand?
Why Frequency Matters
The modern consumer is constantly distracted. Social feeds, endless ads, and competing offers mean that if you’re not consistently showing up, your competitors will. Email frequency directly impacts:
- Engagement – The more you send (with quality content), the more opportunities you have for clicks.
- Revenue – Emails are the cheapest way to generate traffic and repeat purchases.
- Brand Recall – Staying visible ensures your brand is remembered when buying decisions are made.
But there’s no “one-size-fits-all” answer. The perfect frequency depends on your brand, your audience, and how much value you can deliver.
That’s why A/B testing is essential. Every brand should test frequency, subject lines, and content mix to learn what works best. Still, based on industry best practices, we can draw some assumptions.
Recommended Email Frequency by Store Size
| Store Revenue (per month) | Monthly Visitors | Suggested Email Frequency |
|---|---|---|
| $0–$50K | 0–25K visitors | 2x per week |
| $50K–$250K | 25K–50K visitors | 3x per week |
| $250K+ | 50K+ visitors | 4+x per week |
These benchmarks give you a starting point. From here, you’ll want to test and adjust based on open rates, clicks, unsubscribes, and, of course, revenue generated.
What Types of Emails Should You Send?
Frequency is only half the equation—content is what keeps people opening. If your emails are predictable, boring, or overly promotional, your subscribers will tune out.
Here are the core content pillars you should build your calendar around:
- Educational Content
- How-to guides, tutorials, and product usage tips
- Industry news, research, or insights
- Blog post highlights
- Social Proof & Trust Builders
- Testimonials and reviews
- Case studies and customer transformations
- User-generated content
- Community & Brand-Building
- Founder’s story or team notes
- Behind-the-scenes looks
- Personal, relatable anecdotes
- Company mission, values, or impact stories
- Promotional & Product-Focused
- New product launches
- Collection spotlights
- Gift guides or seasonal trends
- Exclusive discounts or limited-time offers
💡 Pro tip: A good cadence is an even mix. For example, with 10 emails a month:
- 2 educational
- 2 social proof
- 2 product-focused promos
- 2 brand/community
- 2 dedicated to a sale or special campaign
This balance keeps your audience engaged, informed, and entertained—not just “sold to.”
When to Send Emails: Timing Matters
Once you’ve determined what to send and how often, the next critical step is figuring out when to send. Timing can make or break your open rates—send too early or too late in the day, and your email risks getting buried.
According to 10 data-driven studies, here’s what the research reveals, particularly for higher open and click-through rates:
- Best days to send:
- Thursday: Ranked #1 in 4 studies.
- Tuesday: Ranked #1 in 3 studies and #2 in 4 more.
- Wednesday: Ranked #1 in 1 study and #2 in 3 others.
👉 Collectively, Thursday, Tuesday and Wednesday dominated as the best-performing days in 8 out of 10 studies.
- Worst days to send:
- Saturday and Sunday consistently performed poorly.
- Sunday was the worst overall.
- Best times of day:
- Mid-morning 10 a.m. – 11 a.m., early afternoon (1-2 PM), and late afternoon (4-5 PM) ranked highest for engagement.
- Evenings (7 p.m.–2 a.m.) performed the worst across all studies, with minimal engagement.
Why Testing Still Matters
While industry data is a useful benchmark, remember: your audience isn’t the same as everyone else’s. If every brand floods inboxes at 10 a.m., your message risks being drowned out. That’s why testing is essential. Test different times and track performance—your subscribers’ behavior may not perfectly align with industry averages.
Klaviyo’s Smart Send Time test:
Klaviyo’s Smart Send Time test is designed to identify the time of day that drives the highest engagement by scientifically determining when your audience is most likely to open and click your emails. The test runs in three phases: Exploratory, Focused, and Optimal.
In Klaviyo’s exploratory phase, your audience is split into 24 groups, with each group receiving the same campaign at a different hour of the day in their own time zone. This allows Klaviyo to test every possible send time, but it also means some subscribers receive emails during low-engagement hours—such as 2 or 3 AM—when they’re unlikely to open.
A way to improve this test is by narrowing the testing window to realistic waking hours. For example, instead of testing across all 24 hours, you could limit the range to 6 AM – 10 PM. This reduces wasted sends, ensures emails are delivered when subscribers are more likely to see them, and still provides enough variety to identify engagement patterns. If your audience is global, you could also adjust the window by region, aligning send times to typical active hours in each local market.
By focusing on a practical timeframe, the test becomes more efficient, preserves your deliverability reputation, and produces insights that are immediately actionable for real-world campaigns.
The focused phase narrows this window, testing the predicted optimal time against two hours before and two hours after, to validate Klaviyo’s prediction. Once enough data is collected, the platform determines your optimal send time, which you can use to schedule future campaigns.
Unlike a standard A/B test, which compares content variations in a single campaign, Smart Send Time requires multiple campaign sends to accurately measure engagement trends. For reliable results, your test audience must include at least 12,000 opted-in profiles, and it’s best to run the test during normal business periods when engagement is relatively steady. The payoff? Data-driven insight into the exact time your audience is most responsive—giving you a repeatable edge in boosting open and click-through rates.
How to Get the Best Results from Your Smart Send Time Test
- It is not recommended to run smart send time tests near holidays or periods where you expect to see traffic spikes for your brand. Try to test during a period of time that is considered “normal” for your brand.
- Do not include flash-sale campaigns, event invitations, or deadline-based messages in a Smart Send Time test. Klaviyo recommends including content such as featured product or best-seller reminders, blog content, social proof, or any editorial-type content that is not deadline-driven.
- Smart send should be turned off for this test.
💡 Example in Action:
A Los Angeles–based cosmetic brand wanted to know the best time to send product launch emails. They ran a Smart Send Time test with 20,000 profiles.
- In the exploratory phase, Klaviyo tested 6AM – 10PM. Results showed engagement spiked in the morning.
- In the focused phase, Klaviyo compared 7 AM, 9 AM, and 11 AM.
- After collecting enough data, Klaviyo identified 9 AM local time as the optimal send time, producing a 22% higher open rate and a 15% higher click-through rate compared to the brand’s previous average.
✅ By locking in this send time for future campaigns, the brand boosted engagement without changing content, design, or frequency—just by sending at the right hour.
🚀 Ready to maximize engagement? Don’t leave your email performance up to guesswork. Running a Smart Send Time test in Klaviyo gives you the data-driven insight you need to reach your audience exactly when they’re most likely to engage. Start your test today, discover your brand’s optimal send time, and turn every campaign into a higher-performing one.
Final Thoughts
So, how many emails should you send per week? The short answer: 2–4, depending on your store size and audience.
The long answer: Test relentlessly. The right cadence is the one that maximizes engagement and revenue without fatiguing your list.
But remember—frequency is only effective when paired with valuable content. Build a balanced content calendar, mix up your email formats, and keep things fresh. That’s how you’ll stay top of mind, build trust, and turn subscribers into loyal, repeat buyers.
