How Often Should You Email SaaS Leads and Customers?

Send too few emails, you’re at the risk of being forgotten. Send too many, and your customers and leads might hit that unsubscribe button.

How often should I email my users? What’s the right cadence?

Nearly every new Userlist customer asks this in their onboarding call.

So we embarked on research. We asked SaaS email marketers what factors they consider in deciding email frequency. Here’s what we found.

What determines email frequency?

Lifecycle stages

New trials, new leads, new users, and new subscribers

Most experts say that these segments get the most emails, ranging from daily to at least 2-3 per week.

AuthorityScribe’s founder Auroriele Hans shares that she tries to capitalize on their initial interest:

“I typically try to capitalize on their interest by sending at a higher frequency at first.

For example, I might send a 2-3 email welcome sequence the first week introducing them to and differentiating the brand. I typically have them self segment in the welcome and then send 1-2 emails a week for the nurture (depending on what kind of content I’m sharing).”

Meanwhile, Emailmonday’s founder Jordie van Rijn starts with the higher frequency to establish the habit of value per open:

“Start with a higher frequency than normal. Daily or every two days, if it is based on a download or educational webinar for instance. This is to establish a habit of value per open, so people will understand that there is something in the email each time they open it. That is extremely hard if the frequency is lower.”

Established subscribers

After the initial stage, email frequency is usually ramped down to the regular pace. This could vary from 1-3 emails per week to once a month, depending on your product and audience.

Disengaged subscribers

When subscribers go quiet, most email marketers send them fewer emails. Phonexa’s SEO director Sergey Galanin says they ramp down, because bombarding disengaged subscribers with more emails won’t convince them to take action:

“We reduce the emails by the second week because if they haven’t engaged after the first week, sending more emails won’t persuade them. If anything, it will train them to ignore us.

I’ve come to realize that if intent doesn’t show early, frequency will not fix it.”

Churned users

Similar to disengaged subscribers, churned users also receive fewer emails compared to engaged subscribers.

Depending on your SaaS business, you can still nurture your relationship with churned users by:

• Placing them on a win-back/re-engagement sequence
• Sharing product updates or industry insights with them at least once a month
• Sending a high-touch 1-on-1 email experience from support

Performance metrics

To gauge if the frequency needs tweaking, more than half of respondents told us they track engagement and unsubscribe rates.

But according to Sergey, unsubscribe rates might not be a cadence issue:

“We don’t use open rates or unsubscribe rates to make this decision.
Sometimes, unsubscribes don’t come from sending too many emails. It could be because the email was directed to the wrong audience and therefore, not a cadence issue.”

That’s why some respondents advise that you should look at business metrics.

For Emails Done Right founder Samar Owais, it’s based on conversions and churn:

“We keep our attention on free to paid conversions and churn. Might sound rudimentary but those really are the only 2 metrics you need to lock in before focusing on anything else.”

For Zachary Hyde, it’s all about the revenue:

“The only metric that matters is people spending money on your product. You eliminate the problem with the others (unsubscribes, engagement, etc.) by generating leads for your list better on the front end.”

Aside from the metrics mentioned above, respondents also tracked:

• Customer feedback
• Reply rate
• Feature adoption after emails
• Revenue expansions
• Spam complaints

Seasonal variations

Most experts share that product launches require a ramp up in email frequency.

But for holidays, peak sale seasons, and major sales events (i.e. Black Friday), that would depend on your product and your audience.

Another instance where you should send more emails is during major industry changes. Suped co-founder Michael Ko shares their recent experience:

“When Google and Yahoo implemented their new sender requirements earlier this year, we increased frequency to daily for a short period to make sure our users didn’t get their mail blocked.”

Lessons from doing A/B experiments

The first three days are crucial

After testing frequencies in onboarding sequences, Samar observed that new users’ engagement drops drastically after three days:

“We’ve found that the first 3 days are crucial, after that engagement drops drastically — in some cases to non-existent levels. We have found that a mix of onboarding emails, in-app, and mobile (if applicable) notifications work best.”

Smart segmentation is key

Head of Email creator Devin O’Toole found sending fewer emails generally works better in the long run, but the key to finding the right frequency is smart segmentation:

“I’ve A/B tested at previous companies and found that editing (reducing email volume) performs better in the long run. The right frequency is different by brand and industry, but the most important thing is to be smart about segmenting.”

Technical audiences prefer utility-heavy emails

If you’re serving technical users, Michael says that short, utility-focused emails work better:

“We’ve A/B tested “Value-Heavy” (long-form educational) vs. “Utility-Heavy” (short, direct links to tools). We found that for our technical audience (DevOps and IT), the shorter, utility-focused emails actually led to higher retention. People just want to know if their domain is secure and get back to work.”

Email type breakdown

We also asked our respondents about the mix of email types they send over a month. Most of them shared that the majority of the emails they sent are either product-related or educational, and going minimal on promotional ones.

Some respondents suggest mixing email types. Jordie says this could be more valuable to your business:

“Education can also be fun and lead into conversion at the same time. For other senders, this varies greatly. But if at all possible making a combo of promotion and other types of email value is golden.”

Meanwhile, Zachary shares that this is a great way to compete with other marketing channels:

“Info-tainment. Period. Story-driven works best. Either your own stories or someone else’s that you find interesting. You’re not competing with other vendors. You’re competing with Facebook reels and TikTok.

They’re going to be entertained first so might as well be the person doing it for them. Just make sure you’re pitching something every single email so they learn to expect that.”

Tips on adjusting your email frequency

Understand your users’ behavior first

Samar says rather than copying other SaaS companies, you should focus on understanding your own users’ behavior:

“Just because something worked for one SaaS doesn’t mean it’ll work for another. Before you focus on email metrics or sending frequency, focus on understanding your user’s behavior. Take the time to figure out what they respond to and adjust your emails accordingly.”

Higher frequency only works with higher total value

Jordie notes that higher email frequency can certainly boost revenue, but this only works for certain products and if you can deliver higher total value:

“Higher frequency is almost certain to increase revenue as long as your product fits with the quick conversion or high frequency purchase pattern. You can’t see this separate from the value that you bring though. So a higher frequency should come with a higher total value to the subscriber (and therefore is typically harder to do).”

Don’t undersend out of fear

Auroriele observed that misconceptions have caused some SaaS businesses to undersend:

“I’ve noticed clients have a lot of misconceptions about sending frequency. In my opinion, many are scared to send too often, which causes them to not send enough emails.”

You need to send a lot of emails to get someone to act

Positive Human founder Marc Thomas observed that most marketers underestimate how many emails they should send before a lead or customer takes action:

“It’s so common to think that making a sales pitch will be obviously screened out. I’ve sent literally thousands (maybe more?) marketing emails and what I can tell you is that marketing teams consistently underestimate how much they need to tell someone to take action before they do.”

Keep your emails simple

Marc also notes that marketers get burned out because they’re trying to create elaborate emails:

“You don’t have to send 3 tips, 2 articles, 1 update per mailer. I received one from a company whose product I love and use all day every day and I thought: ‘This was great but there’s no way you can keep this up and even if you can, there’s no way 99% of people will read this amount of content each issue.’”

He advises to keep your emails simple:

“Keep it simple. Send one thing. One story. One CTA. That’s how you keep going and keep attention.”

It’s ultimately about respecting your subscribers

Michael emphasized that emails are not only about monitoring records and metrics, it’s ultimately about respecting your subscribers:

“The biggest thing I’ve learned is that deliverability isn’t just about technical records like SPF and DKIM. It’s about respect. If you send mail that people actually want to read, your reputation stays high, and the technical side becomes a lot easier to manage.”

Insights from the community

Phonexa

Sergey Galanin, SEO director at Phonexa shares that they pull back on their emails if a new lead hasn’t engaged during the first week because frequency won’t fix intent:

“For new leads, we start with 4-5 emails in the first week and 1-2 emails in the second week. In the first week, we send short, purposeful emails tied to their actions.

Did they request a demo or download a resource? We start with a high volume because the attention span fades off first in B2B SaaS, particularly in performance marketing.

We reduce the emails by the second week because if they haven’t engaged after the first week, sending more emails won’t persuade them. If anything, it will train them to ignore us. I’ve come to realize that if intent doesn’t show early, frequency will not fix it.”

In terms of adjusting frequency based on engagement levels, he shares that disengaged users are sent fewer emails because sending more will hurt their domain reputation:

“We send faster emails to our highly engaged users instead of more emails. Timing matters more than volume in our industry. If someone opens, clicks or replies, they get an email in 24 hours tied to the action.

If they don’t, they get fewer emails spaced further apart because we consider silence as feedback. We change our angle for those who don’t engage and find a different way to target them instead of bombarding them with more emails. More emails to disengaged users will increase unsubscribe rates or hurt our domain reputation.”

Different lifecycle stages get very different email frequencies, with trial users receiving the most attention:

• Trial users: they are who we email the most, every one or two days. The emails are short, specific and tied to product usage. A simple, ‘You haven’t set up X- here is why accounts don’t do well if you skip this step.’
• New customers (0-90 days): we send an email per week or two if there is a new feature that will affect them directly. At this point, we want to reassure them and not sell more products.
• Established customers (90+ days): we send 2-3 emails each month. The emails are either educational or product-driven to justify their decision behind choosing us.
• Churned customers: we send one email a month unless they re-engage, in which case, we send more. In the first month, we ask why they left and in the second month, we share new changes about the product they were using.

Sergey also shared that most of the emails they send over the course of a month are product-related, with promotions kept intentionally low:

• 45% are product-related. These are feature updates and changes that affect workflows.
• 35% are educational such as how top customers use X, smarter ways to route leads and compliance updates that matter to them.
• 15% are promotional such as upsells, add-ons and limited offers. These are intentionally kept low.
• 5% for other emails. For example, events, one-off announcements and surveys.

And instead of relying on typical metrics like open rates or unsubscribe rates to adjust email frequency, they bases their decision on reply rate, feature adoption, revenue expansion, and silent churn:

“We look at the reply rate, feature adoption after emails, revenue expansion within 14 days of an email and silent churn. We don’t use open rates or unsubscribe rates to make this decision.

Sometimes, unsubscribes don’t come from sending too many emails. It could be because the email was directed to the wrong audience therefore, not a cadence issue.”

Phonexa also adjusts the frequency during certain times of the year like holidays and product launches.

“Yes. Most of the time, our adjustment involves reducing the emails.

During the end-of-quarter, CFO weeks and holidays, we send fewer emails. People don’t absorb a lot when they are occupied or if they feel rushed. Long emails don’t do well during high-emotion periods.

During product launches, we increase the frequency of our emails but keep them shorter and more direct e.g., ‘Here is what changed’ or ‘do this now to get X.’”

When they experimented with frequencies, they learned that sending emails closer together doesn’t change whether people will convert. It just makes them convert sooner:

“Yes. We tested the same email content, within the same audience with different spacing. One group got two emails back-to-back while the other got the same emails five days apart.

Engagement differed by 0.2%. The sales conversions, however, happened faster with tighter spacing. We learned that frequency doesn’t change if people will convert or not, it changes when they convert.”

Emailmonday

Email marketing consultant and Emailmonday founder Jordie van Rijn says that you should start with a higher frequency in the beginning to establish a habit of value per open:

“Start with a higher frequency than normal. Daily or every two days, if it is based on a download or educational webinar for instance. This is to establish a habit of value per open so people will understand that there is something in the email each time they open it. That is extremely hard if the frequency is lower.”

He advises to decrease frequency if you have multiple sends per week. But you can ramp it back up once there is engagement:

“Yes, and I would advise to do this if you have a very high frequency of multiple sends per week, to bring that down. If your frequency is already low, it doesn’t make sense to make it even lower. But after a person engages, the cadence can go up. This means following up in 1 or 2 days after someone has visited your site.”

Jordie shared that after the trial and onboarding stage, users will be put on the typical newsletter cadence:

“Trials should have daily or multiple emails per week while new customers should be on an onboarding sequence. After that, it would be the typical ‘newsletter cadence.’”

When it comes to email types, he says that the best emails serve multiple purposes at once:

“Let’s take my own newsletter as an example. It is 99% educational, 25% just fun and 5% option to get in touch (yes, that is more than 100%). Education can also be fun and lead into conversion at the same time.

For other senders, this varies greatly. But if at all possible making a combo of promotion and other types of email value is golden.”

For performance metrics, Jordie advises to stop measuring individual email campaigns. Instead, you should start measuring customer engagement over a time period:

“If it is customers we want to engage, then it is customers we must measure, not campaigns.

There is not really a great standard email metric around this, but if you’d like to measure then we’d have to let go of the metrics per campaign. One element is total unique reached per period. So the number of subscribers you reached with Open or Click. Individual email campaign open rates will likely go down, as do unsubscribe rates, but you want to look at it from a complete program, per period.

Next is the frequency of clicks and conversions per period, and then divided by segment that makes sense (e.g. new in file, re-engagement).”

Having worked with various clients, he shares that email frequency typically increases during major sales events or peak seasonal demand:

“Yes, we have some special promotions and partner promotions and around those dates the email frequency goes up. Think about Black Friday/Cyber Monday for instance. Clients also see this, if it is seasonal in travel for instance, there is a season where people book their trips – so it makes sense to increase the frequency there.”

Jordie also shared that higher email frequency can certainly boost revenue. However, this would only work if you’re offering higher value to your subscribers:

“Higher frequency is almost certain to increase revenue as long as your product fits with the quick conversion or high frequency purchase pattern. You can’t see this separate from the value that you bring though. So a higher frequency should come with a higher total value to the subscriber (and therefore is typically harder to do).”

Mowt

Mowt founder Matt Smith shares that they send bi-weekly emails to new leads. While they haven’t adjusted email frequency based on engagement levels, they’re considering doing it in the future.

As for adjusting based on lifecycle segments, he shares that they don’t like to hound happy customers unless the email is of high value:

“Churned customers and those who never trialed get the most emails. I don’t like to hound happy customers unless it has A LOT of value.”

For email types, Mowt only sends product related emails:

“For active customers, it’s like 95% product updates and 5% feature announcements. We don’t send them the educational or promotional stuff.”

To know if they’re sending too much or too little emails to a subscriber, they base it on different metrics depending if they’re inactive or active:

“For inactive ones, it’s engagement followed by unsubscribed. Active ones are done on feedback.”

AuthorityScribe

Auroriele Hans, email strategist and founder of AuthorityScribe, sends more emails when new subscribers join to leverage their initial interest:

“I typically try to capitalize on their interest by sending at a higher frequency at first.

For example, I might send a 2-3 email welcome sequence the first week introducing them to and differentiating the brand. I typically have them self segment in the welcome and then send 1-2 emails a week for the nurture (depending on what kind of content I’m sharing).

After the nurture, they’d get the newsletter, which is typically bi-weekly.”

She advises to use triggered emails to send more emails to engaged subscribers:

“I usually send more emails to engaged subscribers. Triggered emails are great for this! Unengaged subscribers get segmented for a re-engagement campaign.”

When it comes to lifecycle segments, Auroriele says trials and new customers receive more emails because the goal is to get them to form a new habit aka use the product:

“Email frequency is higher for trial users and new customers because I need to activate and onboard them. In both cases, there’s often a lot of information to share, and I don’t want to overwhelm them. So I send it in bite-sized chunks. Plus, I’m trying to get them to form a new habit (using the product). That means encouraging them to take small actions everyday over an extended period of time.

Emails delivering value are essential for retaining established customers: invites to customer workshops, product updates, usage recaps, and newsletters. That said, the frequency is usually lower.

Churned customers are treated similar to unengaged subscribers. I’ll send a win-back and remove them from the list if it’s unsuccessful.”

As for the mix of email types each month, this depends on the client:

“It depends on the company. I’m working with a SaaS scale-up right now, so they have a lot of product updates and feature announcements. Customers received 3 product-related emails this month. We also sent a new integration guide and an incentivized referral offer. That’s 5 emails this month.”

To know if she’s sending too many emails, Auroriele looks at unsubscribe rates and customer feedback first:

“Unsubscribe rates and customer feedback are the strongest signals that I’m sending too often. Then I look at engagement and conversion rates, especially if there’s a big drop off.”

She also shares that product launches usually coincide with fiscal year-end so they increase email frequency during that time:

“I don’t send on holidays for B2B clients, unless my client is sending their list a holiday offer or warm wishes. Email frequency typically increases for product launches, which have coincided with fiscal year-end.”

And while she hasn’t tested different email frequencies yet, she has noticed a pattern with engagement and sending frequency:

“I haven’t specifically A/B tested different email frequencies. I’ve noticed less engagement with lower sending frequencies (for example, monthly versus bi-weekly newsletters).”

She also observed that misconceptions about sending frequency often lead clients to send too few emails:

“I’ve noticed clients have a lot of misconceptions about sending frequency. In my opinion, many are scared to send too often, which causes them to not send enough emails.”

Wellows

Wellows senior marketing executive Noor Fatima shares that new leads get 2-3 emails a week in their nurture sequences. After that, frequency is adjusted based on their engagement levels: highly engaged users receive more emails versus inactive ones. Engagement rate is also used to determine if they’re sending too many emails or not enough.

Frequency is also adjusted during the holidays, with less emails sent during this time.

On email type mix, she shared that they only send product related emails (i.e. updates and feature announcements) to their list.

Zachary Hyde

Direct response copywriter Zachary Hyde shares that he sends daily emails both to his own list and for several of his clients.

And while disengaged subscribers typically get less emails, he shares that he doesn’t segment out because some metrics are misleading:

“I don’t segment them out for a couple of reasons. With tech changes, some of those metrics are misleading (I’ve got readers who never register in my ESP as opened).

Also, most tech buyers never get around to using your product. Sending out emails about it to them without segmenting them out reminds them ‘hey, maybe I should start using this thing.’”

Zachary places specific lifecycle segments into specific sequences based on their needs. But he also shared that you don’t need to adjust email frequency if you send them daily emails:

“Different strokes for different folks. I’ve got a specific re-engagement funnel/sequence for each audience (new customers, churned customers) because they’re at different stages of need and awareness. But ultimately, this can all be eliminated by sending them daily emails because you’re staying top of their mind unlike your competitors.”

For email types, he advises to go with story-driven “info-tainment” email because you’re primarily competing with short-form videos for attention:

“Info-tainment. Period. Story-driven works best. Either your own stories or someone else’s that you find interesting. You’re not competing with other vendors. You’re competing with Facebook reels and TikTok.

They’re gonna be entertained first. Might as well be the person doing it for them. Just make sure you’re pitching something every single email so they learn to expect that.”

Zachary shares that instead of looking at engagement rates and unsubscribes, you should focus on revenue generation:

“The only metric that matters is people spending money on your product. You eliminate the problem with the others (unsubscribes, engagement, etc) by generating leads for your list better on the front end.”

To get the subscriber’s attention, he gets creative by screwing up holiday emails on purpose:

“Sometimes I actually screw up holiday emails on purpose just to disrupt their inbox. Everyone’s getting Black Friday emails today so I might tell a funny Valentine’s day story because that stands out in the inbox.”

He also noted that by emailing his list daily, his list is filtered down to only engaged subscribers:

“I’ve emailed daily for two years. Even on weekends and holidays. It takes me a whopping 12-15 minutes to knock one out. And my list engages. The tire-kickers and people who never plan on buying anything unsubscribe. Win-win.”

Head of Email

Bitly’s senior lifecycle marketing manager and creator of Head of Email Devin O’Toole shares that outside of the onboarding stage (first 30 days), they limit marketing emails to 1-2 per week.

They adjust email frequency based on three engagement levels:

“We break engagement into high, medium, and low. High engagement users qualify for just about every email (barring segmentation and exclusions). Medium and low engagement users might only receive between 1-3 emails per month until they show an intent signal or higher rate of engagement.”

New subscribers receive daily emails to build momentum. But this pace is adjusted based on their engagement:

“In the first few days after signing up, we email our users daily to build momentum. Very early on, we’re looking to see if the user is opening the first few emails, and if they’re not, we’ll slow down the email cadence for that user. The pace gradually slows down for all users to where established customers are receiving emails about once per week if they remain engaged.”

Through trial and error, Devin and his team found that a flexible calendar while maintaining a variety in the email types works better for them:

“We tried a set cadence for this at one point, but found that the product team didn’t always have something to share, or the content team had two items they wanted to share that month. We’ve gone to a more flexible calendar, but we do try to keep a good mix of content types.”

To gauge if they’re sending too much or too little emails, they look at list churn via unsubscribes or lack of engagement.

They also pause emails strategically during certain seasons when it makes sense:

“This is variable, but we find, for example, that it’s not worth competing with the noise of Black Friday, or that our audience is largely out of the office on certain holidays. So we take all of that into account and pause where it makes sense.”

From A/B testing sending frequencies at previous companies, Devin learned that the most important thing is to be smart about segmenting:

“I’ve A/B tested at previous companies and found that editing (reducing email volume) performs better in the long run. The right frequency is different by brand and industry, but the most important thing is to be smart about segmenting.”

Emails Done Right

Emails Done Right founder Samar Owais says that they don’t hesitate sending multiple emails a week. New leads receive 2-3 emails per week before slowing down to a weekly newsletter cadence.

And similar to the experiences of others, they adjust frequency based on engagement levels:

“If a lead or customer has become inactive we send a re-engagement sequence that’s designed to figure out their hesitation. If we don’t receive a response or there’s no engagement, we only keep them in the active newsletter segment that goes out once a week.”

After mapping out the user journey, specific email sequences are created for each stage:

“We start by mapping out the user journey and then creating email sequences for each stage of the journey. Most emails go out during the Free Trial and those are behavior triggered. New customers get an extended onboarding sequence + customer support emails so a total of at least 2 emails a week.

Established customers get 1 email a week in general. More if they’re also subscribed to our marketing newsletter. Churned customers get a more high-touch, 1-on-1 email experience from support rather than marketing emails that we know haven’t worked.”

As for the mix of email types, they sound more educational emails per month but these come with a promotional element:

“80% educational content. The rest is a monthly product update, feature announcements campaigns, and promotional offers.

Important caveat: our educational content emails also have a promotional element. We keep the ratio 4:1 for non-users — every fourth email has a sign up to our free trial or become a paying user sales-ish element.”

She also shared that they primarily focus on conversions and churn before looking at other metrics:

“Engagement rate — that includes clicks, replies, shares etc. We track this to keep an eye on the general performance. These metrics are only paid attention when we notice a problem or downward trend.

We keep our attention on free to paid conversions and churn. Might sound rudimentary but those really are the only 2 metrics you need to lock in before focusing on anything else.”

Depending on the client she’s working with, there’s an increase in emails during Black Friday and product launches:

“During BFCM, we have high frequency if we’re running a promo campaign, otherwise we tend to be on the quieter side.

During the end of each quarter, we do a semi-formal sales push. Product launches are given the same treatment as promotional campaigns because our goal is to get users to adopt the new feature.”

She’s also experimented with frequencies on onboarding sequences and found that the first three days are crucial:

“We’ve found that the first 3 days are crucial, after that engagement drops drastically — in some cases to non-existent levels. We have found that a mix of onboarding emails, in-app, and mobile (if applicable) notifications work best.”

Samar emphasized that what worked for others doesn’t mean it might work for your SaaS. Focus on understanding your users’ behavior instead:

“Just because something worked for one SaaS doesn’t mean it’ll work for another. Before you focus on email metrics or sending frequency, focus on understanding your user’s behavior. Take the time to figure out what they respond to and adjust your emails accordingly.”

Suped

Suped co-founder Michael Ko says they stick to a frequency of 2-3 emails a week for new leads to be helpful without being a nuisance:

“For new leads, we usually stick to a frequency of 2 to 3 times per week. We want to be helpful without being a nuisance. The first few emails are focused on quick wins, like setting up their first DMARC record or using our AI co-pilot to parse their first report.”

After that, emails may slow down to once a week or one every two weeks if the subscriber hasn’t engaged with them in 14 days:

“We definitely adjust based on how people interact with us. If someone is opening every email and clicking through to our SPF flattening tool, they’ll stay on that 2 to 3 times per week track. If they haven’t engaged in 14 days, we automatically throttle back to once a week or even bi-weekly to protect our own domain reputation.”

Across lifecycle segments, their trial users get the most emails. After that, the frequency and content varies depending on the lifecycle stage:

“Trial users: These folks get the most attention, about 3 emails a week. The goal is to get them to a “p=reject” policy safely.

New customers (0-90 days): We shift to a weekly cadence focused on deeper features like our MSP dashboard or blocklist monitoring.

Established customers (90+ days): We drop to bi-weekly or monthly ‘Health Check’ reports. If their domain health score is good, we stay out of their hair.

Churned customers: We move them to a monthly ‘Industry Insights’ list to keep them informed on new email requirements from providers like Google and Yahoo.”

For the email type mix per month, about half is about educational or actionable content:

• Educational/Actionable content: 50% (Tips on fixing DKIM or alignment issues)
• Product updates/Feature announcements: 30% (New integrations or UI improvements)
• Promotional offers: 10% (Upgrading to unlimited domains)
• Community/Industry news: 10%

Suped monitors unsubscribes and spam complaint rates which signals that they might be “too noisy” to a specific segment:

“We keep a very close eye on our unsubscribe rate and ‘spam complaint’ rate. If unsubscribes tick above 0.5% for a specific segment, we know we’re being too noisy. We also look at ‘time to action.’ If people stop clicking through to the dashboard, it usually means the content isn’t relevant enough for the frequency we’re sending at.”

Michael shares that while traditional holidays don’t really matter to them, they ramp up emails during major email industry shifts:

“We don’t do much for traditional holidays, but we ramp up significantly during major industry shifts.

For example, when Google and Yahoo implemented their new sender requirements earlier this year, we increased frequency to daily for a short period to make sure our users didn’t get their mail blocked.”

They did an A/B test between “value-heavy” and “utility-heavy” emails and found that the latter works better for their audience:

“We’ve A/B tested ‘Value-Heavy’ (long-form educational) vs. ‘Utility-Heavy’ (short, direct links to tools). We found that for our technical audience (DevOps and IT), the shorter, utility-focused emails actually led to higher retention. People just want to know if their domain is secure and get back to work.”

Michael emphasized that deliverability is both about technical records and respecting your subscribers:

“The biggest thing I’ve learned is that deliverability isn’t just about technical records like SPF and DKIM. It’s about respect. If you send mail that people actually want to read, your reputation stays high, and the technical side becomes a lot easier to manage.”

Your product and audience determines the right cadence

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all email cadence. What works for a developer tool with a technical audience won’t work for a non-technical one.

But the patterns are clear: start strong with new leads and users, use segments, and look at metrics beyond engagement and unsubscribes.

Use the insights above as a starting point, then test and adjust based on what your specific audience responds to.