Date: 2025-08-07 | Time of reading: 8 minutes (1554 words)
Regular reminders about your brand are a typical marketing tactic. It is believed that this way, the user won't forget about the brand and will eventually make a purchase. The key is to communicate through all channels: messages are sent through messengers, email, SMS, push notifications, and even social media.
But there's a catch—people receive messages not only from one business. Every minute, over 149 million emails and around 16,500 text messages are sent worldwide. Add pop-up notifications, phone calls, and you get huge volumes of data that are constantly bombarding modern people every day.
That’s why a strategy with too many messages can have the opposite effect: overwhelmed users will start ignoring messages or simply unsubscribe. In this article, we'll discuss how many emails are needed to retain an audience.
What Happens if You Send Too Many Emails
Despite the fact that people are already drowning in a sea of information, marketing communications show no sign of slowing down. On the contrary, more and more methods are being used to reach the consumer.
According to research, an average user receives between 65 and 120 messages daily through SMS, email newsletters, messengers, social media, and other sources. Our brains sometimes simply can't process this amount of information. People even suffer from information fatigue syndrome. So, sending emails too frequently is more likely to annoy users than engage them in communication.
What do subscribers do when the number of emails and messages increases significantly?
They stop opening marketing messages from the brand. On average, 40% of users have 50 unread emails.
They unsubscribe from email lists. 43% say they leave a company if they receive too many emails.
They stop purchasing the brand's products. 74% of customers refuse to make purchases because they feel information overload.
They mark the company's emails as spam if unsubscribing from the mailing list is too difficult or impossible. 47% of users do this.
Fewer Messages — More Personalization
Sending emails or messages based on a "one-size-fits-all" approach is not the most effective marketing strategy. Customers are at different stages of decision-making: onboarding, product selection, purchase made, and so on. So sending the same message to everyone means, at best, being ignored, and at worst, getting an unsubscribe or spam complaint.
For example, if a customer has just had a beauty treatment, but the automated email newsletter says it’s been a long time since her last visit. In such cases, even dozens of reminders won't work because there is no real need for the service at the moment.
Research in the restaurant industry showed that trigger-based emails, based on user behavior, had a conversion rate 247% higher than mass emails that didn’t consider customer actions.
According to marketers, email personalization and segmentation increase a brand’s revenue by 760%.
The effectiveness is also confirmed by users, as 72% engage only with personalized messages.
Too frequent or irrelevant messages can cause irritation. Research showed that 34% of customers formed a negative impression of the brand due to intrusive communications. Additionally, 52% are willing to switch to other vendors if they receive non-personalized messages.
Not Quantity, but Quality of Emails
Good marketing is not just about personalization, but also about clear, high-quality content.
It’s important to choose the right channel for your emails: email alone is not always enough. 54% of customers prefer messaging apps to contact companies, and 73% of shoppers use different methods for purchasing: on the website, through apps, or in-store. Instead of increasing the number of emails, it's better to use omnichannel strategies and deliver information through the communication formats preferred by users. The effectiveness of this approach is confirmed by the numbers: purchase frequency on omnichannel platforms is 250% higher.
At the same time, it’s important to tailor the content for each channel. For example, 81% of users read emails on smartphones. And 50% of people will simply delete an email if it’s not optimized for mobile devices.
Users pay attention to the quality of content in email newsletters: 56% unsubscribe if the content becomes irrelevant, and 51% unsubscribe if the emails don’t meet their expectations.
Not Often, But at the Right Time
The answer to the question of how often and when to send emails depends on various factors:
From the data of previous campaigns. You need to consider user reactions to your emails. It’s pointless to send emails regularly if they’re not opened or if the links aren’t clicked. But sending emails too infrequently is also not the answer: one email per month is easily forgotten, and subscribers will lose interest in your brand.
How to find the best time to send emails? In this article, the CEO of Altcraft explains how the Best Send Time model works — find out when your customer is most ready to engage.
From the product you're selling. If the product is simple and purchased without much thought, you can send emails more frequently — from one to five times a week. For products with periodic demand, like household chemicals or cosmetics, one to two emails per week will work. If the product is rarely purchased or is for special occasions, a few emails per quarter will suffice.
From benchmarking. For example, more than half of companies send emails two to four times a month. The optimal time for sending emails is considered to be Tuesday at 12:00 PM, and the highest Open Rate — 37.6% — is observed on Saturdays. However, it's important to focus on the metrics specific to your niche, as they may differ from the average statistics.
How to Reduce the Number of Emails Without Losing Sales
The data above confirms that it's more effective to focus on the quality of emails rather than the quantity. To find the optimal email frequency, several specific steps need to be taken.
1. Conduct an Email Audit
Check the key performance indicators (KPIs) of your email campaigns: Open Rate, CTR, conversions, and unsubscribe rates. This helps assess current performance and identify weak points, such as ineffective offers or poor timing for sending emails.
Make sure the subscription process works correctly: the user must confirm their consent to receive messages. The unsubscribe button should be visible and functional. Otherwise, your emails will start annoying users, and they'll mark them as spam.
2. Clean the Base and Exclude Ineffective Messages
After the audit, remove users who have not interacted with your emails for a long time. Eliminate messages with low performance and those that aren't yielding results. Make sure your emails don’t repeat and that automated messages are sent at the right time. For example, avoid sending an invitation to visit the store if the customer just visited and made a purchase.
3. Segment the Target Audience
Divide customers into groups based on purchase frequency, engagement level, channels used, and other criteria important to your brand. This will help plan email campaigns with highly personalized content. Use analytics to identify behavioral patterns and conduct surveys to ask your audience how often and what they want to receive.
Improve customer relationships with personalized emails!
4. Create a New Email Plan and Implement Automation
Based on the collected data and segments, plan your emails according to the new strategy. Focus on triggered emails to respond to customer actions.
To send messages and personalized offers on time, use marketing automation. With the help of specialized services, email campaigns can be tailored to each user. For example, the CDP Altcraft platform combines customer data from various sources into one profile and uses it for automated communication.
5. Implement Omnichannel
If the audit and research show that users prefer different communication channels, it’s worth using them all. Omnichannel approach improves the customer experience, increases message effectiveness, and strengthens brand loyalty.
At the same time, it’s important to consider the characteristics of each channel. For example, if SMS is added to email, the best time to send is 10:00 AM, lunchtime, or 8:00 PM.
6. Check Effectiveness
Analyze the optimal email frequency using A/B testing. Divide your customer base into groups based on the number of test variations — for example, three groups if you want to compare daily, weekly, and monthly messages. Use analytics tools and summary reports to gather data on interactions — basic open rates, views, and conversions.
Compare the results for effectiveness: open rates, engagement, clicks, and purchases. This will help determine how often to send emails. To make them more effective, segment the audience, analyze behavior, and use personalized, triggered, and automated emails where they truly work.
Summary
Frequent emails don't always deliver results — users may start ignoring emails or unsubscribe. This is typically due to information overload and irrelevant content. Therefore, it's better to send emails strategically: send triggered messages based on user actions and use a personalized approach. It’s also important to consider the time of sending and the product type — for products purchased impulsively, more frequent messages are acceptable.
To reduce the number of emails and improve their effectiveness, you need to conduct an audit, clean the database, revise the content plan, segment the audience, implement automation and omnichannel strategies, and test your strategy using A/B testing.
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