The Perfect Number of Weekly Emails for Bloggers

Have you ever wondered “how often is too often” when it comes to emailing your newsletter list? In this post, I’m going to cover what types of newsletters you can send, what I think is the optimal number based on how many posts you have, and if your readers even care!

How Many Emails Should You Send Per Week?

When I first started blogging, sending out a weekly newsletter seemed like a daunting task.

What should I say? Do they even care? How many times a week is too many? Do emails really matter to the growth of my blog?

Over the last 9 years, I’ve found the answers to each of those questions and some of them genuinely surprised me.

What Should You Say?

There are many different types of newsletters, and which one you send is going to be determined by your personality, content, and how much automation you want to have in your life.

The Weekly Letter

I’ve seen great success with this method for people who love sharing their daily lives with their readers, in real-time. This can include a section on your life and family, then have several new (or seasonally relevant) pieces of content from the blog at the end.

The Weekly Letter is often a fabulous way to build a connection with your audience but can be less effective at generating page views than other methods.

This shouldn’t be a deterrent necessarily, as a strong connection can lead to high product sales and more direct traffic as people use your site as a trusted resource.

The Round-Up Email

Just as it sounds, this email features a round-up of evergreen or seasonally appropriate posts (3-8 posts), with little or no real-time personal information.

This is a great option for bloggers who have a lot of content in their blog archives already but can be difficult to do if you have under 150 posts.

The plus side to this type of newsletter is that you can easily automate the process, scheduling emails for months or even a year in advance. It also allows you to appeal to more of your audience at a time since you can include so many posts in one email (letting people choose to read what they are interested in).

The Spotlight

After 8 years of sending emails, this is my favorite option! With a spotlight email, you feature just ONE post at a time, allowing you to give a quick “pitch” for the content, and share a photo and a link.

This is a quick decision for people to click or not, making it easy on their already overtaxed brains! People like easy, and so many people enjoy a quick newsletter that doesn’t take any mental or emotional energy to consume – while still giving them good information on a topic they take pleasure in pursuing.

The Spotlight is always a great way to send regular newsletters, even if you have low content on your website (even as little as 9 posts total on your site!)

This is also my favorite because automation is SO easy with this form of newsletter – I always have a year of emails scheduled out at a time.

Do Your Readers Care About Your Emails?

Ultimately, some do and some don’t. But if you don’t send emails because you’re afraid of the unsubscribe rate, then you’ll never build up an audience that *does* care about what you have to say.

You will not reach everyone on your list. You can’t change who you are and what your message is in order to please everyone – so don’t try!

Instead, write with an authentic voice on a consistent basis, on the agreed-upon topic, and you will cultivate a group of people who can’t wait to get emails from you!

How Many Newsletters is Too Many?

The main question you’re here is probably to answer the question “How many times a week should I be emailing?” and the answer is – it varies!

If you have a lot of content (150+ pieces of good, polished content) then you can be sending at least 3 spotlight or round-up emails per week.

If you are just starting out, then I would recommend sending 2 emails per week if you are creating content consistently. This means you can be sending 1 “old” piece of content if it’s been at least 6 months since the last time you shared it, and then 1 new piece that you created that week.

While you can try to send 2 emails a week with fresh content, it’s a hard schedule for most people to maintain, and they end up getting behind and then quitting altogether because they feel like they failed.

It’s better to be consistent at a lower number than to disappear completely!

If you can only send 1 newsletter a week, do it! That’s better than nothing and will keep you in front of your audience at least 1 a week.

I would caution against sending emails every single day, but I have seen it successfully done. In my opinion, unless you are a coupon or deal website, it’s better to give people a day or two to open your last email before you hit them with another one.

Do Emails Matter to the Success of Your Blog?

Based on the rest of this post, I’m sure you can guess the answer here… but YES emails matter to the success and growth of your blog.

Here are a few ways that emails can ROCK your audience connection, traffic, and income.

• Return Traffic – Allows you to contact blog readers to invite them back. They may have loved your site the first them, then not be able to find you again in the future. By giving them a little reminder in their inbox, you can invite them back over and over again.
• Direct Communication – Unlike social media, SEO, and Pinterest traffic, email traffic can be controlled directly by YOU on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. You are not controlled by the algorithm when it comes to emails – just hit send and your entire list is notified.
• SEO Boost – Have a new post that you want to rank for quickly? Just send an email to your list the day (or week) that you publish it for a big boost of SEO juice. Google will see that lots of people are visiting this brand-new post and they will rank it higher than they would have otherwise.
• Trusted Source – As you continually contact your audience with good-quality information, they will be more likely to purchase your products.

Bottom line: Email is a crucial part of building a thriving online business.