- My standard cadence is a campaign every other day, with consecutive sends saved for major promotions. Who gets each send depends on the segment.
- At a fitness tech brand, an engaged-segment send earned $0.19 per person and a full-list blast earned $0.04.
- In a small sample of 4 consumable brands, 3 saw no rise in unsubscribes when they sent more.
- Count your flow emails too. Someone in your welcome series is already hearing from you.
How often should ecommerce brands send emails?
Most founders ask this as "how many emails a week?" and expect one number. I get why. It's easier to plan.
But your list isn't one group of people. It's someone who bought last week, someone who signed up for a discount code eight months ago and never opened anything, and everyone in between. Sending all of them the same amount of email means you're either under-sending to your best customers or over-sending to people who've checked out.
So my answer has two parts. Set a calendar cadence for the brand, then decide how much of it each segment gets.
Here's the cadence I plan client calendars around:
- Every other day for normal campaigns. That's roughly 3 or 4 a week.
- Consecutive days for major promotions.
- 2 to 4 emails in a large promo window.
- 1 to 2 final reminders near the end of a promo.
Why one frequency for the whole list costs you money
The clearest example I have comes from a fitness tech brand. One campaign went to an engaged segment of 7,145 people and earned $0.19 per person. A full-list blast went to 49,475 people and earned $0.04 per person.
Do the math and the blast still made more in total, roughly $1,979 against $1,358. But it took about 7x the sends to get there, and nearly 5x less per person. Every one of those extra sends to people who don't click tells inbox providers your email isn't wanted.
That's why I'd rather add a third weekly send to the 7,145 than a second weekly send to the 49,475. More on building those groups in email segmentation for ecommerce.
Will sending more make people unsubscribe?
Less than you'd think. Across 4 consumable brands, 2,897 campaigns and $17.7M in email revenue, 3 of the 4 saw no rise in unsubscribes when they sent more. One brand didn't follow that pattern, which is exactly why I add frequency segment by segment instead of all at once.
I cover the unsubscribe side in depth, including why spam complaints matter more than unsubscribes, in does sending more emails increase unsubscribes. This post is about the plan.
A starting send frequency by segment
Here's how I'd split that cadence across segments for a consumable brand. The segment shares are starting points, not rules. Your own clicks and revenue per person decide where you end up.
| Segment | Who's in it | Starting share of the calendar | What they get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engaged customers | Bought in the last 180 days, or clicked in the last 60 | Every campaign, about every other day | Everything: restocks, launches, content with an ask, reorder nudges |
| Engaged non-buyers | Clicked in the last 60 days, never bought | Most campaigns | Your best sellers, starter bundles, launches |
| Warm | Last click 61 to 180 days ago | About 1 a week | The big moments only |
| Cold | No click or purchase in 180+ days | A couple of times a month | Your strongest offers, then a sunset flow |
The cold row is the one founders fight me on. They want to keep sending to everyone they paid to acquire. But a cold profile that never clicks still counts toward your Klaviyo bill and still drags down your sending reputation. Give them a few strong chances, then let a Klaviyo sunset flow decide.
Don't forget your flows are sending too
Campaigns aren't the only email people get. Someone who just signed up is in your welcome series, which in the Flow System I install is 6 emails over 7 days. Someone who left a cart is in your abandonment flow. Someone who just ordered is getting post-purchase emails.
That matters most early on. Across those same 4 brands, welcome email #1 earned about $4.50 per person, compared to about $0.10 each for emails #2 to #5. Email #1 carries most of the money, which is why the offer goes in it. You don't want a random campaign landing on top of the most valuable email you send.
Klaviyo has a built-in guard for this called Smart Sending. It skips someone if they've already received an email from you within a set window, which is 16 hours by default for email. It's on by default for campaigns and for many of Klaviyo's pre-built flows, and transactional messages are never skipped. Check that it's on before you raise frequency.
How to test a higher frequency without guessing
If you want to send more, do it like a test, not a mood.
- Pick one segment. Start with engaged customers. They have the most room.
- Add one send a week for four weeks. Same quality bar as everything else: one reason to buy, one button.
- Track three numbers for that segment. Click rate, revenue per person, and unsubscribes plus spam complaints.
- Compare to the four weeks before. If total revenue goes up and revenue per person holds roughly steady, keep it. If revenue per person falls off, pull back.
- Then move to the next segment down.
Judge it on clicks and revenue, not opens. Across the 4 brands, click rate tracked revenue at 0.65 and open rate at 0.32. Apple Mail auto-opens pushed some segments past 85% open rates, so opens will tell you everything's fine when it isn't.
When to send more, and when to send less
Send more when there's news. A restock, a launch, a real sale window like BFCM. In a major promotion I switch from every other day to consecutive sends: 2 to 4 emails in a large promo window and 1 to 2 final reminders near the end. A snack brand doing about $650K a month made $48,771 from one restock email to 30,498 people, its best campaign ever. People want that email.
Send less when you have nothing to say. A filler email with no reason to buy trains people to ignore you. If a week has no news, a reorder nudge or one strong piece of content with an ask beats three weak sends.
This is where a monthly plan helps. I build the frequency into the email campaign calendar so busy weeks and quiet weeks are decided ahead of time.
Where these numbers come from
The pooled numbers come from 4 consumable brands, 2,897 campaigns and $17.7M in email revenue. It's a small sample, so treat the 3-of-4 finding as directional. The $0.19 vs $0.04 comparison comes from one fitness tech brand I've worked with. The Smart Sending details come from Klaviyo's help center.
FAQ
How many emails a week should a Shopify store send?
My standard is a campaign every other day, roughly 3 or 4 a week, with your engaged customers getting most of them. Cold subscribers get far less. Set a frequency per segment and adjust based on clicks and revenue per person.
Is sending an email every day too much?
For normal weeks, I'd stick to every other day. During a major promotion, consecutive days are normal in my calendars, sent mostly to your engaged segments. Test anything more on one segment before you roll it out.
Should I send fewer emails if my open rate is dropping?
I wouldn't use open rate to decide. Apple Mail inflates opens, so the number isn't reliable. Look at click rate and revenue per person by segment instead.
Do flow emails count toward my weekly frequency?
They count toward what the person experiences, so yes, think about them together. Smart Sending in Klaviyo helps by skipping people who got an email within the window you set.
How often should I email people who've never bought?
If they click, treat them almost like customers, since they're interested. If they don't click for months, cut back and send them through a sunset flow.
Founder of Bardown Digital, a Chicago-based Klaviyo email and retention agency for Shopify brands. He's worked with brands doing $500K to $100M a year, with $100M+ in email-attributed revenue across them.