The 8-Step Framework to Find Your Ideal Email Marketing Cadence
Test email frequency the right way — and find the cadence that drives more revenue without killing your list.
Today, we’re addressing a question that almost every email marketer asks at some point:
What’s the optimal cadence for email campaigns?
Is it 3 campaigns per week? 5? Twice per day?
While we won’t give you a single “magic number,” we will give you a clear framework you can use to find the optimal cadence for your eCommerce brand — including a step-by-step guide you can run yourself.
Situation
Let’s say you want to determine which email cadence drives better results:
3 emails per week, or
5 emails per week
Step 1: Split Your Subscribers into Two Groups
Randomly assign your subscriber audience into two groups:
Group A: receives 3 newsletters per week
Group B: receives 5 newsletters per week
The size of each group is up to you.
For example, if you currently send 3 emails per week and want to test 5, but don’t want to risk major negative effects (such as increased unsubscribes), you can start by sending the higher frequency to only 10% of your list.
In fact, this is the approach we recommend from a risk-minimization standpoint:
Keep the majority of subscribers unchanged
Apply the proposed increase only to a small test group
If the test group shows positive results, scale the change to the full list
Step 2: Start Sending Campaigns Based on the Assigned Cadence
Send campaigns to each group based on the cadence they were assigned.
Step 3: Measure Results
Now it’s time to measure the outcome of your test.
There are two primary metrics you should evaluate:
Revenue generated by each group
Unsubscribe rate for each group
Let’s assume that after one month, you get results like this:
Step 4: Project the Results Across Your Full List
Next, simulate what results would look like if your entire subscriber base received either:
3 emails per week, or
5 emails per week
…while keeping the same average revenue per subscriber and unsubscribe rate from your test groups.
Now you can clearly see the tradeoff:
The 5-email cadence generated an additional $70,000
But it also resulted in 7,778 additional unsubscribers
One of these outcomes is clearly positive (more revenue), and one is clearly negative (losing more subscribers).
The key question is:
Is the combined effect overall positive or negative?
Step 5: Calculate the Value of a Subscriber
To evaluate the combined impact, you need to calculate the value of a subscriber — since the 5-email group lost more subscribers.
We recently published an article explaining this methodology in detail, which you can find here:
Important: Define the Time Period
When calculating revenue per subscriber, it’s essential to define the time window.
For example, if you compare revenue per subscriber for users who subscribed in November 2024 vs November 2025, the November 2024 cohort will almost always show higher revenue simply because they’ve had more time to purchase.
To ensure a fair, apples-to-apples comparison, you should evaluate subscribers over the same post-subscription timeframe — for example:
✅ Revenue generated in the first 12 months after signup
Example: Revenue per Subscriber (First Year)
Let’s say you want to calculate the average revenue per subscriber within one year of subscribing.
First, select subscribers who joined your list more than one year ago.
Since we’re writing this article in February 2026, we could select subscribers who joined between:
February 2024 – January 2025
Let’s assume you gained 300,000 subscribers during that period.
Now calculate how much revenue those subscribers generated within their first year after subscribing.
Let’s say that number is:
$5,730,000
Now divide revenue by subscriber count:
$5,730,000 / 300,000 = $19.10
So your average revenue per subscriber (within 1 year) is:
✅ $19.10
Step 6: Calculate Incremental Revenue per Subscriber
At this point, you might say:
“Even if these people weren’t subscribed, they still would’ve made some purchases — so we wouldn’t lose the full $19.10 per unsubscribe.”
And you’d be right.
That’s why we need to estimate the incremental value of an email subscriber — meaning the portion of revenue that can realistically be attributed to email marketing.
How to Estimate Incremental Value
A common approach is comparing:
LTV of customers subscribed to email, vs
LTV of customers not subscribed to email
A quick (but imperfect) method is dividing customers into two groups and comparing their LTV.
However, subscription status can change over time:
A customer might subscribe, unsubscribe, resubscribe, etc.
If you want a more accurate report that accounts for this, feel free to reach out — we’d be happy to consult you on how to structure it correctly.
In any case, your analysis will usually result in a table similar to this:
Let’s assume your analysis shows:
Customers subscribed to email have a 24.2% higher LTV than customers who are not subscribed.
So we can estimate that:
Average revenue per subscriber (1 year): $19.10
Incremental lift from email: 24.2%
Incremental revenue per subscriber:
$19.10 × 0.242 = $4.62
Meaning:
✅ Each unsubscribe costs you ~$4.62 of incremental revenue over the next year
Step 7: Put It All Together
Now we know:
Switching from 3 to 5 emails/week generates $70,000 more revenue
But it also creates 7,778 additional unsubscribers
Each additional unsubscribe costs $4.62
So the lost value is:
7,778 × $4.62 = $35,934
Net gain:
$70,000 − $35,934 = $34,066
So even after accounting for churn, the higher cadence still produces:
✅ +$34,066 per month in net value
Step 8: Repeat the Process
Now that you’ve learned that 5 emails per week is more profitable than 3, you can repeat the same process to test:
5 vs 7 emails/week
7 vs 10 emails/week
different content styles
different promotional vs editorial mixes
The best part is that this framework applies to almost any email marketing test focused on strategy, not just isolated tweaks within a single campaign (such as testing different subject lines).
If you found this post valuable…
We hope this article was valuable to you. If you enjoyed it, don’t miss out on future articles—subscribe for free and have our latest content delivered straight to your inbox.
If you’d like to discuss any aspect of eCommerce technical marketing with us or explore potential collaboration, feel free to schedule a meeting using the link below: