Email cadence

Email cadence is identifying the right time and frequency for delivering email campaigns to subscribers. It allows marketers to determine how often and when to send emails and what type of content recipients prefer to receive.

In this article, we’ll explain why email cadence is important, share some examples, and provide you with 11 best practices.

Why is email cadence important?

Every business has multiple audience segments, each with different opinions on how often and when they should receive emails. By managing email cadence, you can identify these points and increase customer satisfaction and engagement by delivering relevant content at the perfect time. However, these are not the only reasons to consider email cadence. Below, you’ll find the most crucial ones.

• Fewer annoyed subscribers. When you identify the ideal timing and frequency for your email campaigns, you prevent overwhelming potential customers with excessive information while ensuring they remember your brand. Achieving the right balance means engaging your target audience in a non-intrusive manner. By sending weekly emails from your business, you can share urgent information, upcoming events, product launches, discounts, and more. This approach allows you to avoid spamming your subscribers with daily messages, which could lead to them opting out.
• Higher email deliverability and an improved sender reputation. By maintaining consistency in your email schedule, you can effectively deliver your campaigns to recipients without being flagged as spam. Sending your messages on a regular timetable also helps build a positive sender reputation and bypass spam filters.
• Customer trust and loyalty. By consistently reaching your subscribers’ inboxes, you can keep your clients engaged. Furthermore, utilizing personalization allows you to send recipients relevant messages at the ideal time. For example, when you send emails right after prospects abandon their shopping carts, you can remind them and encourage them to check out those products. By offering an attractive discount on these items, you can drive conversions more quickly. Sending emails that align with your subscribers’ needs based on their actions builds trust and loyalty.
• Improved conversion rates. By tailoring email campaigns according to users’ actions—such as signups, downloads, and items in their shopping carts—you can increase engagement. When you send relevant messages at the right time, you motivate potential customers to open these emails and take action. Different reminders, discounts, and promotions lead to additional purchases, resulting in higher conversion rates.
• Fewer unsubscribes and spam complaints occur when sending emails on a schedule. This approach helps you avoid overwhelming customers with too much information each day. By consistently sending messages to subscribers without spamming them, you can prevent recipients from opting out and marking your emails as spam.

Now that you understand why email cadence is crucial for businesses implementing email marketing, it’s time to examine the examples to gain an even better understanding.

The frequency of emails largely depends on the stage of the customer journey. Therefore, we should review various examples based on each stage.

Welcome email cadence — Innisfree

Since communication with new site visitors usually starts once they subscribe to your email newsletter, it’s essential to choose an appropriate time to send welcome emails. On the first day, your business can express gratitude to new prospects for opting in and introduce your brand. You can share your brand story and values a couple of days later and then provide useful resources, testimonials, and customer success stories to engage these leads and encourage them to explore the content. And finally, you can send new subscribers emails with an incentive that drives first purchases. Usually, it’s a discount.

Below is an example of an email from Innisfree. It welcomes new subscribers and encourages them to make their first purchase using a promo code for 10% off.

Lead nurturing email cadence — Rare Beauty

At this stage of the customer journey, your focus should be on educating potential customers about your products and providing the information they need to take action. On the first day, consider sending emails with links to valuable resources like eBooks, checklists, or free guides.

As the nurturing process continues, your emails can introduce product guides, tutorials, case studies, and key benefits. This helps leads gain a deeper understanding of your offerings and how they address their specific needs. Providing relevant materials is crucial for prospects to determine if your product is the right fit.

Additionally, incorporating a limited-time offer can create urgency and prompt quicker purchasing decisions. Rare Beauty demonstrates this well by announcing its biggest sale is ending soon. This strategy grabs subscribers' attention and drives immediate action, encouraging them to explore deals before time runs out.

Abandoned cart email cadence — Temu

Emails should be delivered according to the schedule, even if they address customers abandoning their shopping carts. This ensures that you reach customers immediately without annoying them while kindly reminding them of the products in case they simply forget.

Businesses send these emails one hour after clients abandon their carts without completing the checkout process. If there is no activity within 24 hours, your company should offer these customers incentives, such as a discount or free shipping. Finally, if they still show no intent to purchase, you can send a message indicating that the items are about to be sold out.

In the example below, you’ll see Temu emailing customers who haven’t completed their checkout process. The email notifies these individuals that the items in their cart are nearly sold out and urges them to finalize their purchase as soon as possible.

Post-purchase email cadence — Codeacademy

If you want to improve relationships with customers, encourage customer loyalty, and gather feedback, it’s essential to stay in touch with them even after their purchase. That’s why it’s important to send order confirmations once they complete the transaction and, a few days later, thank them for their purchase. You can also share valuable tips and how-tos so they can get the most out of their products. In two weeks, you can ask customers to share their reviews and feedback. This will be helpful when you focus on optimization.

Codeacademy sends feedback request emails after customers have experienced the service and understand its features. By sharing their voice, users contribute to improving this learning platform for other students.

Re-engagement email cadence — Paperstime

When customers haven't engaged with your brand for a while, it's a good time to send re-engagement emails. These often feature a "Miss you" subject line to remind them of their inactivity. On the fifth day, consider following up with a special offer, such as a discount, gift, or free shipping. If they still don’t respond, ask if they want to stay subscribed. This helps prevent spam complaints and protects your sender reputation.

Let’s examine Paperstime’s re-engagement email, which offers inactive subscribers an 11% discount with a promo code.

Event promotion email cadence — HubSpot

These emails aim to encourage registrations and maximize attendance for webinars, live events, or sales. That’s why you should also send them according to the schedule and at the right frequency. To effectively promote your event, you should connect with subscribers four weeks before it. This should be the “Save the Date” email informing about the event and offering discounts for early registrations.

Two weeks before the event, you must uncover key speakers and the agenda. One week before the event, you can email reminders to encourage last-minute registrations. Then, share the event link one day before your webinar as the final reminder for attendees. This email cadence will enable all interested people to register for and attend the event.

Below, you will find an email from HubSpot inviting subscribers to its upcoming webinar. It includes a call-to-action button for registration and all the essential information about the webinar.

Now that you know what email cadence involves, it’s time to explore best practices. These will help you craft an effective email marketing strategy that meets subscriber expectations and enhances engagement.

Email cadence has a big influence on email marketing performance, including open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. Delivering the right content at the right time ensures that your audience receives your message and pays attention to it. If you aim to improve your conversion rates, consider the following best practices.

1. Identify the key goals for your email campaigns. Before sending emails, you should determine what you want to attain. Your email cadence will depend on whether the campaign targets lead nurturing, customer retention, sales conversion, or re-engagement. For instance, when you nurture your prospects, your cadence needs to focus on educating them, highlighting the product's benefits, and offering a special discount for their first purchase.
2. Start with a welcome email. After new site visitors subscribe to your email newsletter, ensure to send them a welcome email thanking them for opting in. It enables you to remind prospects about your brand once more and start educating these subscribers about your brand and its products.
3. Take advantage of A/B testing. Identifying the ideal timing, frequency, content format, and placement of CTAs is essential for the effectiveness of every email campaign. By utilizing A/B testing, you can determine whether it’s more effective to send emails in the morning or evening, distribute messages daily or weekly, and choose between short or long content, among other variables. This method also enables you to evaluate different CTA placements and identify which ones generate the highest engagement. With A/B testing, you discover what resonates best with your audience.
4. Incorporate segmentation. When you group customers by similar characteristics, you can tailor your content to their journey, needs, requirements, problems, and preferences. Segmentation allows you to categorize your audience and send welcome emails to new subscribers, sales-focused messages to prospects ready to convert, and re-engagement campaigns to inactive subscribers.
5. Identify the perfect frequency. Although the frequency of emails varies by industry, it’s common for businesses to send email campaigns once a week or three times a month. This approach helps subscribers remember your brand and prevents them from feeling overwhelmed by excessive emails. Additionally, the number of messages may change depending on the customer's journey stage. For instance, when clients abandon their shopping carts, you might need to send three to four messages a week to encourage action.
6. Adjust the timing for higher open rates. When sending emails, you should keep in mind that certain days of the week and times lead to higher open rates and clicks. Most marketers prefer to deliver email campaigns on Mondays because they generate a 51.90% open rate. Tuesdays and Sundays are among the best days to share content and enhance engagement. According to MailerLite, it’s better to send emails between 3 pm and 7 pm during weekdays and at 9 am on weekends.
7. Personalize content. Subscribers open emails and explore offers when the content is relevant. For this purpose, you should tailor your emails based on your prospects' needs, pain points, and requirements. For example, when customers don’t check out your items, you might consider offering them a special price for these particular products. It will encourage them to take advantage of the offer.
8. Provide value. Your emails should provide helpful content based on the customer journey stage. Some of the subscribers need to discover your brand in detail, while others might search for customer success stories and testimonials for a well-thought-out decision.
9. Ensure an easy opt-out. Even if you send emails at the right time and frequency, engagement isn’t always guaranteed. Make it easy for subscribers to opt out if they’re no longer interested. Some may have already found a solution and no longer need your updates. Including an unsubscribe button in every email allows them to leave gracefully, protecting your sender reputation and email deliverability.
10. Clean up your mailing list regularly. To maintain strong email deliverability, a positive sender reputation, and high engagement, regularly remove inactive and invalid email addresses. There’s no benefit in sending content to unresponsive subscribers—in fact, keeping them increases the risk of spam complaints, which can harm your reputation. Cleaning your list ensures your scheduled email campaigns reach engaged subscribers' inboxes smoothly.
11. Track email performance and adjust. Email marketing isn’t just about applying new strategies—it’s also about tracking their success. Use analytics to evaluate your email cadence, and if open, click-through, or conversion rates fall short, adjust the frequency, timing, or content. This approach helps refine your campaigns and drive more conversions.

In short, a well-planned email cadence boosts open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. Email marketing is powerful, but only when done right. Consistent visibility, relevant content, and perfect timing are key to turning prospects into customers.

Last Updated: 26.02.2025