Email frequency: how often is too often

One restaurant emails its guests three times a week and wonders why its unsubscribes keep rising. Another emails twice a year and wonders why nobody remembers it. Both have an email frequency problem, in opposite directions. Somewhere between them is a rhythm that keeps a venue in guests' minds without wearing out their patience, and it is different for every venue.

There is no single right answer to how often a restaurant should email, but there are clear signs of too much and too little, and a simple way to find your own rhythm from what your guests actually do. The answer depends less on a number than on two things: what you promised guests when they joined, and whether every email is worth reading.

This guide covers the cadence restaurants usually get away with, the signs that you are sending too often or too rarely, the weeks when two sends are perfectly fine, how to plan a rhythm with an email calendar and how to find your own cadence without guessing. Every venue and figure in it is an example.

Send too rarely, and guests forget you. When an email does arrive, months after the last, it feels like it came from a stranger, and some guests have forgotten that they ever signed up. Send too often, and guests tire of you. They stop reading, unsubscribe or mark emails as spam, which can push your emails into the spam folder for everyone.

The right email frequency keeps the venue present without becoming noise. Guests who hear from you at a steady, reasonable rhythm, with something worth reading each time, come to expect your emails and act on them.

Most restaurants find a comfortable rhythm somewhere between twice a month and once a week. Some lists accept more, up to two or three emails a week, when every email is short and genuinely useful; others prefer less. A monthly email is the minimum for staying in guests' minds; less than that, and the venue starts to feel like a stranger.

Treat these as starting points, not rules. A café whose regulars love its weekly bake list may happily send every week. A fine-dining restaurant with a list of occasional guests may do best with a monthly note and an occasional event invitation. The right cadence is the one your guests respond to.

The most important limit on frequency is the promise you made when guests opted in. If the box said "about twice a month", then twice a month is the rhythm guests agreed to. Sending every week breaks that promise, however good the emails are.

If you want to send more often than you promised, change the promise for new subscribers and tell existing ones what is changing. Our guide to email opt in that guests do not regret covers how to make the promise in the first place.

The clearest sign is a rise in unsubscribes after each send. Others include spam complaints, a falling click rate even on good emails, and replies that say "too many emails". If guests who used to book from your emails stop doing so, frequency may be part of the reason.

Look for the pattern over several sends. One email with more unsubscribes than usual may have been the wrong message. Unsubscribes rising steadily as you add sends is a sign the rhythm itself is too fast.

Sending too rarely has its own signs. Clicks are low when you do send, because guests have forgotten you. Bounces rise, because addresses go stale between emails. Some guests are surprised to hear from you, and a few mark the email as spam because they do not remember signing up.

The cost is less visible than unsubscribes, but it is real: a list that is rarely used loses its value. A venue that emails twice a year has a list of strangers. One that emails twice a month has a list of guests who know it.

Unsubscribes are one of the best guides to frequency, as long as you read them carefully. Every list loses a few guests with each send: people move, change their habits or simply tidy their inbox. That steady trickle is normal and healthy.

What matters is the pattern. Compare the unsubscribe rate for each send, and watch how it changes when you change your rhythm. If it stays steady when you move from twice a month to weekly, your guests accept the change. If it doubles, they do not.

It is tempting to judge frequency by email open rates: if opens fall as you send more, you are sending too often. But open rates have become unreliable, because some email apps register opens automatically and others hide them. A falling open rate may mean little, and a stable one may hide a real problem.

Use clicks, unsubscribes and bookings instead. They show what guests actually do. Our guide to email open rates and the numbers that matter more covers what to measure.

Many venues send one monthly restaurant newsletter that tries to say everything: the new menu, three events, the gift cards, a staff profile and the opening hours. The traditional newsletter format suits magazines better than restaurants, because guests want to know one thing quickly.

Replacing one long monthly newsletter with shorter, focused emails often works better, even if it means sending a little more often. Two short emails a month, each about one thing, are usually read more than one long one, and each can be sent at the moment it matters.

Some weeks naturally need two emails, and guests accept them. An event announcement followed by a reminder a few days before. The launch of a new menu, then the last tables for its opening weekend. A festive menu in December, then the dates that still have space. A terrace opening on the first warm week, then a note when the forecast turns sunny again.

What these have in common is that each email is useful on its own and related to something time-sensitive. Two sends in one week are fine when the second is genuinely helpful. They become a problem when the second is just another promotion.

Equally, some weeks need no email at all. If there is nothing new to say, saying nothing is better than sending a filler email to keep the rhythm. A guest who receives an email with no real news learns that your emails can be ignored.

A steady rhythm is valuable, but not at the cost of quality. It is better to skip a week than to send an email you would not want to read yourself.

Different groups of guests can tolerate different frequencies. Regulars, who love the venue and visit often, may welcome more frequent emails about new dishes and events. New guests, who are still deciding about you, may prefer fewer. Lapsed guests may need only an occasional, well-judged message.

If you send to segments, think about how often each group hears from you in total. A regular who receives the regulars' email, the event email and the general newsletter in the same week may be hearing from you far more often than you intended.

In a group, a guest may be subscribed to several venues, or to the group as a whole. If each venue sends its own emails without coordinating, a guest who likes three of your venues may receive six emails a week, and unsubscribe from all of them.

Agree how often the group as a whole contacts each guest, and coordinate the calendar so emails from different venues do not pile up in the same week. A guest should feel they are hearing from a group they like, not being targeted by several businesses at once.

Automated marketing emails, such as a monthly regulars' note or an email sent when a guest becomes lapsed, add to the total a guest receives. They are easy to forget because nobody sends them by hand, but guests experience them like any other email.

Count them when you think about frequency. And remember the difference between marketing emails and the emails that come with a booking, such as confirmations and reminders. Guests expect those, and they do not usually count against your marketing rhythm, as long as they stay about the booking.

The simplest way to manage frequency is an email calendar: a plan of what you will send, to whom and when, for the coming months. It shows at a glance how often each group hears from you, and stops emails clustering in one week and leaving gaps in others.

A calendar also improves quality, because each email has a planned purpose rather than being written in a hurry to fill a gap. Our guide to an email calendar for a venue with no marketer covers how to build one in an afternoon.

To find your own rhythm, start with a cautious one, such as twice a month, and keep every email short and useful. After a couple of months, try adding a send, for example moving to weekly, and watch what happens to unsubscribes, clicks and bookings.

If unsubscribes stay steady and clicks and bookings rise, your guests welcome the extra emails. If unsubscribes jump and clicks fall, step back. Change one thing at a time, and give each change a few weeks before judging it.

A predictable rhythm often matters more than the exact frequency. Guests who know that your email arrives every other Tuesday come to expect it, and some look forward to it. Guests who receive three emails one week and none for two months never know what to expect.

Pick a rhythm you can keep. A venue that promises weekly emails and manages them for a month, then falls silent, is worse off than one that sends reliably twice a month all year.

Frequency can shift with the seasons, as long as it does so sensibly. December often justifies a few more emails, because guests are planning and there is more to say. Quiet months, such as January, may also justify more, because emails can fill nights that would otherwise be empty.

Summer may need fewer, if many guests are away. Plan the seasonal shifts into the calendar, so that busier periods are deliberate rather than accidental, and return to the normal rhythm afterwards.

The real limit on frequency is quality. Guests will accept more emails from a venue whose every email is short, specific and useful. They will tire quickly of a venue whose emails are long, repetitive or full of offers.

So before asking whether to send more often, ask whether each email is worth reading. If the answer is yes, you can probably send a little more. If it is no, sending more will only accelerate the problem.

Guests will often tell you how they feel about your emails, if you listen. Replies, comments at the table and answers to a simple question in an email, such as "Would you like to hear from us more or less often?", all give direct feedback.

Take it seriously. A few guests saying "too many emails" is a signal worth heeding, especially if it matches a rise in unsubscribes. A few saying "I love your weekly specials" is a sign the rhythm suits your most engaged guests.

Sudden changes in frequency can affect whether emails reach the inbox. A venue that has sent once a month for a year and suddenly sends daily may look suspicious to email providers, especially if unsubscribes and spam complaints rise at the same time.

Change frequency gradually, and keep an eye on the delivery rate and bounces as you do. Our guide to email deliverability: why your mail goes to spam covers what affects whether your emails arrive.

Some email tools let guests choose how often they hear from you, such as weekly or monthly, or which kinds of email they want. Where that is possible, it can keep guests who would otherwise unsubscribe.

Where it is not, the promise beside the opt-in box does the same job: it tells guests what rhythm to expect, so they can decide before they join. Keeping that promise is the simplest way to respect their choice.

Sometimes the right frequency is none, for a while. After a run of event emails, a busy festive season or a period of frequent sends, a short pause lets the list rest. Guests notice the quiet, and the next email feels fresh rather than relentless.

Plan pauses into the calendar, especially after busy periods. A list that gets a breather is more likely to respond when you return with something worth saying.

A new venue's list needs a little care with frequency. In the first months, guests are still learning who you are, and a rhythm that is too fast can lose them before they have formed a habit. Start gently, perhaps twice a month, and let the list settle.

As guests come to know the venue and respond to its emails, you can try a faster rhythm. A list built over a year of steady, useful emails tolerates far more than one that is a few weeks old.

When the venue closes for a holiday or a refurbishment, frequency should drop to almost nothing. One email telling guests when you are closing and when you will reopen is useful; a stream of emails during the closure is not.

Before reopening, one email with the date and something new to come back for brings guests back without overwhelming them. Then return to the normal rhythm, rather than making up for the quiet weeks with a burst of sends.

Frequency and content affect each other. A venue that sends weekly can afford for each email to be short and about one thing. A venue that sends monthly may feel pressure to fit everything in, which makes each email longer and less read.

If your emails keep growing longer, it may be a sign that you are not sending often enough to say what you need to say. If they keep getting thinner, you may be sending too often. Let the content guide the rhythm, and the rhythm guide the content.

Once a quarter, look at frequency on its own: how many emails each group of guests received, how unsubscribes moved and whether clicks per email rose or fell. It takes a few minutes with the campaign reports and the calendar.

The answer tells you whether to hold the rhythm, slow down or try a little more. Without the check, frequency tends to creep upwards, one extra email at a time, until guests start to leave.

An invented wine bar sends a long monthly newsletter and a separate offer email most weeks. Its unsubscribes have been rising and its clicks falling. It replaces both with a single rhythm: a short email every other week, each about one thing, plus a second email only in weeks with an event and a reminder.

It plans the rhythm in an email calendar and watches unsubscribes and clicks for each send. After three months, unsubscribes are lower, clicks per email are higher and the tasting evenings fill from the emails. The bar tries a weekly rhythm for a month, sees unsubscribes rise and returns to every other week.

In servearound, each venue's list health shows how many sends went out this week, against the guide that a list sustains about one to three a week, with the unsubscribe rate across recent sends, confirmed subscribers and net growth over thirty days. The send checklist says when this list was last emailed, so a second send in the same week is a decision rather than an accident, and campaign analytics show the unsubscribe rate and every campaign side by side.

Automations skip anyone who had a campaign email from the network in the last seven days, whichever venue sent it, and each guest receives an automation at most once, so automated sends do not pile up on the same guests. There is no per-segment frequency setting for one-off campaigns, so the rhythm in this guide is one you keep with an email calendar. Booking emails, such as confirmations and reminders, are separate from campaigns and go to every guest who books. See Campaigns.

Most find a comfortable rhythm between twice a month and once a week. Test to find yours.

It is a reasonable minimum. Less often, and guests start to forget you.

Yes, when both are useful, such as an event and its reminder.

Unsubscribes rise with each send, clicks fall and guests tell you.

No. Use unsubscribes, clicks and bookings instead.

Shorter, focused emails usually work better than one long newsletter.

Yes. Guests experience them like any other marketing email.

Send nothing. Skipping a week is better than a filler email.

Email frequency has no single right answer, but most restaurants do well between twice a month and once a week, with the promise made at opt in as the limit. Watch for the signs of too much, such as rising unsubscribes and falling clicks, and of too little, such as forgotten guests and stale addresses. Judge by what guests do, not by open rates.

Two sends in a week are fine when both are useful; a week with nothing to say needs no email. Replace a long monthly newsletter with shorter, focused emails, count automated emails in the total, coordinate across venues and plan the rhythm in an email calendar. Find your own cadence by changing one thing at a time, keep it consistent and let quality set the ceiling.