How Often Should You Send?

I was recently asked how often your newsletter should be sent.

When deciding on frequency, I believe there are three considerations you need to make.

The first consideration is whether you have the time to write and send something every day. If you don’t currently have the discipline to do so, can you build it? Can you make writing part of your daily routine so it becomes something you do instead of something you have to do?

Paradoxically, writing daily might actually be more efficient than writing weekly - writing for 30 minutes a day, five days a week, is two-and-a-half hours, versus three hours or more weekly.

If you don’t enjoy doing something, you won’t do it - and since writing daily requires a higher level of commitment than writing weekly or biweekly, it’s a lot easier to justify stopping outright. However, that level of commitment also brings with it numerous benefits, such as the ability to ideate more quickly.

The second consideration is whether you have any existing credibility with the audience you’re targeting. If you’ve spent years doing things like giving presentations and attending trade shows in a particular market, you have more credibility in that market than someone who has just entered. Since you’re already credible to that audience, you don’t need to put in as much effort to maintain that credibility.

However, if you’re new to a market, or have pivoted from another market, writing a daily newsletter about your ideal customer’s problems will increase your credibility in that market much more quickly than writing a weekly newsletter will.

The third consideration is what your risk tolerance is. What goals do you have for your newsletter? Do you need it to be successful as quickly as possible, or do you have the runway to allow for slower growth?

If you’re starting from scratch, a daily newsletter can still take time to gain traction and attract a following. You’re creating more helpful material for your audience than you otherwise would be, but it still needs to proliferate and be discovered.

If you’re curious about the frequency with which you should send your newsletter, I’d encourage you to try out weekly to start. If you build the habit of weekly writing and want to know what writing daily is like, create a separate “pop-up” newsletter about a different or more specialized topic as an experiment.

If you enjoy writing that newsletter and want to apply those learnings to your main newsletter, just make sure that your audience knows that you’re changing your cadence in advance.

There are multiple benefits to writing and sending a daily newsletter, but not everyone is able to commit to doing so. Despite those benefits, weekly or biweekly newsletters are not lesser options - they might take a bit longer, but they'll still accomplish the same goals.