How Often Do You Publish Your Newsletter?

As often as your subscribers will read it.

You may recall I’ve long recommended that businesses publish a newsletter on a monthly basis.

If that is too onerous an effort, then it should be at least quarterly.

I asked colleagues about the frequency of their newsletters and compiled their responses below. Admittedly, most of them are marketing professionals; because they are more comfortable with the content creation process, this may have skewed the answers to the more frequent side.

Here’s how they arrived at their selected schedule and the focus of their practice:

Deliver value and not be viewed as spam:
Laurel Carpenter, monthly, brand voice copywriting
Rachel Clar, twice monthly, empower BigLaw women
Steve Fretzin, twice monthly, legal business development

Designed to be visible to their readers:
Ilise Benun, twice monthly, marketing for creative professionals
Sue Horner, monthly, tips on writing, words, newsletters and more
Sara Mears, monthly-ish, branding, marketing, presentation, and design
Ivy Slater, weekly, leadership, personal growth, business strategy, sales, and internal engagement

Subscriber preference:
Guy Alvarez, weekly, AI’s transformation of legal practice, client relationships, and business development

How often they read other newsletters:
Jane Becker, twice monthly, stories of custom jewelry designs, high-value sales, exceptional estates, and appraisals

Note that the most frequent answers relate to the appetite of their subscribers for communication that is perceived as relevant and not spam, plus the desire to be top of mind with their readers.

Consider that developing newsletters for publication, alongside other professional activities, is an issue even for communications professionals, who arrived that their periodicity to:

Manage their workload and their newsletter:
Beth Granger , no set schedule, the power of community, conversation, and curiosity
Ron Latz, weekly, actionable marketing insights 
Howard Levy, twice monthly, harness the power of AI for nonprofit marketing and fundraising
Matt Plavnick, monthly, legal marketing
Erika Steinberg, quarterly, legal marketing
Precious Williams, monthly, innovative sales and pitch tips

As Ilise Benun noted, “(twice a month) is a lot of work, especially if you’re not a content machine, so I advise my clients to publish monthly at the most.”

You are encouraged to take these two insights to heart when calibrating the frequency of your newsletter: meeting readers’ expectations and investing your own time.

This Month’s Tip

Newsletters are a balancing act, like much in life. Too frequent and your insights risk being ignored or deleted by busy subscribers. Too infrequent and you will fade into the background.

Start with a monthly schedule. After a few issues, check your open rate, which should be 15%-25%, according to Mailjet, an email newsletter provider. Perhaps survey your readers. You can always ramp up or slow down and advise subscribers of this change of pace.

Exception: when you skip an issue, due to a work deadline or personal emergency, do not apologize. Simply plow ahead, as if nothing happened. I guarantee no one noticed. If they did, thank them for their loyal readership.


Contact

It’s time for you to take the plunge into an email newsletter, or to evaluate the frequency of your current publication. Contact me at Janet@JanetLFalk.com, book an appointment here or call me at 212.677.5770. Let’s find the balance between your time and your readers’ attention.

See also Resources to Rev Up Your Newsletter (or Start One).

Many thanks to my colleagues for their responses. Click on their names to view their newsletter or website.

This discussion was sparked by a conversation about newsletter frequency with email newsletter publisher Charley Mann.

Image credit: Edx Education