Optimizing Email Frequency for Maximum ARPU
Email frequency is like caffeine — too little, and your users forget you exist. Too much, and they get jittery, unsubscribe, or worse: mark you as spam. Finding the sweet spot is where ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) climbs instead of crashes.
This is especially important for apps with short trial windows, paywalls, and high churn risk. Most teams either go “set-and-forget” with a timid two-emails-a-week plan or blast five in three days and vanish. Both waste revenue potential.
Step 1: Stop Copying Your Competitors’ Cadence
Your competitors might be sending daily emails — but that doesn’t mean it’s working. Copy-paste frequency is why many apps plateau at mediocre ARPU. Instead, start with your own data:
Engagement decay curve: How quickly do open and click rates drop over a sequence?
Time-to-first-purchase: How many days does it take for 80% of conversions to happen?
Paywall revisit patterns: Do users tend to upgrade after a certain number of touches?
These will tell you whether you should cluster emails early in the trial or spread them out.
Step 2: Segment Frequency by User Intent
Every user shouldn’t get the same rhythm.
Examples:
High-intent users (clicked a paywall, used multiple features): Hit them daily during trial, then scale back.
Low-engagement users (quiz completed but no in-app activity): Every 2–3 days, with re-engagement hooks.
Long-term subscribers: Weekly or bi-weekly value-driven emails to avoid fatigue.
Pro tip: You can run multiple frequency tests in parallel for each segment. That’s how you find what moves ARPU without torching your list.
Step 3: Match Frequency to Offer Type
You don’t need the same send cadence for:
Onboarding sequences: High frequency early, taper off.
Feature education: Short bursts around feature releases.
Promotional pushes: Higher frequency in short windows, but only if urgency is real.
Think of it as different heart rates for different workouts.
Step 4: Use Engagement-Based Throttling
Stop thinking “3 emails/week” as a fixed law. Instead:
Send more when they engage more.
Slow down when they ghost.
Re-accelerate if they re-engage (open, click, or log in).
Your ESP should let you automate this with conditional sends and recency scoring.
Step 5: Test ARPU Directly, Not Just Opens
Open and click rates can mislead.
The real KPI for frequency testing?
ARPU per cohort.
Example:
You run a 10-day trial. Two test groups:
Group A: 6 emails total → ARPU $3.20
Group B: 10 emails total → ARPU $4.10
Even if Group B’s click rate is lower, their ARPU win makes the higher frequency worth keeping.
Step 6: Don’t Forget Post-Purchase Frequency
A lot of brands go quiet after the first conversion — a huge ARPU leak. Post-purchase, your users are more primed to spend again than any other time.
Upsells, bundles, and seasonal offers work better in the 30 days after purchase than at any random moment.
FAQ: Optimizing Email Frequency for Maximum ARPU
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ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) measures how much revenue you generate from each user. In email marketing, it’s a key metric to track the impact of your campaigns on actual monetization, not just engagement.
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Data shows that trial users respond best to daily emails in the first 5 days, especially if the content is personalized and tied to their in-app actions.
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Yes — if frequency isn’t segmented by engagement. Adaptive cadence, based on behaviour, prevents fatigue and boosts conversions.
But an even more honest answer?
Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.
The only way to find out — test and measure. -
Paying users typically prefer fewer emails. Want to raise revenue? Focus on retention, churn management and upsells.
Don’t sell the things that are already sold.
