AI & Automation
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
When I started working with a B2B SaaS client who was obsessing over the "perfect" newsletter frequency, they were sending one monthly newsletter that nobody read. The open rates were dismal, engagement was non-existent, and they were basically shouting into the void.
Sound familiar? Most SaaS founders I work with are paralyzed by the same question: how often should I email my subscribers without annoying them? The conventional wisdom says "weekly is safe" or "monthly keeps you top of mind without being pushy." But here's what I discovered through actual client work: frequency isn't the problem—value is.
After experimenting with different approaches across multiple B2B clients, I landed on a strategy that actually increased engagement while sending more emails, not fewer. This isn't theory from a marketing blog—this is what actually happened when we shifted from playing it safe to providing genuine value.
Here's what you'll learn from my real-world experiments:
Why the "weekly is safe" advice kills engagement
The specific frequency formula that doubled our click-through rates
How to structure content so people actually want more emails
The exact metrics that matter (and which ones don't)
When to break your own rules for maximum impact
This approach works whether you're a early-stage startup building your first email list or an established SaaS looking to increase contact inquiries through better email engagement.
Industry wisdom
What every SaaS founder has already heard
The marketing industry has basically settled on a few "safe" newsletter frequencies for SaaS companies. Here's what every growth blog and email marketing guru will tell you:
Weekly newsletters are the gold standard—frequent enough to stay relevant, not so frequent that you annoy people
Monthly updates for product-focused content to avoid overwhelming subscribers
Bi-weekly emails as the "compromise" between staying in touch and respecting inbox space
Segmented frequency based on user behavior—active users get more emails, inactive users get fewer
Event-triggered emails only, avoiding scheduled newsletters altogether
This conventional wisdom exists because it feels logical and safe. Nobody gets fired for sending weekly emails. It's the marketing equivalent of wearing a navy blue suit to a job interview—it won't hurt you, but it won't make you memorable either.
The problem is that this "safe" approach treats email frequency like a numbers game instead of a relationship-building tool. When you're so focused on not annoying people, you end up creating content that's forgettable. Your weekly newsletter becomes just another email that gets skimmed and deleted.
Here's where the conventional wisdom falls short: it assumes that frequency drives unsubscribes, when in reality, irrelevance drives unsubscribes. I've seen SaaS companies lose more subscribers from boring monthly newsletters than from valuable daily content. The metric everyone obsesses over—unsubscribe rate—is actually the wrong metric to optimize for.
Most SaaS founders are playing not to lose instead of playing to win. They're so worried about being "too much" that they end up being nothing at all. Your newsletter becomes wallpaper—present but invisible.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The client that changed my perspective on newsletter frequency was a B2B automation SaaS with about 2,000 subscribers. They were sending a monthly newsletter with typical SaaS content: product updates, feature announcements, and the occasional "thought leadership" piece written by their marketing intern.
The numbers were brutal: 12% open rates, 1.2% click-through rates, and virtually no engagement. More importantly, their newsletter wasn't driving any meaningful business results. No trial signups, no demo requests, no revenue attribution. It was just... there.
When I analyzed their subscriber behavior, I discovered something interesting. Their most engaged users—the ones actually using the product and likely to upgrade—were getting the same generic monthly update as people who signed up for a lead magnet six months ago and never opened another email.
My first instinct was to follow conventional wisdom: improve the content quality, segment the list better, optimize send times. We tried all of that. Open rates improved slightly, but engagement remained flat. The newsletter still felt like an obligation rather than something people genuinely wanted to receive.
That's when I had a conversation with one of their power users during a customer interview. He mentioned that he wished he could get more frequent updates about automation best practices and real use cases. "I love what you guys send," he said, "but I only hear from you once a month. I'd read more if you sent it."
This comment flipped my entire approach. Instead of asking "How often can we email without annoying people?" I started asking "How can we provide so much value that people want to hear from us more often?"
The challenge was that the client was stuck in the typical SaaS content trap: treating their newsletter like a corporate announcement channel instead of a value delivery system. Every email was about them—their product, their updates, their achievements. No wonder people weren't engaged.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Here's the experiment that changed everything: instead of monthly newsletters, we shifted to twice-weekly value emails with a completely different content philosophy. This wasn't just increasing frequency—it was rebuilding the entire approach from scratch.
The New Content Structure:
Tuesday emails became "Real Implementation Stories"—actual case studies from users, step-by-step automation workflows, and specific examples of how people were using the tool. No product pitches, no feature announcements, just pure value.
Thursday emails were "Quick Wins"—short, actionable tips that readers could implement in under 10 minutes. These weren't generic productivity advice; they were specific automation strategies that worked whether someone used our client's tool or not.
The Content Creation Process:
Instead of having the marketing team write everything, we leveraged actual customer success stories and founder insights. The CEO would spend 30 minutes every week documenting interesting use cases he'd seen, and the customer success team would share specific automation workflows that were working well.
We used AI content automation to help structure and polish these insights, but the core ideas came from real user experiences. This gave us an endless content engine while keeping everything practical and relevant.
The Personalization Layer:
We segmented the list not by company size or industry, but by engagement level and use case. Power users got more advanced content, new subscribers got foundational concepts, and trial users got onboarding-focused emails. But everyone got the same frequency—value twice a week.
The Measurement Framework:
Instead of obsessing over unsubscribe rates, we tracked engagement depth: click-through rates, time spent reading, and most importantly, conversion to demos and trials. We also monitored support ticket themes to see if our educational content was reducing common questions.
The key insight was treating the newsletter like a product, not a marketing channel. Every email needed to solve a specific problem or teach something immediately useful. If we couldn't articulate the specific value in the subject line, the email didn't get sent.
This approach required more upfront work to build the content systems, but it scaled beautifully once we had the framework in place. The content practically wrote itself because we were documenting real user successes instead of manufacturing marketing messages.
Real Stories
We used actual customer implementations instead of theoretical case studies to build trust and provide immediate value
Quick Wins
Every email included something readers could implement in under 10 minutes to drive consistent engagement
Value-First
No product pitches in the main content—value delivery built trust that converted better than direct selling
Data-Driven
We tracked engagement depth and business metrics rather than vanity metrics like open rates
The results completely contradicted everything I'd been taught about email frequency. By doubling our send frequency while focusing obsessively on value, we saw:
Engagement metrics improved across the board: Open rates increased from 12% to 28%, click-through rates jumped from 1.2% to 4.7%, and unsubscribe rates actually decreased from 2.1% to 1.3% per email. People were more likely to stay subscribed when they were getting consistent value.
Business impact was immediate: Newsletter-attributed demo requests increased by 340% within the first quarter. More importantly, these leads converted at a higher rate because they were pre-educated about the product's capabilities through the use cases we shared.
Unexpected secondary benefits: Customer support tickets dropped by 23% as people found answers in the educational content. The sales team started referencing newsletter content in demos because prospects were already familiar with advanced use cases.
The timeline was faster than expected. We saw engagement improvements within two weeks of the frequency change, and meaningful business metrics shifted within 6-8 weeks. The key was that we didn't just increase frequency—we completely redesigned what each email delivered.
What surprised me most was the feedback. Instead of complaints about "too many emails," we started getting replies asking for specific topics and thanking us for the practical advice. The newsletter became a relationship-building tool instead of a broadcast channel.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
This experiment taught me several lessons that apply beyond just email frequency:
Value beats frequency concerns: People don't unsubscribe from useful content, regardless of how often you send it. They unsubscribe from irrelevant content, even if it's just once a month.
Document, don't create: The best newsletter content comes from documenting what's already happening in your business—customer wins, interesting use cases, common questions. You don't need to be a content creator; you need to be a good documentarian.
Engagement depth matters more than reach: A smaller, highly engaged list that converts to revenue is infinitely more valuable than a large list that ignores your emails.
Systems enable consistency: Having a clear content framework and involving multiple team members makes frequent sending sustainable. One person trying to write everything twice a week will burn out.
Test your assumptions: The "conventional wisdom" about email frequency exists because it's safe, not because it's optimal. Sometimes being contrarian delivers better results.
Segmentation by value, not demographics: How people want to engage with your content matters more than what industry they're in or how big their company is.
Treat newsletters like a product: Apply the same rigor to your email content that you apply to your software features. If it doesn't solve a problem, don't ship it.
If I were starting over, I'd focus even more on creating systems for capturing and organizing customer insights. The content quality is only as good as your input sources, and the best input comes from real user experiences.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups implementing this approach:
Start by documenting 5-10 specific customer use cases
Create a simple content calendar with value themes
Set up tracking for engagement depth, not just open rates
Build a system for capturing customer success stories
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores adapting this framework:
Focus on customer styling tips and usage examples
Share behind-the-scenes content and product stories
Create educational content around your product category
Use customer photos and testimonials as content inspiration