Terms

Email Cadence

Email cadence is the specific frequency, timing, and sequence of emails sent to an audience. The primary goal is to find a sustainable rhythm that maximizes engagement and achieves campaign objectives without causing subscriber fatigue. This balance is crucial for maintaining a healthy relationship with your subscribers and reducing unsubscribe rates.

Importance of Email Cadence

A well-tuned email cadence is vital for campaign success. It helps guide leads through the buyer's journey, keeping them engaged without feeling pestered. This builds trust and strengthens customer relationships, ultimately improving your marketing results.

Conversely, a poor cadence can be detrimental. Sending emails too often leads to high unsubscribe rates, while sending too infrequently risks losing leads to competitors. Finding the right balance is key to maintaining a healthy list and avoiding wasted resources.

Best Practices for Email Cadence

There's no one-size-fits-all formula for the perfect email cadence. The key is to tailor your approach to your specific audience and business goals. Following these best practices will help you find the right rhythm for your campaigns.

  • Goals: Define your campaign objectives to guide your cadence strategy.
  • Segmentation: Group subscribers by interests or behavior to send more relevant content.
  • Personalization: Customize emails to increase engagement and perceived value.
  • Testing: Experiment with different frequencies and timings to see what your audience prefers.
  • Autonomy: Allow subscribers to control their email frequency to reduce unsubscribes.

Email Cadence vs. Email Sequence

While often used interchangeably, email cadence and email sequence serve distinct strategic purposes.

  • Email Cadence: This refers to the overall frequency and timing of your email communications. It's a long-term strategy focused on maintaining audience engagement and list health. While a well-tuned cadence builds trust, a poor one can increase unsubscribes. It's ideal for enterprises managing broad communication with diverse, long-term subscriber bases.
  • Email Sequence: This is a finite series of automated emails triggered by a specific user action. It's designed to guide a user toward a specific goal, like a purchase or trial. Sequences are highly effective for targeted nurturing but can feel impersonal if not well-crafted. They are often used for specific campaigns like onboarding or lead follow-up.

Tools to Manage Email Cadence

Email cadence management is typically handled by email marketing and automation platforms. These tools offer a suite of features designed to help marketers send the right message to the right person at the right time, optimizing engagement without overwhelming subscribers. Key capabilities include:

  • Automation: Schedule and trigger emails based on user behavior and timelines.
  • Segmentation: Divide your audience into smaller groups for more targeted messaging.
  • Analytics: Track key metrics like open rates and unsubscribes to refine your strategy.
  • Personalization: Customize email content to make it more relevant to each recipient.

Common Mistakes in Email Cadence

An ineffective email cadence often stems from a few common, easily avoidable missteps.

  • Frequency: Sending too many or too few emails, leading to subscriber fatigue or disinterest.
  • Relevance: Using a one-size-fits-all approach instead of personalizing content for different segments.
  • Optimization: Failing to test, monitor analytics, or give subscribers control over their preferences.

Frequently Asked Questions about Email Cadence

How often should I send marketing emails?

There's no magic number. It depends on your audience, industry, and content value. Start with a baseline, like once a week, and use A/B testing to monitor engagement metrics like open and unsubscribe rates to find your sweet spot.

Should my email cadence change for different audience segments?

Absolutely. New subscribers might benefit from a more frequent onboarding sequence, while long-term customers may prefer less frequent updates. Tailoring cadence to segment behavior and expectations is key to maintaining engagement and reducing churn.

How do I measure the success of my email cadence?

Track key performance indicators (KPIs) like open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and unsubscribe rates. A successful cadence will show healthy engagement and low unsubscribes, indicating you've found the right frequency for your audience.

Other terms

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NoSQL

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Cohort Analysis

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Bounce Rate

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Sales Engineer

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System of Record

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System of Record

User-generated Content

User-generated content (UGC) refers to any form of content, like images, videos, or text, created and shared by users on online platforms.

User-generated Content

Webhooks

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Webhooks

Application Performance Management

Application Performance Management (APM) monitors and manages an application's performance, availability, and the experience of its end-users.

Application Performance Management

Account-Based Everything

Account-Based Everything (ABE) is a strategy aligning sales, marketing, and success teams to focus on a specific set of high-value accounts.

Account-Based Everything

Letter of Intent

A Letter of Intent (LOI) is a document declaring the preliminary commitment of one party to do business with another, outlining the chief terms.

Letter of Intent

Buying Signal

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Buying Signal

Accounts Payable

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ABM Orchestration

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ABM Orchestration

Docker

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Docker

Content Management System

A Content Management System (CMS) is software for creating, managing, and modifying website content without needing specialized technical skills.

Content Management System

Warm Outbound

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Warm Outbound

Key Accounts

Key accounts are a company's most valuable customers, vital due to their significant revenue contribution and strategic importance for growth.

Key Accounts

Headless CMS

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Headless CMS

Custom API integration

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Custom API integration

Customer Data Platform (CDP)

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) centralizes customer data from all sources to create a complete, unified profile for each individual customer.

Customer Data Platform (CDP)

SFDC

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SFDC

Net New Business

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Net New Business

Sandboxes

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Sandboxes

Sales Funnel

A sales funnel is a model illustrating the customer's journey from initial awareness to the final purchase, narrowing down leads at each stage.

Sales Funnel

De-dupe

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Consultative Selling

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Customer Acquisition Cost

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Customer Acquisition Cost

Content Rights Management

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Content Rights Management

Programmatic Display Campaign

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Programmatic Display Campaign

Customer Relationship Marketing

Customer relationship marketing is a strategy for building lasting connections with customers to foster long-term loyalty and engagement.

Customer Relationship Marketing

Expansion Revenue

Expansion revenue is the extra money a business makes from its current customers via upgrades, new products, or additional services.

Expansion Revenue

Account-Based Selling

Account-Based Selling is a B2B strategy where sales and marketing treat high-value accounts as markets of one, using personalized outreach.

Account-Based Selling

Enterprise Resource Planning

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Enterprise Resource Planning

GPCTBA/C&I

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GPCTBA/C&I

Demand

Demand is the economic principle describing a consumer's desire and willingness to purchase a specific good or service at a particular price.

Demand

Marketing Qualified Account

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Marketing Qualified Account

Product-Led Growth

Product-Led Growth (PLG) is a business strategy where the product itself drives user acquisition, conversion, and expansion.

Product-Led Growth

Competitive Analysis

Competitive analysis means identifying your rivals and assessing their strategies to pinpoint your own business's strengths and weaknesses.

Competitive Analysis

SEO

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search results.

SEO

Lead Generation

Lead generation is the process of identifying and cultivating potential customers for a business's products or services.

Lead Generation

Progressive Web Apps

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Progressive Web Apps

Voice Broadcasting

Voice broadcasting is an automated system that delivers a pre-recorded voice message to a large list of phone numbers simultaneously.

Voice Broadcasting

Revenue Forecasting

Revenue forecasting is the process of estimating a company's future revenue, using historical data and market trends to guide strategic planning.

Revenue Forecasting

Ideal Customer Profile

An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a detailed description of the perfect, hypothetical company that would get the most value from your product.

Ideal Customer Profile

Marketing Attribution Model

A marketing attribution model is a framework for assigning credit to the marketing touchpoints that lead a customer to convert.

Marketing Attribution Model

Net Revenue Retention (NRR)

Net Revenue Retention (NRR) is the percentage of recurring revenue kept from existing customers, including upsells, downgrades, and churn.

Net Revenue Retention (NRR)

Representational State Transfer Application Programming Interface

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Representational State Transfer Application Programming Interface

Lead Scoring Models

Lead scoring models rank prospects by assigning points for their behaviors and demographics, helping sales teams prioritize their outreach.

Lead Scoring Models

Sales Enablement

Sales enablement provides sales teams with the necessary tools, content, and information to help them sell more effectively and efficiently.

Sales Enablement

Video Selling

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Channel Partner

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Channel Partner

Order Management

Order management is the end-to-end process of tracking customer orders from placement to fulfillment, ensuring a seamless customer experience.

Order Management

Sales Pipeline

A sales pipeline is a visual representation of where prospects are in the sales process, from the first contact to the final sale.

Sales Pipeline

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based model where affiliates earn a commission for promoting another company’s products or services.

Affiliate Marketing

Sales Partnerships

Sales partnerships are strategic alliances where two companies co-sell products to expand their reach, generate new leads, and increase revenue.

Sales Partnerships

Point of Contact

A Point of Contact (POC) is the designated individual or department that serves as the main hub for information and communication on a matter.

Point of Contact

FAB Technique

The FAB technique is a sales framework connecting product features to advantages and then to the specific benefits for the customer.

FAB Technique

Chatbots

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Chatbots

Contact Data

Contact data is the set of details, like names, emails, and phone numbers, used to get in touch with a person or business for outreach.

Contact Data

Revenue Intelligence

Revenue intelligence is the process of collecting and analyzing customer data to provide insights that help sales teams make smarter decisions.

Revenue Intelligence

Sales Enablement Technology

Sales enablement technology refers to software and tools that equip sales teams with the resources they need to close more deals efficiently.

Sales Enablement Technology

Sales Dashboard

A sales dashboard is a visual tool that centralizes and displays key sales data, metrics, and KPIs to help teams track performance and goals.

Sales Dashboard

Business Continuity

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Business Continuity

Inside Sales

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Sales Development Representative (SDR)

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Sales Development Representative (SDR)

Persona-Based Marketing

Persona-based marketing uses fictional customer profiles, or personas, to create targeted messaging for specific audience segments.

Persona-Based Marketing

Intent Data

Intent data tracks a user's online behavior—like searches and site visits—to identify signals that they are ready to make a purchase.

Intent Data

Cross-Selling

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Lead Routing

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Lead Routing

Programmatic Advertising

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Programmatic Advertising

Single Sign-On (SSO)

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Single Sign-On (SSO)

Event Tracking

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Event Tracking

Demand Generation Framework

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Demand Generation Framework

AI Sales Script Generator

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AI Sales Script Generator

Operational CRM

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Operational CRM

Total Addressable Market (TAM)

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Total Addressable Market (TAM)

Buyer Intent Data

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Buyer Intent Data

Sales Demo

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Sales Demo

Performance Plan

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Performance Plan

Gamification

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Gamification

Product Recommendations

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Product Recommendations

Email Personalization

Email personalization uses subscriber data—like their name, interests, or past behavior—to create highly relevant and targeted email campaigns.

Email Personalization

White Label

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Marketo

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Precision Targeting

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Precision Targeting

Elevator Pitch

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Scrum

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Objection Handling

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Brag Book

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Sales and Marketing Analytics

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Landing Pages

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Landing Pages

Consumer Relationship Management

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Consumer Relationship Management

Lead Generation Software

Lead generation software helps businesses automate finding and capturing potential customers' contact information to build sales pipelines.

Lead Generation Software

Marketing Operations

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Marketing Operations

Sales Development

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Sales Development

Average Revenue per User

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Average Revenue per User

Canary Releases

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Canary Releases

Lead Nurturing

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Lead Nurturing