1-Minute Recap
If you’re just here for the answer to “how often should you email your list?”, here’s the quick version:
- There’s no single magic number, but for most brands, 1–4 marketing emails per month to a broad list is the sweet spot where performance tends to hold up.
- For casinos, hotels, and franchises, frequency is a data problem, not a feelings problem. You should look at open rates, click through rates and unsubscribe rates together to decide whether to send more or less.
- As a starting point:
- Casinos: 1–2 broad email campaigns per week per engaged player segment + triggered trips/events + regulatory messages.
- Hotels: A lifecycle-driven cadence tied to browsing, booking, pre-arrival, in-stay, and post-stay moments + 2–4 brand/offer sends per month.
- Franchises: Fewer, deeper touches—usually 2–3 educational marketing emails per month per active lead, plus milestone follow-ups.
To do this well, you need to go beyond “we feel like we’re sending emails too often” and let data from your email campaigns do the talking.
This guide assumes you’re already familiar with:
We’ll use those as guardrails for frequency.
Why “How Often Should You Email Your List?” Is the Wrong First Question
Most articles on email frequency say some version of:
“It depends on your audience. Don’t send too many emails. Test and see.”
Not wrong, but not enough if you’re:
- A casino balancing offers, events, player development, and responsible gaming comms
- A hotel brand coordinating pre-arrival, upsells, in-stay experiences, and loyalty
- A franchise system where leads, franchisees, and local customers all receive emails from the same brand
In that environment, “how often should we send marketing emails?” isn’t a soft question.
It’s a revenue and risk decision that should be grounded in:
- The value and intent of each segment
- The behavior of people who receive emails from you
- What your business model requires to grow
So instead of asking “how many is too many,” we’re going to frame this as email cadence 101 for casinos, hotels, and franchises—and then show how to tune frequency using data.
Framework: Frequency Is a Data Problem, Not a Feelings Problem
Here’s a simple framework to make frequency decisions based on data, not guesswork.
1. Classify all the ways you’re sending emails
Break your program into three buckets:
- Campaigns (batch/broadcast):
- Promotions, newsletters, event announcements, PR, brand storytelling.
- Automations (journeys/flows):
- Browse or booking abandonment, post-visit flows, reactivation, loyalty journeys, birthday/anniversary, host outreach.
- Transactional/Regulatory:
- Receipts, confirmations, account changes, self-exclusion updates, legal or compliance notices.
Once you see how many types of email campaigns you’re running, “how often to send marketing emails” becomes a lot easier to manage.
2. Segment by engagement and value
Don’t treat your entire list as one blob. For each brand or property, define:
- Engagement tiers:
- Recently opened/clicked vs cold; who still clearly wants to receive emails.
- Value tiers:
- VIP vs casual player, frequent vs infrequent guest, late-stage vs early-stage franchise lead.
High-value, highly engaged segments can usually handle more frequent emails—as long as they’re relevant and clearly beneficial.
3. Use your metrics as guardrails
For each key segment, track trends in:
- Open rate → Is inbox performance and interest holding up?
- CTR → Is content/offer alignment getting better or worse?
- Unsubscribe rate → Are more people unsubscribing as you increase frequency?
You don’t look at any of these in isolation, open rates, click through rates and unsubscribe rates together tell you how your list feels about your cadence.
- Open signals → Understanding Email Open Rates
- Click signals → CTR guide
4. Define floors and ceilings per segment
For each major segment, decide:
- Floor:
- The minimum touch so they don’t forget you and your email lists stay warm.
- Ceiling:
- The maximum number of marketing emails you’ll send in a typical month before you start to risk fatigue.
With that in place, you can adjust which campaigns and automations fire—without arguing feelings about “too many emails.”
Recommended Email Frequency: Casinos
The reality
Casinos don’t just run simple promo emails.
You’ve got:
- Offers and comps
- Events and entertainment
- Hotel and F&B promotions
- VIP and host-driven outreach
- Responsible gaming and regulatory communications
If you only send emails once a month, you’re leaving money on the table. If you blast everyone daily, people unsubscribe, complain, or tune you out.
Baseline cadence for engaged players
Focus on engaged, opted-in player segments, not the entire database.
Campaigns:
- Start with 1–2 campaigns per week per engaged segment:
- 1x offers/events email
- 1x brand/reputation email (PR, community, property updates, CSR)
Automations:
Depending on player behavior, automations might add 2–6 emails per month:
- New signup / loyalty program welcome
- Trip pre-arrival reminders
- Post-visit recaps and “next visit” nudges
- Near-expiry points and offers
- Invitations to events that match their play style
Regulatory/compliance:
These go out as needed and aren’t throttled for frequency—but they’re still part of the experience when someone receives emails from your casino.
Your Casino Email Marketing Strategies article is where you can map these into real programs and see how often each segment is actually being touched.
Floors and ceilings for casinos
- Floor (engaged players):
- At least 2–3 emails per month, or you risk fading into the background and letting competitors own the inbox.
- Ceiling (typical months):
- Roughly 8–12 emails per month (campaigns + automations) for engaged players is a practical upper band.
- VIPs with active host relationships may receive more frequent emails, but those should be highly personalized.
To avoid feeling like “all promo, all the time,” weave in brand and community content and follow the balance guidance in your casino public relations email marketing strategy guide.
Recommended Email Frequency: Hotels & Resorts
The reality
For hotels and resorts, the answer to “how often should you email your list” changes dramatically depending on where the guest is in the stay lifecycle.
When someone is actively planning or taking a trip, they expect more frequent emails. When they’re not traveling, they only need periodic reminders and inspiration.
Lifecycle-driven cadence
Think of email cadence 101 for hotels as two layers:
1. Trip/stay lifecycle (high intent, higher frequency)
Per stay, you might send:
- Browsing/booking:
- 1–3 browse/booking abandonment emails if they don’t complete.
- Booking:
- Confirmation and essential pre-arrival details.
- Pre-arrival:
- 1–3 emails about upsells, local tips, and what to expect.
- In-stay:
- 1–2 messages about on-property experiences, dining, spa, etc.
- Post-stay:
- 1–2 follow-ups for feedback, reviews, and next-stay incentives.
It’s normal for a guest to receive 5–10 emails around a single stay, and they often welcome it because the content is clearly tied to their trip.
Brand/promotional layer (steadier, lower frequency)
Outside of stays:
- Most past guests do well at 2–4 marketing emails per month:
- Seasonal deals and packages
- Loyalty point updates and member offers
- “What’s new at the property” content
The goal is to stay top of mind without making frequent emails feel like noise.
Floors and ceilings for hotels
- Floor:
- Active guests should receive a full lifecycle sequence (or close to it).
- Past guests should hear from you at least once every 30–60 days so they don’t go cold.
- Ceiling:
- Outside of active travel, 2–4 emails per month per engaged guest is usually a healthy upper band. If you go beyond that, monitor how open rates, CTR, and unsubscribes react.
Recommended Email Frequency: Franchise Dev & Local Franchise Marketing
Franchise development (selling new franchises)
Franchise leads are making a major investment decision. The risk isn’t usually that they receive emails too often; it’s that communication is too shallow or sporadic.
Baseline cadence:
- 2–3 nurture emails per month per active lead, plus:
- Case studies and owner stories
- Unit economics and support structure
- Invitations to webinars, discovery days, or 1:1 calls
During high-intent phases (FDD review, financing, site selection), you may temporarily increase cadence to 1–2 emails per week.
Local franchise marketing (driving store-level revenue)
Local lists need to feel like they’re hearing from a familiar neighborhood brand, not a faceless corporate sender.
Baseline cadence per local list:
- 2–4 emails per month:
- Local offers and promotions
- Community updates, new products, or store events
Because customers can appear on both brand-level and local lists, central governance is key so they don’t suddenly receive emails from three locations and the corporate brand all at once.
Signs You’re Emailing Too Often (or Not Enough)
Instead of asking, “Do these emails feel annoying?” let the data tell you when you’ve crossed the line.
You might be sending too many frequent emails if…
- Open rates trend down across similar types of campaigns
- CTR drops even when you’re confident the offer is strong
- People unsubscribe at a higher rate than usual or start flagging messages as spam
- Deliverability diagnostics or your ESP report early warnings
If increasing frequency leads to worse open rates, click through rates and unsubscribe rates, you’re not growing—you’re eroding trust.
You might be emailing too rarely if…
- Long gaps exist where engaged segments don’t receive emails at all
- Performance doesn’t improve when you cut volume
- Large parts of your email lists haven’t opened or clicked in 6–12 months
- Hosts, sales teams, or GMs tell you “our customers never see our email campaigns”
Remember: people check email constantly, and a significant share buy from marketing emails at least monthly. Under-sending lets competitors own the inbox while you disappear.
Don’t Forget Your Preference Center
One of the safest ways to increase the value of your email campaigns without burning people out is to give subscribers control.
A preference center lets people:
- Choose how often they receive emails (weekly vs monthly vs “only big news”)
- Pick the categories they care about (offers, events, VIP, local-only, franchise opportunities, etc.)
- Pause certain types of sends without unsubscribing completely
For casinos, hotels, and franchises, a well-designed preference center acts like a pressure release valve: you can confidently increase cadence for high-intent segments while giving others a way to dial things back rather than hitting “unsubscribe forever.”
How iPost Helps You Increase Frequency Safely
All of this depends on more than just a send button. iPost is built for data-intensive, multi-brand, multi-location environments like casinos, hotels, and franchise systems:
- Player IDs and host notes, not just addresses in a CSV
- PMS and booking data integrated with your ESP
- Franchise hierarchies and brand governance baked in
- Central visibility into who’s receiving emails from which part of the business
That means you can:
- Tune frequency per segment instead of one-size-fits-all
- Coordinate campaigns, automations, and regulatory sends without overwhelming the same inbox
- Use open rate, CTR, and unsubscribes as a real steering wheel for smarter sending
For casino-specific cadence ideas, pair this with:
Together with your open-rate and CTR articles, this gives you a full 2026 email frequency playbook for casinos, hotels, and franchises—built on data, not guesswork.
