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Set up an email frequency safeguard

Last updated: January 29, 2024

Available with any of the following subscriptions, except where noted:

Marketing Hub Enterprise

Good email campaigns keep your subscribers engaged without overloading their inbox. The email frequency safeguard feature allows you to set a maximum number of marketing emails each contact can receive in a given period, on a rolling time range basis.

When you turn this setting on, it will automatically apply to the following email types:

  • Regular marketing emails
  • Automated emails sent through the workflows
  • Blog notification emails

Transactional emails, one-to-one emails, feedback survey emails, and emails sent from the conversations inbox are not included in the email frequency cap, and will always be sent to your recipients.

Please noteif there's a specific email that you want all contacts to receive, you can disable the email frequency cap setting on the Recipients tab in the editor. If you use workflows to send essential automated emails, you should disable this setting for each of those emails. Otherwise, emails will not be sent to any contacts who have met the frequency cap.


Enable the email frequency cap setting

  • In your HubSpot account, click the settings settings icon in the main navigation bar.
  • In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Marketing Email.
  • Click the Send frequency tab and select the Recipients receive a set number of emails radio button to enable the feature and choose your settings:
    • Enter the Maximum number of emails per recipient
    • Choose the Frequency for how often this maximum will be measured.

Please note: the time period you select under Frequency is a rolling time range for each individual contact. For example, if you have two contacts, John Smith and Jane Doe, and your maximum send frequency is 1 email per recipient per week, it will apply independently to John and Jane. If John receives an email on Friday, he cannot receive another email until the following Friday. If Jane receives an email on Wednesday, she cannot receive an email until the following Wednesday.

send-frequency-setting

Disable the email frequency cap on a specific email

  • In your HubSpot account, navigate to Marketing > Email.
  • Hover over the email you want to update and click Edit.
  • Click the Send or schedule tab.
  • Clear the Enable send frequency cap for this send checkbox. This ensures this email will be sent to all contacts.

enable-send-frequency-cap-email-editor

Resend an email that was accidentally sent with this setting enabled

  • In your HubSpot account, navigate to Marketing > Email.
  • Click the name of the email you want to resend.
  • Click the Recipients tab.
  • Click the Not sent tab to see which contacts were omitted from the send.
  • Click the Filter by dropdown menu and select Reached frequency cap.
  • Click the List actions dropdown menu and select Create a new list.

filter-recipients-list

  • Enter a name for your new list, then click Create list.
  • At the top of your recipients dashboard, click Back to all emails. 
  • Create a clone of your to email to send to the list you've just created. Your original email's settings and all the original recipients will be included by default.
  • Click the Recipients tab and remove your original email recipients lists.
  • Select the new contact list you just created.
  • Disable the email frequency cap setting by clearing the Enable send frequency cap for this send checkbox.
  • Click Send.

Please note: the send to more span feature automatically drops any contacts that were included in the original send, and will not help you resend emails that had the email frequency cap enabled.

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