Set up an email frequency safeguard

Setting an email frequency safeguard lets you set a maximum number of marketing emails each contact can receive in a given period. This helps prevent contacts unsubscribing because they receive emails too frequently.

Understand limitations and considerations

• 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.

• Email frequency is calculated separately for every contact, on a rolling basis. For example, if John receives an email on Friday, he won't receive any more emails until the following Friday if the frequency cap is set to weekly. 

Set up an email frequency cap

1. In your HubSpot account, click the settings settings icon in the top navigation bar.
2. In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Marketing > Email.
3. Click the Send frequency tab.
4. In the Send frequency section, select the Recipients receive a set number of emails option. 
5. In the Maximum number of emails per recipient section, enter the maximum number of emails a contact will receive per the frequency you set. 
6. In the Frequency section, select Daily, Weekly, Every two weeks, or Monthly. 

Turn off the email frequency cap for a specific email

If there's a specific marketing email that you want all recipients to receive, you can make that email exempt from the email frequency cap. This is useful when sending information like important announcements or company name changes. 

1. In your HubSpot account, navigate to Marketing > Email.
2. Click the name of a drafted email. 
3. Click the Send or schedule tab.
4. Clear the Apply send frequency cap for this send checkbox. This ensures this email will be sent to all contacts.

View contacts not sent an email due to the email frequency safeguard

Once you've sent an email, you can see which contacts weren't sent that email because they'd already hit the email frequency cap.

To send the email to these contacts, clone the email, turn off the email frequency cap in the clone, then send the clone to a list of these contacts. 

1. In your HubSpot account, navigate to Marketing > Email.
2. Click the name of a sent email. 
3. On the email performance page, click the Recipients tab. 
4. In the left column, click the Not sent section. 
5. Click the Filter by dropdown menu and select Reached frequency cap. 

6. To save a list of these contacts:
   • Click the List actions dropdown menu in the top right of the Recipients section, then select Create new list. 
   • In the dialog box, enter a name for your list, then click Create list.