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How many promotional emails to send — campaign cadence tied to the marketing calendar

CTC's case that email is a promotional channel, not just retention — Spiral Bible (no LTV) went from 18 to 27 campaigns a month with every send tied to a calendar moment, 2.8x campaign revenue and 28% of revenue from email — plus the BFCM cadence (3/week → daily → 3/day → extension → shipping cutoff) and how story emails fit in.

Updated 2026-10-24·3 sources·emailsmsklaviyocampaignsmarketing-calendarbfcmecommercecadence

How many promotional emails to send

TL;DR

  • “Email is not a retention channel” (Taylor Holiday). Many pop-up subscribers haven’t bought yet and are waiting for a reason to. Every campaign should carry a revenue expectation and hang off a dated moment.
  • Spiral Bible (a one-time-purchase Bible publisher with no LTV) went from 18 campaigns in June to 27 in August, with 29 planned for September. Campaign revenue rose 2.8x, conversions 3x, and email drove ~28% of September revenue (Klaviyo, 7-day click).
  • BFCM minimums (Joy Sharma, CTC): ≥3 emails a week in the pre-sale, VIP early access 48h before, 1 a day in Black Friday week, up to 3 a day on BF and CM, a 2-day “extended” Cyber Monday, then a free-shipping-cutoff sale. Send at your historical peak hours. SMS as much as you like.
  • For content-led lists (coaches, info), mix storytelling and sales emails. Sales-only exhausts the list (Alex Cattoni).

Details

Calendar-driven campaigns (Taylor Holiday, CTC keynote 2026). For Spiral Bible’s September, CTC planned every send around moments:12

  • multiple Labor Day sales and a flash sale
  • “Brave Faith Week” around See You at the Pole, with 10% of proceeds donated
  • a July “halftime sale” for a Bible in a Year product: “you don’t need 52 weeks, you need 90 days”3

Each email and SMS had a revenue target and each campaign an efficiency target.2 Going from 18 to 27 campaigns produced 2.8x campaign revenue and 3x campaign conversions. Email made up ~28% of September revenue on a narrow 7-day-click Klaviyo attribution, “for a brand with no LTV”.23 Taylor also described it as “nearly half as many sends” with ~3x revenue per send. That doesn’t square with 18 → 27 campaigns, so read it as more revenue per send.3 How to build the calendar: Marketing moments — building Meta creative and email around a dated calendar.

BFCM cadence (Joy Sharma). These are bare minimums. More is fine.45

  1. Optional early start (e.g. 1 November) if you have a lot of stock to move. Give email/SMS VIPs access 48h earlier.
  2. Pre-Black Friday period: at least 3 emails a week.
  3. Black Friday week, from the Monday: at least 1 a day.
  4. Black Friday and Cyber Monday: up to 3 each.
  5. End Cyber Monday, then run “extended Cyber Monday” for 2 days.
  6. Switch to a free-shipping cutoff sale (free expedited shipping to arrive by Christmas). Most brands stop at Cyber Monday and leave this revenue behind.
  7. Use your historical hourly revenue to send at peak hours. Joy calls this “the biggest leverage point”.5

His frame: the rest of the year optimisers win, but in these four weeks “maximisers” win.56

Content lists (Alex Cattoni). Storytelling-only emails leave money on the table and sales-only emails exhaust the list. Combine them, bridging each story to an offer (Storytelling emails that sell — the three "story bridges" (lesson, compare, metaphor)).7

Disagreements / caveats

  • CTC’s “every email has a revenue expectation” stance and Cattoni’s nurture-plus-sell mix suit different businesses: a promo-driven ecommerce brand vs a creator-led info business. Both reject sales-only or content-only extremes.
  • The Spiral Bible numbers are a CTC client case on platform (Klaviyo) attribution, with no holdout.
  • More sends can hurt deliverability and raise unsubscribes. None of the sources give unsubscribe data.

See also

Footnotes

  1. Low LTV Doesn’t Have to Limit Your Ecommerce Growth @ 39:53 — Taylor Holiday ↩

  2. Low LTV Doesn’t Have to Limit Your Ecommerce Growth @ 40:40 — Taylor Holiday ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Low LTV Doesn’t Have to Limit Your Ecommerce Growth @ 41:30 — Taylor Holiday ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. The BFCM Prep Checklist: From Least to Most Impact @ 06:53 — Joy Sharma ↩

  5. The BFCM Prep Checklist: From Least to Most Impact @ 07:53 — Joy Sharma ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  6. The BFCM Prep Checklist: From Least to Most Impact @ 09:21 — Joy Sharma ↩

  7. 3 Storytelling Email Frameworks That Make People Want More @ 00:00 — Alex Cattoni ↩