Timing is Everything: Dating and Email Marketing Alike
Feature by Co-Founder, Caroline Lim. With an iPhone in one hand and a pink planner in the other, she’s always on the go. Whether she’s working, gyming it up, or shopping, you can catch her on Twitter.
Timing is everything. No, I’m not talking about when to walk up to that attractive person you’re trying to hit on, although, the same holds true. I’m talking about when to send an email campaign.
When sending an email campaign, when’s the magic day and time? This is the Holy Grail of questions for email marketers. With that said, people try desperately to find the answer. So what’s the problem? Contradictory conclusions.
Here’s the reality: Email marketing constantly changes, which means as a result, strategies should also change accordingly. To go a step further, just because a strategy works for one company doesn’t mean it works for every company.
In short, since email marketing is so dynamic across businesses and strategies are diverse within each organization (as they should be), this results in the contradictory conclusions you will find when you google “the best time to send an email campaign”. Whew! So then bottom line is, how do you know the optimal time to send an email campaign?
Welcome to part one of the three-part series on timing. Use these resources, plan your strategy and send the hell out of those emails. GoMarket!
Part 1: The Beginner. It’s the first time you try to ask someone out on a date – all you know about the timing are the basics (not while they’re eating, in the bathroom, ect) or ASAP (“Let’s just get this over with.”).
The general answer: The general rule of thumb for sending email campaigns: Mondays and weekends are bad and mid-week is good. If this doesn’t ring a bell, don’t sweat, the following resources provide some great beginner knowledge. Again, make note of the contradictory conclusions and pay more attention to the rationale and strategies.
- Timing is Everything: What is the Best Day of the Week to Send an Email to Your Customers? From Comm100
The skinny: Don’t send same day emails. Send your email three to five days before the target event, focus on sending your email blast in the Eastern Standard time zone (only relevant for North American campaigns), and for the highest open rates, send around noon or 1:00pm EST. Lastly, remember the “Monday Blues”, “Weekend Warriors”, “Midweek is the Best Week”, and the number one rule of email marketing is “Test. Then test again.”
The skinny: Pulling conclusions from Marketing Sherpa, eROI, and MailerMailer, Mondays at 9am have the highest open rates and the best click-through rates. You can even download the free whitepaper for the full details.
The skinny: Look at the past 6 months’ worth of results to gain insight into the best send time for future campaigns. Generate a graph comparing your results with the yearly email marketing metrics report provided by MailerMailer as a benchmark. Deviations to this graph tell you everything you need to know.
Behind the contradictory conclusions, one thing does hold true: the importance of testing. As if I didn’t make it complicated enough, wait until you read part two of this three-part series: The Advanced.
Here’s a taste of what to expect: Best Day To Send Marketing Emails from Understanding Marketing dives into the difference between B2B and B2C email marketing strategies as well as other influencing factors such as trigger events and auto responders.