What day is best for email marketing: to open and read your emails
Website design By BotEap.comI have been writing a number of articles on email marketing. Specifically, how to overcome the obstacles to opening and reading your emails. I previously identified the three biggest obstacles as
1) spam filters,
2) Delete-Happy Fingers and
3) Great competition. So far, I have written a 4-part series aimed at helping you overcome these obstacles. Website design By BotEap.comNow, I would like to address a question that has come up over and over again as I have done training and coaching on this topic. And that question is, “What is the best day and time of day to send marketing emails?” Well, unfortunately, that answer is not straight forward and simple. Let’s look at some of the variables and see if we can get some general guidance that might help you. Website design By BotEap.comThe first question to consider is whether you are B2B or B2C. That means, are you a business that markets to another business (B2B) or are you a business that markets directly to consumers (B2C)? If you’re B2B, the answer is that Tuesday seems to work well in terms of open rates. If you are B2C, weekends are very attractive. Website design By BotEap.comThe next consideration is your target market. Who are they? Do they mostly live in the same time zone or are they scattered around the world? Also, a good question to ask yourself is whether or not your emails are urgent. Most email and contact management software will allow you to create group lists according to many different parameters, so if you have a list that is Australia, for example, and you’re mailing from New York, you might want to separate Australians to receive their emails at a different time of day. Website design By BotEap.comNow, what about the frequency of your emails? I truly believe that it is better to err on the side of too many and too often than too few and not often enough. If you’re sending an email like an ezine, which people will expect on a regular basis, then by all means send it on the same day every week or month, however often. My online training company hosts a free webinar every week on Tuesday afternoons. We send several emails prior to the event. Once, we didn’t send emails on a day when most of our list expected to hear from us. We started getting emails from our audience wondering where the registration/reminder email was. We had no idea our audience was paying so much attention and would react by not receiving our emails exactly when expected. That was a valuable lesson for us. Website design By BotEap.comI would not send emails more than once a day. I prepare an email at least 3-4 times a week, even if it’s not a “call to action” email, but just valuable content. If your emails are valuable, your list won’t mind receiving them, even on a daily basis. Website design By BotEap.comA couple of final thoughts…
1) spam filters,
2) Delete-Happy Fingers and
3) Great competition. So far, I have written a 4-part series aimed at helping you overcome these obstacles. Website design By BotEap.comNow, I would like to address a question that has come up over and over again as I have done training and coaching on this topic. And that question is, “What is the best day and time of day to send marketing emails?” Well, unfortunately, that answer is not straight forward and simple. Let’s look at some of the variables and see if we can get some general guidance that might help you. Website design By BotEap.comThe first question to consider is whether you are B2B or B2C. That means, are you a business that markets to another business (B2B) or are you a business that markets directly to consumers (B2C)? If you’re B2B, the answer is that Tuesday seems to work well in terms of open rates. If you are B2C, weekends are very attractive. Website design By BotEap.comThe next consideration is your target market. Who are they? Do they mostly live in the same time zone or are they scattered around the world? Also, a good question to ask yourself is whether or not your emails are urgent. Most email and contact management software will allow you to create group lists according to many different parameters, so if you have a list that is Australia, for example, and you’re mailing from New York, you might want to separate Australians to receive their emails at a different time of day. Website design By BotEap.comNow, what about the frequency of your emails? I truly believe that it is better to err on the side of too many and too often than too few and not often enough. If you’re sending an email like an ezine, which people will expect on a regular basis, then by all means send it on the same day every week or month, however often. My online training company hosts a free webinar every week on Tuesday afternoons. We send several emails prior to the event. Once, we didn’t send emails on a day when most of our list expected to hear from us. We started getting emails from our audience wondering where the registration/reminder email was. We had no idea our audience was paying so much attention and would react by not receiving our emails exactly when expected. That was a valuable lesson for us. Website design By BotEap.comI would not send emails more than once a day. I prepare an email at least 3-4 times a week, even if it’s not a “call to action” email, but just valuable content. If your emails are valuable, your list won’t mind receiving them, even on a daily basis. Website design By BotEap.comA couple of final thoughts…
- Get Started Now – You can modify your system later. Don’t wait until you think you’ve mastered it perfectly, or it won’t happen.
- Do your own tests. If your list is big enough, you can do split testing. See what happens when you send an email on certain days of the week or at certain times of the day. Always leave room for flexibility.
- Look beyond the raw data. In other words, don’t just look at “open rates.” Be aware of when you actually make sales. You may be making sales on days when the open rate is not the highest. You have to weigh all this before making a determination.
- Last but certainly NOT least, your content is ultimately much more important than what day of the week you send your emails. Your success relies more on high-value content than you might imagine. I know people with small lists who make 6 figure incomes. Why? For the valuable content. More on this in a later article. Stay tuned.