All About Timing: When Should You Send a Marketing Email?
Sure — knowing how to write a persuasive and attractive marketing email/newsletter is important, but knowing when to send that email is equally as important. You need to make sure that you send out emails at a time when consumers will be most receptive — otherwise, they'll just end up just thinking your email is spam and keep it in their inbox for a while or worse — delete it immediately without even opening the letter. While there is no way to guarantee that a consumer will read your email, there are a few things you should take into consideration when sending them out. Continue reading below to find out what they are.
1. People Check their Email Less Frequently on the Weekends. While your target audience may have different work schedules, it can be safe to say that if you are aiming to grasp the attention of young and middle aged-business professionals, they will have a Monday through Friday, 9-to-5 work schedule. That being said, when the weekend rolls around they will most likely be out and about spending time with their friends and family, not glued to their computer screens as if they were at work (some exceptions of course). So refrain from sending emails starting at 5 p.m. on Friday. You may even consider avoiding Mondays as well — after all your costumers are just recovering from the weekend. We should also include holidays in this group — like with the weekends, customers are busy doing more leisure activities and are too busy shopping, etc to be preoccupied with checking their email.
2. Most People have a Morning/Afternoon E-Mail-Checking Routine. Rarely do people who work a 9-to-5 want to go home and play on the internet after being on the computer for 8 hours. So your best bet is to catch them at work. That said, most consumers typically have a "system" of which they do things — a routine if you will. For example, some check their email along with their social media accounts the moment they wake up, with a cup of coffee/breakfast, or as soon as they get to their desks; others choose to partake in email and social media site-checking during or after returning from their lunch break. That said, you should aim to have your email in your customer's inbox around 8 a.m. or 11 a.m. but no earlier than 8 a.m.– the reasoning is discussed further in the following tip.
3. Most Emails Are Aggregated to Smartphones. While smartphones are slowly making home phones obsolete, they are also getting rid of another device we once found important — an alarm clock. That's right, more and more people are using the alarms built-in their cell phones to wake them up for work in the morning as opposed to an actual clock. This means that your consumers will have their phones turned on throughout the night. So what does this have to do with you? Some marketers like to send emails at obscure times, like 3 a.m., but this is a huge no-no. Since most smartphones allow consumers to receive emails in real-time on their phones, this means that there is a good chance your costumer will be awaken by a loud buzz or bing at 3 a.m. Once they realize the object that woke them up during the middle of the night was an email from a marketer, they'll become annoyed and delete it or they will go ahead and request to be off your list serve indefinitely — and good luck getting your message across and selling your product then.
4. People Live in Different Time Zones. No matter if you choose to send the emails manually or use some assistance like G-Lock EasyMail7 to mass e-mail your newsletters for you, it's important that you also take into consideration time zones — your consumers may be spread across the country (or better yet the world) and it's important that each get sent emails at "appropriate" times. You will have the idea about what time is the best if you track your email campaigns using an email tracking service like G-Lock Analytics. Not only will G-Lock Analytics show you how many recipients opened the email and clicked links inside the email, it will also display the recipients’ activity in time. You will see at what day and time your email got the maximum number of opens and plan your next campaign for that day and time on the next week or month.
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