In the last few months we’ve been asked one question more than any other. When should I send out my email? It’s hard to believe, even in 2014, there’s a lot of confusion around the day and time to send out an email. Timing is everything. So where do you turn?
It’s really hard to know where to turn without properly educating yourself with some email send research. We decided to take a little time and investigate what most bloggers had to offer. Here are our findings. We think you will find the consensus is interesting.
Business to Business Email Marketing
If you’re campaigning from business to business, most people think the best days to send out emails are Tuesday thru Thursday. Sending between 9:00 a.m. and 3 p.m. is supposed to be the best time for open rates.
Business to Consumer Email Marketing
Sending business to consumer is a different story. Friday thru Sunday are considered the best days to send out for consumer emails. Many people think you will receive the best response sending between 5:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m.
This sounds like the answer to our prayers, but we found varying degrees of data going against each bit of information. It’s hard for us to sit by and watch people tell you what to do because everyone has different products, services, clients and prospects. How can they tell you the type of results you can expect? We ask again, where can we turn?
The True Test
The honest truth is everyone’s email list is different. The only true way you will ever know the best time and day to send your email is to test, test some more and retest again. We love to use A/B testing to find true patterns, or independent variables, that help us achieve better response rates and conversions. To be frank, we totally feel testing an organization’s email send time and date is grossly overlooked.
Here is an idea for you. Collect 7 sample groups from your email subscribers list. Set a specific time of day to send out an email. Send out your email campaign to a separate sample group every single day of the week, including Saturday and Sunday to make sure you’re testing correctly. Once the first round is done, collect the open and click through rates to determine the day that received the best response. Rinse and repeat the cycle with at least 5-10 email campaigns to see what day of the week received the best results.
The time of day to send out an email can be simpler. You almost have to re-engineer the process to be successful. Most email marketing tools have a time stamp of when the email is opened. If it doesn’t, it might be time to find a new tool. Run a query on the time of day that receives the most opens. If you don’t have a query function, then do some manual digging on your last few campaigns. Create a spreadsheet and see when most people opened up the email. Once you have the 3-5 best times then test those times to see which receives the best response. Testing may take a few months, but it’s well worth it.
Timing is everything in email marketing, but testing is the only way to truly know when to send your emails. It’s never too late to get started. Please post this to your favorite social media site so everyone can have better email response rates.
