The Best Time of Day to Send Your E-mails Is...
Myths and new thoughts for e-mail timing.
Myths and new thoughts for e-mail timing.
What is the best time of day to send your e-mails? This question has been around since the dawn of commercial e-mail. I thought about this some more, not to give an easy answer (10:37 a.m.) but because a lot of e-mails I was getting from brands I like seemed to come at less than optimal times, or at least for me and my busy inbox. Therein lies part of the challenge and dilemma of this topic. There is no magic bullet for timing and if marketers think that their e-mail will be lifted solely by the right time of day, that could create some disappointment. It deserves your attention though.
So let’s look at some common mistakes on choosing the right time of day for sending your e-mail campaigns:
Below are thoughts on how to approach this in a different light:
If you are sending an entertainment (e.g., dining, music, sports) related e-mail, do you think your subscribers are thinking about where they are going to eat on Friday night on Tuesday mornings?
Gilt Groupe offers flash sales to its members, and its e-mails come within minutes of the sale opening. This makes sense for creating the sense of urgency in its offerings and is consistent with its business model. Inventory is limited and moves quickly, so that e-mail is geared towards spurring quick action, not browsing and awareness.
If you pass the mobile e-mail triage stage (when a subscriber only reads/responds to necessary e-mails on their mobile device, deletes some, and keeps others to review on their preferred e-mail consumption device), you are lucky. So the timing is really important in this regard. Is your business sending an announcement of a new software release at 8 p.m. PST when most of your subscribers are on the east coast and probably read your e-mails during the work day? How about the daily deal that arrives early in the morning to a consumer audience that is probably focused on getting the kids to school and to the office? Neither sound like the ideal time. Moving a send time to a time that better synchs up with your product and users’ potential behavior is worth exploring in more detail.
Social media has already received the obligatory best days and times of the week to post (Wednesday at 3 p.m. EST says Vitrue). Of course, taking these with a grain of salt is required, but my company knows from our client work that on social networks there are spikes of activity that have regular patterns. It’s different for each client, but keeping the social dialogue activity top of mind should be a factor in sending your e-mails if part of your goal is to drive engagement on social networks. Either way, no one will share or discuss your e-mail on social platforms if the content and value isn’t there, so ensure that is the core of this social strategy.
While one of the golden rules of e-mail marketing continues to be relevancy (and I believe a strong, value-filled e-mail will be read and responded to no matter what day and time it is sent), digital marketers should seek to mitigate any risks and choose the best times of day for optimal response as well as peak user convenience.
What have you found from your e-mail marketing efforts that should be considered for this discussion?