There’s so much that goes into crafting a perfect marketing email. You’ve got to create that snappy subject line, quick and engaging copy, and wrap it all up with the perfect call-to-action.
It’s tempting to get lost in the excitement of a new campaign, pat yourself on the back for a job well-done and push your new email campaign right out of the nest—but, wait!
Have you considered the time you send your emails? Sure, they’re all going to your client inboxes, but we’re going for engagement here. Let’s enhance those open rates.
General wisdom says the best time to send an email is Tuesday at 10 a.m.
After crunching the numbers, most studies state that Tuesday at 10 a.m. is the best general time to send your marketing email. What this number doesn’t account for is—well, literally anything else. If you’re not familiar with your audiences’ demographics or are sending a general email without any open data, this is a good starting place.
After all, you need to discover your particular list’s email habits.
Think about your ideal recipient’s lifestyle. Are they night owls? Are they at their desk from 8 to 5, but home on the weekends? If you have a guess, great! If you’re more inclined to use actual data, tap into Google Analytics to see what times are most popular for your website visitors.
Set up an A/B test in your CRM to have your email send out at two different times on the same day—first, at the baseline Tuesday at 10 a.m. and second, at the time you think your customers may be active. Track the results. Don’t be afraid to experiment. You’ll soon find that ideal time.
Mid-week emails can help you snag the attention of traditional business-to-business customers.
Mondays are a hectic mess. Workers are too busy trying to get into the swing of the week through copious cups of coffee and morning meetings to spend meaningful time with their inbox.
Whether you’re selling business-to-business or organizing a webinar, you’ll want to get your email in front of relevant eyes once the week has slowed.
To ensure that it has a fighting chance of being noticed in the inbox, use your CRM to schedule your email to be sent on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. According to several studies, later weekdays will return the highest open rates for business clients, with Tuesday – Thursday open rates reaching nearly 20%.
Weekends are a goldmine for retail and recreational emails.
It’s the weekend, who wants to think about work? On Saturdays and Sundays, business and finance emails see a considerable dip in engagement and emails sent. Over the weekend, we all want to partake in a little fun. Messages related to hobbies, arts and entertainment, or retail sales tend to peak the interests of their subscribers on the weekend.
In fact, according to a study by MailChimp, more than 20% of hobby companies and over 15% of retail companies find that weekends are the optimal time to contact their clients.
Remember though, people aren’t glued to their computers all day on the weekend. To take advantage of the opportunity to get in front of eager eyes without as much competition, you’ll want to cater your email for mobile delivery.
If you aren’t comfortable with creating responsive mobile layouts, an email builder like Hatchbuck can make the task easy. Use a responsive template to ensure that your message looks great on any device. With the variety of email clients out there, the way your email looks can be vastly different from platform-to-platform. Keep your message simple with short paragraphs and a large, apparent call-to-action button.
Cold emails get the most responses before and after work.
If your business plan involves reaching out to clients through cold messaging, hold off on that send button. While the end goal is to have a conversation, you’ll get lost in the shuffle if you send that email during the chaos of daily business.
Your best bet at getting your cold message in front of a decision-maker and receiving a response is to send your email between 5-6 a.m. or after business hours from 7-9 p.m.
To ensure you hit that timely sweet spot nationwide, use your CRM to set up segments by time zone. Stagger your email by these segments to ensure each message reaches the inbox at an optimal viewing time.
The data available for email marketing is staggering, and sometimes it’s difficult to apply it to your business plan. Experimentation with time and day is one piece of the successful email puzzle. When you find success with your sending time, see if you can improve your results with tweaks to your subject lines, visuals, written content, or by making your emails more personal.
Just remember that to find a successful path in email marketing, you need to continually test, record your results, and keep a vigilant watch on your message analytics.
Now, let’s get those emails queued!