Finally, an answer to the tricky problem of when to send email. A pundit named Daryl Jay states categorically that you can’t beat morning.
“If the campaign is B2B, the morning is an optimal time as most deskbound workers usually start their day by going through their email inboxes,” he says.
That makes sense, with some slight caveats. B2B marketers “tend to avoid Monday mornings when inboxes are crowded and people are busy,” another pundit writes. A third guru adds Saturday morning is the best time, and others argue that Tuesday afternoon produces the best results.
How do you make sense out of this welter of conflicting advice?
We agree that morning’s a good time—we check our emails first thing. But we keep checking them throughout the day. And we look at them late at night, on Sunday afternoon and just about any time it occurs to us.
Relevant offers will get opened regardless of the time.
But let’s agree, for argument’s sake, that timing is a critical factor. Should everyone send their emails at precisely the same hour?
Even when backed by research, that sort of advice may not reflect the behavior of the people on your email marketing list.
The best course is to test different times, or, as a U.K. writer has suggested, do a keyword Twitter search RSS feed to “find out when people are talking about the stuff you’re selling, and adjust send times accordingly.” Above all, be flexible.
Email specialist Michael Brownyard offers these tips:
1. Look at your past results.
2. Exploit benchmark data on open patterns.
3. Segment by time of response.
We agree. Let’s keep the “direct” in direct marketing.
