Did you know that if you want your marketing emails to have the expected impact, you need to send them immediately? Let’s start by saying there are no hard and fast rules regarding the best time to send an email newsletter.
This is simply the time that is best for your particular audience. Each email is addressed to different categories of people with different internet habits. In short, the ideal time to email your business may not be the same as that for a marketer.
Regarding email response time statistics, people often receive emails in their inbox daily. However, in most office jobs, only 65% of emails received are personalized; the rest can be trashed or left unopened. In addition, marketing research shows that open email rates drop by almost 1% after 24 hours of landing in the inbox.
This means that if your subscribers don’t open your emails within the first day of receiving them, chances are they won’t read them in the future. And that doesn’t include emails filtered by their email service provider’s spam filters.
Learning more about average email open rates and getting many tips on improving your email marketing effectiveness is also a good idea. With so many competitors in the market and inboxes flooded with many marketing emails, a marketer must send emails at the right time of day/week when recipients are likely to open and read them.
#SpoilerAlert: there is no right time to post
Unfortunately, there is no universal “right” or best time to send an email to get a response. Researching your target audience will give you the most information for your marketing campaign. Case studies can also give you a good overview to get you started.
This is because every email list comprises a group of individuals with unique human behaviors and daily routines. This may vary by the target market. For example, the best time for a clothing store or real estate company to send sales emails may differ.
For example, the email list for your toy company was built for stay-at-home moms who take care of their children during the day. Unfortunately, many may only check their email in the evenings and on weekends, so sending an email at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday is a problem.
On the other hand, if your career coaching list consists of young professionals who are always at work in the morning on their emails, nine emails would be the best email newsletter send time. If you understand the people in your target audience well, you will know the exact day and time to send the email. Then, over time, you will learn how to create the best email-sending schedule for your business through trial and error.
It is worth mentioning that different times of the year will also affect open email rates. So, if you used holiday email marketing trends to build a mailing list, that mailing list would only be relevant around that holiday time each year; it cannot be used to shape a year-long campaign.
Do email sending times differ for b2b and b2c audiences?
Well, yes. These two audience types are completely different groups with completely different interests.
Because consumer responses to B2C email marketing campaigns are typically direct and emotional, it’s important to communicate the offer’s value quickly and optimize the call to action. Discounts offered for a limited time help create a sense of urgency and immediate response.
Also, ensure you understand your target audience’s needs and what motivates them when directing your email content and calls to action based on that information. In addition to creating non-promotional content that educates, B2B email marketing campaigns must address the industry’s pain points and position the sender as a company looking for solutions.
White papers, case studies, and webinars may provide this information over time. For example, suppose your B2B target audience typically consists of 9-5 employees who are unlikely to check their work emails on the weekend regularly. In that case, the best days to send emails are mid-week (e.g., Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday).
However, if you know that your B2B target audience is mostly entrepreneurs and “workaholics” – who check their email regularly all day, every day – this weekend is probably the best time to get your email sent. For B2C emails, Saturday had the highest open rates, closely followed by Tuesday.
Steps to determine the right time to send out email content
Let’s start with an old question plaguing email marketers ever since (when people were annoyed every time they got a message).
And the question is: When is the best time to send an email? The answer is that it depends on the audience, the type of message you send, and many other things, so if you want to know the exact “when,” you need to start by asking yourself more questions before you dive in.
Who are you contacting?
Knowing what will work for your audience—or specific audience segments is important. Because, of course, not one size fits all when it comes to this. People are becoming more fluid in the ways they open and read email.
Consider the following:
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- Who is sending you an email?
- Are they hot leads, inactive leads, or long-term customers?
- Is it a B2B message, or is it reaching your consumers?
- What time zone are they in? “
What are you communicating?
The “what” is as important as the “who” in many cases. What kind of content are you promoting in your email? Is it a webinar promotion? Because if that’s the case, the weekend isn’t the best time to share it. They know that the middle of the week is best for promotional webinar emails, with Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday being better than the rest.
Blog posts, on the other hand, perform much better on Saturday than on Friday. It just makes sense. Busy people don’t always have time to read long blog posts during the week, and weekend news is how many of us handle our scheduled days.
Test your data
This brings us to testing – the perfect way to determine which day of the week and time of day is good for your email. You can use a split test to determine which day is best if you have a large list. Your goal is to test the days against each other for all the other factors – group size and type, message, time of day, etc.
Of course, you want to repeat this process a few times to ensure you have enough data to see a clear trend, and you can repeat it at a different time (e.g., morning to noon). You can also analyze your list and look for trends in how people have responded to your posts. For example, if you find a large portion that regularly responds on Sunday afternoons, try adjusting the delivery time to their behavior.
You can also track online trends and see how sending emails when people are active on your website or Facebook page affects results. But, of course, that’s the time of day.
The best time? Well, that’s debatable.
When it comes to determining how and when to send your email to your database, it all depends on your industry, your products, and, of course, the people. It takes time and effort to figure it out, but you’ll be set once you do.
