Email marketing - best times to send?
Expert
Jerry Rackley
Expert
- Aug 7, 2013 11:47 AM
Last week, I hosted a webinar on B2B email marketing, to share the results of our recent study on this topic. The recorded broadcast is now available for viewing.
During the session, one of our attendees asked about the best times and days to send promotional emails. I found a very helpful article and graphic addressing this very question, and I wanted to share it with the community:
http://www.b2bmarketing.net/news/archive/email-news-96-emails-campaigns-...
Resource Reference
Free
This eWorkshop presents key findings from this recently concluded study by sharing the results and providing some high-level recommendations about how to mitigate these barriers to email marketing success.
5 Responses
Jerry, in my experience the best days to send emails are Wed and Saturday. Wed is good because people are into the rhythm of the work week and looking for resources. Saturday is good because most profesionals are compulsive email checkers and volume is lighter. Saturday also catches people who are doing the planning for the following week. In the research I've done for clients, the best time to send email is around 12:30 pm and 8 pm at night.
Hi Clare - this is really useful feedback. We send emails almost daily at Demand Metric, and email marketing is such an important channel for B2B marketers - thank you!
So I saw a research report a year or so ago that said to send after hours because as Clare says, "People are obsessive email checkers". I am certainly one of those folks. However, in my business I've found that during the day actually works much better in terms of results. Often you will get a better 'open rate' later in the day and in off-hours but you will get a better 'action rate' (downloads, sign-up's,inquiries, etc.) when sending during work hours. When you are trying to move the needle you'd rather have 10 opens and 2 actions rather than 100 opens and 0 actions. Just my 2 cents :)
Keith
Hi Keith - that's a good point, thanks for sharing!
In my experiences, I prefer to send E-mails on Monday morning between 6am and 9am. The reason I do this is because I noticed back in 2006 during my first E-mail marketing campaigns, for a non-eCommerce business, that most of the E-mails I sent on Thursday and Friday would not generate many responses. So, I divided up about 4000 customers into 5 different days and sent them E-mails once per month with the best responses coming from those E-mails sent on Monday and Tuesday.
After talking to many customers and doing my own research, I came up with the conclusion that the E-mails sent out on Thursday and Friday were forgotten about by the following Monday and that by Thursday and Friday most people have already made plans for the weekend.
I also wanted to have my E-mails in a customers' Inbox and hopefully near the top of all other new E-mails they'd received when they first opened their E-mail client that morning.