In the real estate business the agents chant ‘location, location’ when talking about certain wanted objects which by themselves don’t seem so hot. Take for instance an old appartment on the 4th floor in the middle of the city with dodgy electrical wiring, no elevator and only two rooms. Why on earth would you pay through the nose for that house? How dare they ask such an astronomical price for it in the first place? The part ‘in the middle of the city’ should have given it away: it means you’ll be living close to a lot of facilities and services: supermarkets, cinema’s, shops, educational services, transport you name it. All in a short walk’s reach. That’s worth a lot to many people who don’t value a high quality and/or big home so much compared to the available services in the hood.
What does this have to do with email? Well, I’ll tell you: there’s an important aspect of email that’s often overlooked, which is timing. These days retailers are sending more and more newsletters, special offers, member updates and more: it’s getting crowded in the inbox. On top of that there’s more spam too (more than 90% of all email is spam according to Cisco) which doesn’t help in getting attention to your own message.
One of the questions I get asked by clients quite often is related to this: “what is the best time to send?” I answer that with “the moment your audience is most likely to open your message”. This may sound as an easy and even ‘lazy’ answer, but it holds an important truth: if you know (by historical stats and traffic figures) when your audience most often opens your message(s), then you have to time it right on those moments to reach maximum effect. If it is not known (yet) by all means, go out and test different times and days to send out your messages and compare the results: not just the opens but everything else too: clickthroughs, orders, feedback anything.
So instead of chanting ‘location, location’ there should be the chanting of ‘timing, timing’ in the marketing rooms: it can help to finetune the efforts towards a succesful email program. It should not be the only thing of course: relevance is at least as important. But that’s a different kind of song.. uhm subject.
Great post, Remy. Also important to keep in mind that “timing” is a constantly moving target. What’s the best time to send today is not the best time tomorrow or this same time next week. You have to be there when your subscribers are and that is constantly changing.
Cheers,
Kelly
We’re working on a modification to our systems now that will deliver emails to recipients based on the average time they engage with an email. So if the last 4 or 5 times you open an email is at 8:30pm, we’ll deliver yours at 8:15. Clicks will be waited heavier than opens initially. Timing, timing, timing!! Nice post!
Nice blog post Remy!
Indeed, the key element is timing. It would be great to have a system that could send the email based on the history of opening time. But I guess this sounds more like future music.
What I experience in the B2B sector is that the best timing is on tuesday and thursday between 11.00 and 15.00 hours. Mostly because then B2B decision makers are having lunch or return from lunch and check their email. However, I am interested in what the effect is of mobile Internet on the best time to send out your mailing. Anyone?
Nice post Remy, I’ve been thinking about timing and mobile lately…and that if you want to target people outside of business hours, you might have better luck sending a mobile friendly design.
When we sent out our santa HTML email around 6pm Xmas Eve – with everyone traveling and away from PCs – a large % viewed it on the iPhone (more than twice as many than normal). So for retailers trying to catch people on weekends or food brands trying to catch you around dinnertime…
— Anna
Like the sound of that new feature Peter!
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by emailzoo: Timing, timing and more timing http://idek.net/1BKR #emailmarketing…
Thanks for the comments everyone! ๐
Kelly: very true indeed: the best time won’t be a static thing, especially when you have a large(r) and varied audience.
Peter: that’s a very nice feature! Something dynamic that can adjust for opens, cool.
Bart: the thing with mobile is that it is often not the only platform people read their mail: they for instance ‘pre’ read their mail on mobile in a scan fashion, and later on when at their work or home computer take time to read an email to the fullest.
Anna: agreed on the mobile design when sending out of business hours: chances are bigger that people are not near a normal computer but have their Blackberry’s and iPhones with them ๐
Great post Remy!
When I think about timing, I also think beyond general time of day or day of week, but rather the overall timeliness of my messages related to where subscribers are in their relationship with me and what they’ve been doing (or not). I think that’s what you’re trying to say, too, if I’m not mistaken.
Investing some time in creating meaningful lifecycle messages, like creating a robust welcome series with getting started help, sending product review requests once someone has had time to receive and use their purchase, and so on are really the most impactful ways to connect with subscribers. And an added bonus is that most of these messages are a one-time set-up and will run nicely in the background, building relationships and bringing in revenue.
I agree Kristen, and indeed: that was what I was trying to say ๐ Lifecycle messages when executed right can deliver so much more to both the end user and the sending company or organisation.