When to Send: Timing is Everything!

I’m asked on a daily basis by clients, “When is the best time to send email?” My answer, “When your subscribers want it.” This is not the answer that my clients are anticipating.  Most marketers have accepted the fact that the "batch and blast" email method is a strategy of the past and that they must put their subscribers' needs, wants and interests first. 

Email subscribers have varying habits around checking email, engaging with email and buying via email. Different time zones also throw another variable into the mix. The time in which your email message reaches a subscriber’s inbox can impact the results of the campaign.

So, how can you best determine when you should be scheduling your promotional email deliveries?

1. Test & Analyze:

Before you map out a testing strategy, you’ll first want to take a look at past send data. There is probably a lot of insight already sitting in your campaign reports. How about taking 6 months' worth of emails and graphing time of send against response and seeing if any patterns emerge? Specifically, are certain send times always associated with a higher response rate? Use this data to develop a control “time”. Keep in mind, if you always send emails out at the same time, you may have nothing to compare. If this is the case and assuming your list is large enough to be sent out over a 7 day period, pick a week to send out a mailing and analyze the results. Make sure there are no holidays or other anomalies that would significantly skew your results if possible and allow enough time for the results to mature before you analyze (maybe a week or so).

2. Use Send Time Optimization (STO) Tools:

Send Time Optimization tools allow you to schedule emails to send at the time of day, and optionally the day of the week, that the contact is most likely to open the message (based on open time data). Each contact's optimized time is refreshed daily. One of the biggest benefits for marketers is that STO only takes a single click, and then the technology does the rest. There’s no slicing and dicing of your list, no sending the same message multiple times, and no analyzing of multiple mailing reports. STO is a perfect solution for companies who are sending campaigns across multiple time zones. By eliminating the need to separate queries in order to target each recipient at 9 a.m. in his or her local time zone, it cuts back on wasted manual effort. You simply use STO and allow it to deliver at the optimal time for each recipient worldwide - regardless of whether you’re sending your email to three time zones or 10. As with any element of email marketing, testing is a smart bet when it comes to STO too.

3. Look Beyond Opens & Clicks:

In general when testing the time in which your email is sent, you’ll analyze open and click rates and typically will see some level of increase there. But, consider that the biggest impact may be on conversion rate, revenue generated per email and overall order size. This makes sense because you’re catching recipients at a time they have allocated for Internet activity. Because they aren’t as rushed, they engage more deeply.

You may also want to consider adding a "what time do you like receiving emails" box in your preference center.  That would be an interesting data collection point. You could then analyze when people "say" they want to receive email and compare that to when they actually open.

Today’s consumers expect to be treated as individuals. Marketers who stop looking at their lists as an “audience” and start taking the steps to communicate with each subscriber as an individual will increase their chances of success. Follow the recommendations above and begin to solve the “right message, right time” equation.

Clearly timing is an important issue in email marketing. But many of the concepts involved apply equally to other channels. Do you, for example, apply as much care to the timing of your blog posts, Tweets or Facebook updates as you do to your emails?

Emily Keye
Marketing Strategist at Bronto