Knowing the best time to send an email blast could be the missing key to your digital campaigns. As a digital marketer, you know how time-consuming it is to get your email campaigns just right before sendoff. However, you might not be seeing your deserved payoff because of this small, but relevant factor. If you have ever hoped that that one company executive would look over your emailed resume, you know exactly what we are talking about.
Sending emails, especially in blast form, can often be a race against time. When sent optimally, your marketing strategies could unlock an array of positive outcomes. Sent at a less preferable time and your hard work could get lost in the inbox vortex. In this article, we will guide you in choosing a send time for your email marketing – a relevant cultural factor in our digital lives today.
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Why Does Email Send Time Matter?
Have you ever received an email just as you boarded a plane for vacation? How about right when you closed your laptop for the evening?
In our technologically-filled lives, many find themselves more attentive to their inbox than other areas of focus. However, this concentration simply cannot last forever. At some point, we put our hands up and decide when it is time to turn away from our emails and towards something else. The email inbox can easily become the crowded DMV of your nightmares. And emails at the top of the inbox generally receive more engagement than those at the bottom. Ensuring that your marketing emails touch the glass ceiling of an inbox is crucial to creating an effective lead.
When it comes to digital marketing especially, sending your email campaigns at the right time can help in two ways:
- Improve your open rates – If your excellently crafted email is at the top of your audience’s inbox, they are more likely to open it. Sending the email at the most optimal time is crucial to achieving higher opening rates.
- Improve click-through rates – As a skilled digital marketer, your email campaigns are sure to contain elements to enhance SEO. Even if your entire audience opens your email, you will not get a good ROI if they do not click through these elements. Sending an email blast at the wrong time might mean your audience will not have time to thoroughly read through and interact with your content.
Having knowledge of customer behavior, cultural habits, and time zones will help you determine what time and day will be best to send your email newsletters. This will help make sure your emails are at the top of your most important targets’ inboxes.
Demographics – Know Your Audience
The first step to determining when to send out your email campaigns is to know who you are hoping to reach. Let’s go through some brief attributes that will help give you a glimpse into the schedules of your potential audience.
Emailing Businesses vs Customers
People do not always use their professional and personal inboxes interchangeably. Determining when to send an email blast will be impacted by whether you are targeting businesses (B2B) or a general customer audience (B2C). Email checking habits for business employees can differ greatly from those with just a personal email.
Asking yourself some of these questions will help focus your send times based on the type of marketing you are creating:
- Will you send email blasts to personal or professional addresses?
- Is your audience more likely to check their inbox when waking up or during their lunch break?
- Do you want your messages to be more engaging during weekdays or weekends?
- Do your targets check their emails from mobile devices or do they wait until they are in front of their computer?
Age of Recipients
What is the age range of customers you are hoping to reach from your emails? If you are targeting a young, tech-advanced crowd, you may consider emailing them at night. Going against the typical “no emails after 5pm” might work for a younger, more tech-using audience. Conversely, the opposite would be important to consider for any professional or older audience who tend to have earlier start times to their days.
Know Your Industry Trends
Different industries create products that have unique peaks and plateaus when it comes to sales. For example, retail companies might see more sales transactions on the weekends when people have time to go out and shop. During the week, grocers could be busier with many people cooking and eating at home as opposed to the weekends.
Knowing when your industry is busiest and slowest is important when creating email marketing. Sometimes these trends have weekly impacts like the ones above. Catering to them will enhance the already existing sales patterns of your company’s customers.
Best Time to Send Marketing Emails
And now the question you have all been waiting for…when is the best time to send an email blast? After reviewing data and analysis from multiple sources, there are a couple of different ways that we can answer your question.
According to many studies, the optimal time to send an email blast is between 10-11 AM. These studies have shown that 15:00 Universal Coordinated Time (11 AM in local time zones) is when emails are most likely to be read across the globe.
Additionally, other data from companies like GetResponse and HubSpot have discovered that other time windows exist for higher email opening rates. However, it is important to note that this data did not specify a global analysis unlike the first statistic above. HubSpot reinforced the 11AM time slot while GetResponse found that 1PM and 6PM are great times to send emails. GetResponse saw dramatic decreases in open rates between 2-3PM and Hubspot saw them between 3-5PM.
To combine all of these findings, it seems that the early morning to mid-day window of 10AM-1PM and afternoon slot just after 6PM are most ideal to send a blast of marketing emails.
Best Time to Send an Email Newsletter
While newsletters are sent via email blasts, they differ in content and organization from the standard marketing email. For example, email newsletters typically have more internal and external links, eye-catching graphics, genres, lengths, and calls-to-action. In order to get the full audience experience from a newsletter, a customer may need more time to completely examine it. That being said, it is important to choose a send time that will allow customers to thoroughly interact with your marketing newsletter.
Predicting when your target audience will have this break to dedicate the time to your newsletter is not easy. It is helpful to use the time frames that we mentioned above in order to begin this conversation. Typically, the mid-day and early afternoon windows tend to be the biggest breaks in most people’s day. Aiming for those 11-1PM or 6PM slots would be best in order to incentivize potential customers with your enticing newsletter.
Best Days to Send an Email Blast
General marketing statistics have shown that Tuesdays and Thursdays tend to be the best days to send marketing emails. Marketing analytics from both GetResponse and HubSpot have shown that marketing emails sent on Tuesday have the highest open rates. On the other hand, these analytics have also shown that open rates tend to drop during the weekends.
Continue Researching and Testing
When it comes to deciding how to schedule your emails blasts for a marketing campaign, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Because of this, we encourage you to do your own testing to analyze the best time for your customers to receive email blasts. One simple way to do this is to compare the results of sending the newsletter during a morning time window vs. an afternoon one. Additionally, you could consider playing with the email’s length or subject line. Using an internet service provider that has tools to help segment, test, and compare your email marketing campaigns will be incredibly helpful in honing in on what is best for your business.
Furthermore, it is incredibly important to do ongoing research about your target audience. Make sure to continue making note of the cultural, technological, and business trends associated with the demographics of your prospective customers.
Time Might Not Always Be the Key
Yes, the best time to send an email blast can give you an inherent leg up into increasing the open rates of your email blasts. However, be aware to also reflect upon the content and organization of your marketing emails or newsletters as well. Even if you are sending them during a “sweet spot,” unwanted results could still arise. Ask yourself some of these final questions to make sure you are also considering other contributors to the success of your digital marketing campaign:
- Do you have a strong subject line that stands out in a crowded inbox? Without one, you risk being left unread amidst a plethora of other emails.
- Are your blasting emails too frequently? Might you be overwhelming your potential customers with marketing that could be deterring them from engaging?
- Are your marketing emails and newsletters mobile-friendly? Do they have the capability of being viewed on various devices? The more accessible your marketing is, the more likely it is to lead to engagement.
FAQs:
- What are the benefits of sending emails at the right time?
- How do I get to know the demographics of my audience?
- What is the best time to send marketing emails?
- What are the best days to send marketing emails?
- Why is email marketing good for business?
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