When is the best time to send an email marketing campaign?

The dotDoctor offers some timely advice on many an anxious email marketer's dilemma:

'Should I send my email campaign now, how soon is now, and if not now then when?'


	"Dear dotDoctor, Based on all the research that's been done, can you tell me when is the best time of the day and week for me to send my email marketing campaigns, for maximum open rates?"

I'm often asked this question. Sometimes on a daily basis in fact! No question which gets asked with such frequency can have a simple answer, but there is certainly some sound advice I can dispense.

One man's meat is another man's poison

Traditionally, it's been suggested that Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon are the sweet-spot to ensure that your email is opened. Others suggest hitting targets just after the morning rush or soon after lunch.

But actually, these universal sweet spots are a myth.

Look at it this way: If there really was a single best time to hit audiences, everyone would be sending their campaigns at those times, inundating inboxes and turning the sweet-spots into the exact opposite - the worst possible times to send.

What's more, spammers (who you could argue pay as much attention to the stats as legitimate email marketers) would also be sending their spam in these golden time slots, putting a dampener on open rates even more.

The reality is that indications of these sweet spots for email sending are very general, average highs, and shouldn't be taken as indicators of the behaviour of your own customers and target audience.

How to identify your own 'best sending' time windows

So, I've explained why I'd prefer you to take industry averages with a pinch of salt in this context. But that's not the end of the story. There are some key questions you can ask to help identify the 'best send windows' for your own customer base and contacts.

Who are you recipients and what do they do?

Firstly, I'd like you to consider the demographics of your target audience – who are these people, what work do they do, how do they live and behave?

Occupation alone can be a major influence on opening habits and expectations. Are your audience business or consumer? At work, at college or at home? All these factors can help you build a picture of how your target market is likely to respond to the timing of your email campaigns.

When do they interact with you?

Use your website analytics or ask your account department to show you when your market interacts with you. When are the busy buying/enquiring times and days. When does activity drop off? Build you campaign timings around these patterns.

Let's look at an example.

Here at dotMailer, we have a client in the business of selling hair and beauty products. On investigation they found that their website generated a flurry of orders on Monday mornings.

Possible logic behind this? Those ordering on Monday mornings were people who'd had a bad weekend on were suffering from Monday morning blues and wanted to cheer themselves up and look forward to Friday?

Either way, weekends had presented a quiet time for sales for this business. With this in mind, they used weekends to send promotions with buy-1-get-1-free offers on any orders placed that Saturday.

Who's doing what and when?

Segmentation is the key word here. Don't stick with a one-time-fits-all broadcast slot.

It's always worth experimenting with different segmenting your audience in line with their engagement levels and experimenting with different timed sends for different segments.

What's the history?

If you've been using email marketing for a while, you should have access to an invaluable reservoir of historical information and reporting.

Campaign response reporting offered by your email service provider can give you some eye opening insights into when your recipients are most responsive and to what degree the sending time influences their behaviour.

All these considerations can come together and help you work out the best times to send your different email marketing messages. Not because of when they open everyone else's emails or because of industry averages, but based on the specific habits of your audience.

As is so often the case in marketing. I recommend a good dose of patience, willingness to experiment and an understanding of who you're trying to reach.

Along with the dotDoctor, our team of email marketing experts are always on hand to answer your email marketing questions. Call us on 0845 337 9170.

If you prefer, why not seek the advice of the dotmailer user communit, in our community forum, dotZone. Take me to dotZone.

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