The Best Time to Send Email Campaigns

What's the end result you want?

When sending an Email Marketing campaign, you want to reach as many of the recipients as possible, so it's important to think about who you are sending to. If you’re sending to business owners, don’t send them emails at 9pm expecting any sort of attention; the guy is probably eating dinner or chilling out watching TV. Send that same email at 3pm and you’ve got a fighting chance of it being read. On the other hand, if you’re selling to consumers, sending an email at 8pm or 9pm might be a pretty good strategy. Now we have the basics out of the way, here are some things I’ve found over the years while using email as my primary way of generating enquiries and sales: Keep emails short The shorter you keep your emails, the better. John Warrillow, author of ‘Built To Sell’, sends 1 line emails. Here’s his recent email in it’s entirety: Subject: “Do you dream of getting an offer from a big, strategic acquirer?” Body: “Here are five ways to make that dream a reality.”. That’s it. His subject line is actually longer than his email. I would imagine his clickthrough rates are reasonably high with a thought-provoking question, then literally a link. It’s an extreme method but if you’re sending information and want people on your site, maybe it’s not a bad strategy? On the slightly more normal side of the fence, just keep it no longer than 3 paragraphs. No daunting looking walls of text.

Info in the morning

In the mornings we want to consume information, so if you’re sending articles, ebooks or things for people to consume, do it in the morning. By morning, I mean 11am. Do not send earlier as people are busy. At around 11am, people start chilling out, having a coffee, and building towards lunch. That’s a good time to send information.

Action in the afternoon

After lunch, people are a little more up-beat and ready to get things done and are more likely to ‘do stuff’ from emails you send. If you want someone to take any form of action, make sure you send these emails in the afternoon. I like to shoot for 3pm but certainly don’t send any later than 4pm as the end of the work day starts creeping in and things get pushed to the next day. Of course, that would be fine if “tomorrow” didn’t bring a new set of issues, things to do and distractions.