When talking about e-mail marketing we cannot insist more on one particular key rule of success: planning. It is very important that you make a calendar and that you know exactly when you will be sending your newsletters. But what are the most favorable moments for e-mail marketing? It is obvious that there is no magic hour when all Internet users will open your e-mails. Moreover, the reactions of your customers depend on many factors: the quality and the content of your mails, the field of your business and especially the type of customers to whom you address. Nevertheless, we all live in an organized society where the lives of most people respect a routine that marketing specialists can use in their favor.
1.The different periods of the year
Winter is much more favourable to e-mail marketing than other seasons because we have a much higher tendency to stay at home and do everything via the Internet: paying bills, shopping, planning holidays, buying gifts. Christmas is, of course, the time of the year when the e-mail rate is highest. If you have an online store, this is a great opportunity to remind your customers that you are offering gift cards or special Christmas packaging. Apart from major events, think about long weekends and holidays.
If you are in the hotel, restaurant or transport business, you should send your most important campaigns when people plan their holidays. In January we often request days off for our summer vacation so it is likely that customers will be interested in a good offer in presale. The long weekends in spring also present a good opportunity to send your travel newsletters : this is the moment when the whole family has the opportunity to get together and plan the holiday.
Our advice: Make a calendar at the beginning of the year with all the holidays and then decide which ones will be the most important for your business. For startups it would be better to focus on 1 or 2 periods of the year and do a more massive promotion campaign then instead of dissipating your efforts everywhere.
2. The days of the week
The period of the week that is least recommendable for sending your e-mails is the weekend. When we are together with family we just don’t consult our mail boxes very often. The right day to send your newsletters depends, again, on the type of your business. If this is a restaurant for example, Thursday and Friday are probably the best days of the week to send a discount coupon to your regular customers. In general for the leisure and entertainment sector it is better to wait at least the middle of the week before sending any campaigns. Institutions and banks, on the other hand, will do better to send their emails rather on Mondays and Tuesdays.
Our advice: Test and send your emails in different days of the week. Analyze your results and adopt the practice that best suits you and your clients.
3. The hours of the day
We consider that we get the best opening rates respectively in the afternoon between 2pm and 3pm, then between 9am and 10am and finally between 5pm and 7 pm. Of course, these schedules depend (as always) on the type of your offer and on your target. Even if you are very motivated and productive early in the morning try not to send your emails before 9am. There is very little chance that you will get good results at this time. The time slot between 9am and 10am is advisable because many Internet users start their day by checking their inboxes. The end of the day is also an interesting niche: around 7pm is the ideal time to send your B2B offers because people who work late will have a quieter time to read your email. In the evening, consumers have more free time and are more open to some emails related to shopping and their hobbies. As they also tend to shop online at home, it is very interesting to send your best marketing offers between 7pm and 10pm.
