Choosing the right day to launch and send your email campaigns can have a huge effect overall results. Much of the process of deciding on a day will initially rely on intuition (Will people be packing up for the weekend on Friday and therefore be less likely to open emails? Will they be stuck in the doldrums on Wednesday and therefore be more likely to open?). Your decision will also depend on your list specifics and the idiosyncrasies of your target audience, meaning that best practices will be relative. However, there are some concrete steps you can take to determine what day your subscribers will be most likely to engage with the content you send them.
- Make an educated guess.
You know your customers better than anyone and you’ve had the chance to observe their habits over time. Take advantage of eConnect Email’s analytics tools to monitor open rates and click rates and then make an educated guess as to which day will be best for your email campaign based on what you learn.
- Test.
Don’t rely strictly on guesswork, however. Test your theories by sending emails on various days and observing how customers interact with them (again spend some time reviewing campaign stats from previously sent emails).
- Consider weekends vs. weekdays.
Aggregated benchmarks often point to weekends as good days to send email. If you engage primarily in business-to-business marketing, however, weekends probably won’t perform well for you. On the other hand, many people can now check email from the comfort of their easy chairs via smartphones, making weekend email checking easier than ever before. Again, we recommend testing, reviewing results and testing again.
- Consider the email content.
Does your email discuss a weekend sale? Is it a newsletter that talks about best practices for business? How about a weekend gardening project? The day you send each email will be affected by what the email contains, so be willing to alter the content within your campaign if you’re sending a time-specific message.
- Be flexible.
Even if you’ve found the perfect day to send, it’s still important to remain flexible. You might usually send on Mondays, but you’ll want to alter your strategy for Labor Day weekend, for example.
The bottom line is that there is no perfect day to send email that will work for every business. The analytics and stats tools available from eConnect Email can help you determine what the best practice will be for your company in order to maximize the actions (opens, clicks, purchases) taken by your subscribers.