Business owners and email marketers have all pondered over this question at one point or another: when is the best time to send an email newsletter?
Traditionally, companies would print newsletters and mail them out to customers in multiple locations. These were sent out on a weekly or bi-monthly basis.
Print newsletters went out on weekends when people were most likely to be at home.
From crowded mailboxes to crowded inboxes – not much has changed – which is why you need to send your newsletters at the optimal time.
This article covers everything you need to know about sending newsletters at the right time, and why it matters so much.
Before Sending an Email Newsletter
The increasing level of internet penetration presents multiple avenues for businesses to get in touch with their clients.
Social media posts and influencer sponsorships are both ways for brands to provide information about their products, promotions, and events.
However…
Email Marketing Remains Relevant
Email campaigns are an indispensable part of every company’s marketing efforts.
Here’s why;
With the rise of social media and other instant communication tools, one would think that email marketing would be irrelevant by now.
Internet marketers, however, still use emails to get to their present and past consumers.
Rejuvenate your digital marketing campaign with email video marketing.
Emails are easy to send; you don’t need to set up new software to do it. Besides, emails allow for longer and more comprehensive marketing messages.
Here are more reasons why email marketing is still relevant in 2021:
- It’s easy to customize and personalize email designs and messages.
- Emails work on most mobile devices, and at no extra cost to both the consumer and the business.
Create a Strategy
The fact that a lot of people use email also makes it harder to get impressive results from this platform. The best way to ensure your consumers click through your newsletters is to send relevant and targeted content.
Other Ways to Increase your Email Marketing ROI
Although timing is important, it’s not the only factor that counts towards successful email marketing campaigns.
Here are other things you can do to ensure your newsletters have a significant ROI:
Segment Your Audience
Divide your target audience into smaller categories.
You can separate your audience based on demographics, interests, location, occupation, and many more factors. In general, there are four types of market segmentation:
- Behavioral segmentation
- Geographic segmentation
- Psychographic segmentation
- Demographic segmentation
Segmenting your audience helps you craft more personal emails.
Business vs Personal Emails
B2C marketing is different from B2B marketing.
For one, people don’t check personal emails as much as they do business emails. The structure and scheduled sending time change depending on whether you are serving businesses or individual clients.
Personalize Your Content
Today’s technology makes it possible to personalize newsletters to a great extent – take advantage of this.
Customize your email messages, add catchy designs, and address your consumers by name.
Why is Timing Important?
Your emails might have the best designs and the catchiest call-to-action statements, but none of this will matter if you send out your newsletters at the wrong time.
Why does the timing matter so much?
Different Time Zones
If you have a global audience spread across multiple time zones, you need to make unique decisions that cater to their differences.
Sending email newsletters at the right time encourages clients to interact with the content, including the non-essential details.
Increase the Open and Click-Through Rates
Like we mentioned, an average inbox is a crowded place. Even with the catchy subject line, sending your newsletter at the wrong time could put it at the bottom of the list.
But even if your audience opens the email, do they have enough time to click through it?
It’s vital that you understand the habits of your consumers before sending out newsletters, which brings us to our next point:
Consumer Behavior and Habits
Customer behavior data gives insight into the psychological process that consumers go through before making a purchase.
Salesforce reports that 76% of customers expect companies to understand their needs.
What expectations do they have? How do they solve their problems and make plans to avoid issues in the future?
Understanding consumer behavior will help you understand why people pick one brand over the other, and how to engage their interests.
To get information on consumer behavior, derive analytics from the marketing platforms you already use.
Understand the personalities of your consumers. What is their profession? How does a typical day in the life of your client look like?
These questions are essential in understanding consumer habits.
When do they report to work, and when do they leave to go back home?
Most importantly, you need to understand why your clients need your product or service.
Research shows that one of the best times to send emails is during work breaks when consumers have time to look through most or all of the content in your newsletter.
But work breaks differ from industry to industry, which is why you need to understand your consumer habits.
Type of Newsletter
E-newsletters play a critical role in building a company’s image among its consumers and stakeholders.
Newsletters act as unofficial public relations tools that give the consumers insight into an organization’s activities, culture, and future plans.
While it is optimal to send email newsletters at 8:00 am when people have just arrived at work, this doesn’t always work.
You need to schedule emails depending on the type of newsletter you are running.
For instance, research shows that the optimal time to send a promotional newsletter is in the evening, around 5:00 pm.
Accounting for differences in consumer behavior and the type of content on your newsletters can have a positive effect on your email campaign.
Best Time to Send an Email Newsletter
There is no set optimal time to send an email newsletter. This is why it’s essential to do research aimed at understanding your customer base.
However, these at the optimal times to send emails throughout the day:
Early Morning: 6:00 – 8:00 am
Catch the crowd that looks at their emails during breakfast, or before leaving for work.
Side note: Optimize your email campaigns for mobile as well – a lot of consumers look at their emails on their phones.
Some consumers might even catch up on emails during their work commute.
The challenge with sending newsletters in the early morning is that most viewers might not have the time to properly go through the content.
Early morning email readers have been known to skim through newsletters without taking the time to observe the specifics. They will likely miss any information you put out about your products, services, and offers.
Mid-Morning: 10:00 – 11:00 am
A lot of researchers agree that this is the absolute optimal time to send an email newsletter, no matter who or where you are marketing your content.
Take this magic number and use it, but keep in mind that everyone knows this secret.
Sending out emails at the optimal time means you are in competition with at least a dozen other brands.
It might serve you better to pick off-peak hours to reach your customers.
Afternoon: 12:00 – 2:00 pm
Everybody reaches for their phone at lunch break – throw your newsletter in there on time.
Late Evening: 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Just like in the morning, most people look at their phones on the commute back home. Be careful not to send the newsletters out too late.
What is the Best Time for YOU?
Every set of consumers is different, so you need to determine what works specifically for your brands.
Understand Your Audience
Look at the past to infer the future.
Information on past engagement data and click-through/open rates should give you insight into the habits and behavior of your audience.
If you record the highest engagement rates on the weekends, ignore what everybody else is doing and test this hypothesis.
Trial and Error
Alternatively, you can conduct a test and collect the engagement data you need.
The best research might point to 8:00 am as the optimal time to reach out to your customers, but these numbers vary depending on a lot of factors.
What type of business are you in? Do you have insight into the habits of your consumers? Is your newsletter full of promotional content, or updates from the brand?
Consider all the factors before you settle on one specific time to send an email newsletter.
You can conduct a text for two weeks or so to establish solid results. Send emails out at 8:00 am in the first week. Move the time to 11:00 am in week two.
Compare the results and find the optimal engagement time for your consumers.
When deciding what time to schedule an email, you should also consider the day of the week.
Best Day of the Week to Send an Email Newsletter
Who are your consumers?
Are they the type of people who check their email a few times every hour? Do they look at their inboxes on the weekends?
Do they get a notification every time they receive a newsletter?
It’s not safe to assume that most people don’t check their emails on the weekends. You need to go with what works for your audience.
Apparently, the best days of the week to send emails are Thursday and Tuesday. Here is the evidence, derived from data harvested from billions of emails sent out every year.
Tuesdays and Thursdays are the best days to send email newsletters.
Wednesdays are also a good day to send emails.
But be careful not to overcrowd your customers’ inbox with too many emails.
It is optimal to send emails in the middle of the week, sure, but this doesn’t mean you should send one newsletter out each day.
If you have to send out more than one email in a week, do it on consecutive days.
The Worst Days to Send Emails
You would think Monday is a good day to send an email since people are fresh from the weekend.
That’s not quite the case.
Sending out emails on Mondays and Saturdays might just get you the lowest open rates yet. Your consumers are busy reading through the emails from the weekend and mapping out their week.
Mondays and Saturdays are the worst days to send email newsletters.
Fridays might not be the best either.
Most people tap out early and get on social media as they wait for the clock to hit 5.
Use What Works for You
Online ads can be annoying, and people pay good money to block them on streaming channels.
On social media, for instance, you only have one chance to get the attention of your consumers. Users are likely to scroll past your content and never look back.
Successful email campaigns take the time to understand the audience, curate the perfect message for them, and send it out at the right time.
Email marketing remains the only marketing medium with a solid organic reach. Do everything you can to make your emails relevant to your audience.
Email newsletters enable companies to share a lot of information with clients, potential clients, and stakeholders at a much lower cost than other communication avenues.
To maximize the value of newsletters, organizations must work hard to design attractive prints, curate the content to communicate the intended message clearly, and understand their target audience.
Because it works, there is a lot of competition in email marketing. Use every card you have to your advantage.
