So your customers log into their in-box. They don’t see your message; it’s lodged between two other emails down at the bottom of the page. You normally have excellent open rates, but this message just doesn’t seem to make an impact.
Everyone has his or her own preferred time to deal with email, but we’ve found that some times are significantly better than others. If you’re mailing to business recipients, it’s usually best to send between 930AM and 3PM on Tuesday through Thursday. Mondays are often reserved for meetings and catching up on the prior week, while Friday afternoon emails are often ignored until they’re at the bottom of the heap on Monday morning. Of course, if you are sending to non-commercial recipients, you will find that 5 to 8PM and weekends are the best time to send. This is the time when they’ll have the most leisure time and will be most likely to be online.
Don’t forget that time-zones make a difference. If you’re on the east coast, try to send your messages at 12:30 EST for people on the west coast. I usually segment my contact lists so I can send my messages at the best time for each geographic location.
Next time, I’ll talk about how to time your messages for the best sending frequency.
