Is there an optimal day of the week and time of the day that is best to send out e-newsletters?
/ 21 November 2009 - 09:22 pm
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7 Comments
Is there a particular day or time of day when recipients are more likely to open newsletters? How important is it to send newsletters (whether they are monthly, fortnightly or weekly) at the same time and on the same day each time? What principles do you recommend for writing engaging newsletter titles to encourage more people to open them?
Comments
Hi there Jackie et al
This is where it would be really useful to hear from everyone out there. Because my theory is that although there are "standards" and "best practice" out there in the wider email marketing world, it would be really interesting to know what specifically works best for New Zealand arts organisations and arts-related emails.
Generally I have found the response to be best on weekdays Tues to Thurs. I mentioned my theories in the other post - that Mondays people are dealing with an inbox full of emails and by Friday they're over it! I've had my best open rates just after lunch on weekdays - people come back from lunch and read it at work, or when they get home if they received it on personal email.
But, I'll be honest - you have to do really consistent detailed testing to really know. And there are so many other factors that determine when you can send an email out.
Once, in a desperate situation in a past life, I sent an e-newsletter out on a Saturday night. The open rate was almost half the average! I didn't make that mistake again. It was amusing, however, watching the responses to the email in real time - almost immediately two people responded to the competition. I pictured them sitting at their desks on a Saturday night, just waiting for an email!!
The thing is, we all have different target audiences - some may respond better on a workday and others may respond better at the weekend or in the evening.
Does anyone else either have a gut feeling or some tangible evidence related to this?
Vicki
Vicki Allpress Hill Connecting audiences to the arts va@vickiallpress.com
If you look at global stats, Tuesday is the best day to send out e-newsletters. However, recently Thursday had the best 'open' rates. My advice is experiment as you do with Subject lines and identifying spam words.
Created in New Zeaqland – heard around the world!
Certainly our Google Analytics statistics bear out that most of our visitors are coming to the website on Tues-Thurs Vicki. We have not yet worked out a way to specifically track the enewsletter opening rates or times, but I would be fairly surprised if it did not follow the same pattern. What is VERY obvious is that the numbers visiting our site drop every Friday and Saturday - encouraging actually as it implies that people are viewing the SOUNZ website as a necessary and useful adjunct to their work (as opposed to leisure?)
Regarding 'send days' it has changed over time and will continue to do so. Best thing is to experiment, you can fast track by signing up to Newsletters in your niche (ie similar customers) and see when they send and use that to start from.
That's a really great idea, Ben. Signing up to related newsletters is important and can give us a lot of ideas.
Vicki Allpress Hill Connecting audiences to the arts va@vickiallpress.com
I haven't looked at global stats but recent practice suggests that Friday mid-afternoon is the best time to send any kind of email marketing. Most recipients have by this time cleared their mailbox and are also unlikely to have too many appointments booked for late on a Friday afternoon, so they have some time to actually read whatever you are sending, rather than consigning it to the recycle bin.
Generally Monday is considered a poor time to send stuff as busy people will often accumulate quite a lot of mail over the weekend (much of it junk) which they will flick through quickly in order to get on with the week in hand, so they're unlikely to spend much time on anything non-pertinent.
Mid-week emailers are easily ignored when you are focussing on other projects, however, there's no one-size-fits-all answer - though Friday afternoon seems to offer a read rate.
That's interesting Jooles.
Next year we'll be doing a lot more A/B (split run) testing with emails, and this will include day and time, so hopefully I'll have some more tangible evidence by then!
Vicki Allpress Hill Connecting audiences to the arts va@vickiallpress.com