Timing Is Everything in Email Marketing

Email marketing is a viable and profitable way to create traffic to your website. The components needed in an effective email campaign include quality content, a call to action, and timing your email so that people will actually open them, read them, and then act. You may not have given much thought to timing except how many days of the week you send out your emails, but did you know the day of the week and the time of day greatly affect click through rates? The three core components of email marketing; targeting the right audience, sending the right message, and sending the email out at the right time combine to create an effective and profitable email marketing campaign.

MECLAB Research Partners conducted an experiment to test email marketing when the best time to send out emails would be. The goal was to see if the day of the week and time of day had any bearing on email marketing, and when emails were being opened and acted upon. What they found was Sunday was the best day of the week to send out emails, and the best time of the day was late afternoon/early evening. Fourteen emails were sent each day, and when they were opened was tracked. Here are the results of their experiment with email marketing:

Monday: 1 email opened in the morning, and 2 opened in the afternoon.

Tuesday: 3 emails opened in the morning, and 4 opened in the afternoon.

Wednesday: 5 emails opened in the morning, and 6 in the afternoon.

Thursday: 7 emails opened in the morning, and 8 in the afternoon.

Friday: 9 emails opened in the morning, and 10 in the afternoon.

Saturday: 11 emails opened in the morning, and 12 opened in the afternoon.

Sunday: 13 emails opened in the morning, and 14 in the afternoon.

As you can see by the data collected, emails sent later in the week and later in the day have a better chance of being opened and acted upon. Researchers thought this was because in the late afternoon people had the habit of checking and answering their emails. Weekends seemed to be best because people had more time to follow through on a call to action included in email marketing campaigns.

So what does this mean to you the business owner? Should you only send out emails late in the week and late in the day? Well no, you should still include early in the week and morning emails in your email marketing plan. But you might want to save your really juicy call to action emails for the prime time.

When implementing your email marketing campaign, use the emails early in the week and early in the day to be more informative. Draw people's interest in, and then when it is time to send out emails later in the week you can zero in on the call to action. This will help increase your click through rates and get people to take advantage of what you have to offer.

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