Day of Week/Time of Day to Send

[cactus_michellej]

I know what the research says on day of week/time of day to send, but what have those of you out there sending the e-mails say? What day(s) have you found is best? What time?

[samblankenship]

We've had the best luck on Thursday night mailings and noticed a bump in our traffic and orders over the weekend as a result. We've also noticed that some people read their email 2 and 3 times. We've used a newsletter format.

The Trick Shop E-Newsletter

Our customers have also said that they liked having our search box included in the email.

I think a lot of it depends on the call to action message in the email though. I really feel like if the promotion or message is strong enough, you can send it anytime.

I hope some other will post their thoughts, too!!

[cperry]

I think it depends on your business.
M-F does have a lot to do with it while people are at work. When we send emails on the weekend, we get a lot of "out of the office" replies - which says they signed up with their work email.
We also have good success with Sundays....
IT is funny because we get feedback that people want more photo contest, articles on pets etc....however, we get the highest click through rates and orders with offers....especially really high discounts that are only valid for a few days. The typical "monthly offers (10% off /free standard shipping) do okay but not as much as I would have thought as much as people complain about shipping.
That is just our experience......

[2smokingbarrels]

Originally Posted by samblankenship

I think a lot of it depends on the call to action message in the email though. I really feel like if the promotion or message is strong enough, you can send it anytime.

I agree. We have a newsletter format to give all subscribers something to look forward to (usually helpful, how-to style articles). That way even if they're not really interested in buying something now ... it keeps unsubscribes at a minimum because you're giving them something worthwhile and helpful that isn't necessarily fattening your coffers.

We send emails out every other Friday, although I think you can't be short-sighted in scope when posing a question like this since so many factors come into play: deliverability, time of year, content, product mix.

Those aside, we generally see traffic spike on Saturday and Monday, with revs highest on Saturday, Monday and Wednesday (but even this varies). We've sent a few "special" promos on other days (generally mid-week) and find that if the offers are worthwhile, that the email has a chance to perform almost to the caliber of our newsletter, although never quite matching it.

I think you get out what you put into it. If you're throwing a mish-mash of products together with no rhyme or reason to them, sending too frequently, not having a "branded" voice, look & feel ... those are things that will have a list with a high turnover. Next steps for us are segmenting our list by preferences ... although even after we launch the newsletter preferences page it will likely be a while before we act on the data.

Try to put yourself in the customer's shoes; with the mindset of "what's in it for me?" it becomes clear that there is much more you can do to improve email communications beyond just deciding when and what time to send.

All communications, whether promotional, transactional ... even email responses from customer service are extensions of your brand and have the potential to generate incremental revenue. If you're passionate about what you do and the lifestyle you represent, email marketing is really a great way to express and impress that upon the customer/reader/peer.

A little off topic, I know. It's my lunchtime and I couldn't help myself.

[mikewilsonkid]

A company called Viralytics Media out of Chicago handles all our email marketing campaigns and their Lead Strategist swears the premium time to send email drops is Wednesday at 3:15pm. For whatever reason, every time they blast at that time our cost per acquisition is the best and our rate of bringing in new customers sky-rockets.

I would be interested to hear what times have been the most successful for you guys.

[candypam]

WE get our best response if we send them Tues, Wed, Thurs 9:30 /10:30AM. EST
I know myself Mondays I am too busy catching up from being away from my desk to shop online. Fridays, now way, all I can think about is the weekend!
Tues, Wed, Thurs any early than 9:30 I feel they have a good chance of landing in the trash bin .

There is nothing worse than coming into work, clicking on your emails and 100 of them sitting there right off the bat.
I'm sure we all scan those "early bird" emails quickly and those that might interest us might get deleted just because we don't have time to deal with them first thing in the AM, and we want to clean out the mail, but after 9:30, I know myself I'm settled and won't hit the delete button as quick.
We notice 80% of our emails are opened the first 8 hours after we have sent them, then just a few here and there. Tells us, most of our customers are shopping from work.
Pam

[Steve Kaiser]

It seems as our open rates suck right now. Any tricks anyone can offer? Maybe it just our customers but probably it is more like my email subject line is horrible... i don't know!