Yes, I realize this topic has been beaten to death countless times. But there’s always a new opinion and I just came across another one from the Marketing Sherpa.
The long and the short of it, of course, is that marketers need to rely on their own tests to determine the best time to send something out. In my career, I’ve determined with many clients that Mondays and Fridays are a deathwish, make sure to send emails early in the morning, and don’t send emails right before or right after legal holidays. So I was curious to see what someone else would say about this topic.
Matt O’Laughlin, a Marketing Business Analyst at Second Act LLC, wanted to see what would work best for an electronics eretailer. The client was currently sending out a monthly enewsletter. Matt started a series of tests to determine where the best results would be. For this test, he ensured that emails arrived in inboxes at the same time and had the same subject line and offer.
The results of Matt’s initial tests were that Tuesdays were better than Mondays and Wednesdays (I was happy to hear that I have been advising clients correctly on this point). He also found that emails that arrived at 9am (as opposed to noon or 4pm) had a significantly higher click through rate. (Another sigh of relief from me that I have been advising this as well.)
In the end, Matt implemented the 9am on Tuesday mailing tactic for this particular client and will continue to do so. His logic suggested that the best time to reach people is when they read their emails first thing in the morning before digging into their workload. No word on my “no emails around holidays” theory, but I can guess my thinking is probably in line with his research.
