The Question: When is the best time to send my email newsletter?
For starters, what time (or times) of the day do you normally check your email? If you’re like our team, you probably check for new messages way more often than you should. Including when you first wake up, a few times before lunch, definitely at lunch, a few times after lunch, and at least one or two more times before bed. The problem with this sporadic timing is it becomes difficult to know what time of day or week to target users for your specific message.
Historically the way to work around this was to pop over into your web analytics package to see when most users were typically on your site and converting, or possibly taking that a step further and seeing when just email-specific users were visiting the site. Unfortunately there are still many other variables you’re not able to factor for when sending out a bulk message such as:
- Users are in different time zones
- Different subscribers have different email behaviors
- Other companies might be sending mailings at the same time or day as you, cluttering up your customer’s inbox.
- Etc.
- Etc.
- Etc.
The Answer: When They Are Most Likely To Open It
But how? Enter send-time optimization. This feature (available with some email marketing and customer database engagement software like Silverpop) is a time-tagging tool of sorts that keeps track of when individual users open your emails. Over the course of time, after sending several emails and tracking when each one is opened, you start sending emails very close to when your customer typically opens them, which helps improve email visibility and open rate. Below is a sample of how send time optimization might work for an individual within your contact list.
