When to Send Out Email Marketing
You want more opens and clickthroughs in your email marketing campaigns. Your mailing list is a loyal customer base as long as you provide consistent quality content. So how do you tap into that market and ensure your message gives the impact you need?
We’ve compiled a list of frequently asked questions and answers to help you get started.
What is the best day and time to send out email?
Several studies point to Tuesday as the most popular day to send out email. If you send out two emails a week, choose Thursday as your second day. This works especially well for tech companies, small businesses, eCommerce, and more. If your business is recreation-based, you gain additional traction on the weekend. Hobbies, Arts and Leisure, and more can benefit from an additional weekend email, but it doesn’t beat out the Tuesday and Thursday leap.
What is the best time to send out email?
Most email is opened around 10-11 a.m. The second most popular time may surprise you. People tend to check their email before they go to bed, so 8 p.m. to Midnight came in a close second. The third most popular time is 2 p.m. and the fourth is 6 a.m.
A note on time zones: Unless you’re a local business targeting local customers, consider using Eastern Time since that time zone covers 50% of the population in the United States. So if you’re on Central Time, you would want to send an email at 10 a.m. Eastern Time or 9 a.m. Central.
These studies are a great starting point for new email list building, but your analytics will provide a more in depth picture of your subscribers and how they engage with you. You do this with A/B testing.
What is A/B testing?
A/B testing in email marketing is where you split test your content to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. You begin with something you want to test. It could be something as simple as evaluating opening times (as mentioned above) or a new way to write your subject line. Whatever you decide to test, make sure you are only testing one thing at a time. Here are some other examples of A/B tests: Call to action phrases, testimonials and whether to include them, message layout, body text, closing text, images, offer options (“Save 10%” vs. “Free Shipping”, etc.), and personalization.
What email subject lines should you use?
CoSchedule analyzed over 1 Million blog headlines to find the most frequently shared content. There were three types of headlines that stood out among the rest: How to, list, and question headlines. Here are some template examples:
- How To Make (Subject) That Will (Benefit)
- 36+ Ways to Overcome Your (Subject)
- Do you think you can (Subject)?
Ultimately, you need to know that your subscribers will only open content that provides a benefit to them. Curiosity will only get you so far, and click bait headlines are ignored (and frequently marked as spam).
Take the time to build a quality email that appeals to your readers and you’ll get the traction and clickthroughs you need.