Most people today receive way more email than they can actually read.  Millions, perhaps billions, of emails are deleted unread each day.  The key to getting your emails opened and read is two-fold:  (1) relevant content, and (2) timing.  Last week, in Content is King for Email Delivery, I discussed how important it is to create relevant content that your recipients actually want to read.  This week, I want to discuss how critical timing is for a successful email marketing program.

The idea of timing seems simple, but to get it right takes effort.  In order to execute your email marketing campaigns with the best timing possible, consider the following:

1. Time of Day – Consider your audience, their work habits, their location, and other factors to determine the best time of day for your recipients to receive email. For example, if you are marketing to small business owners in retail, then sending your email during retail business hours may not be the best time.  Similarly, if your recipients are all located several time zones away from you, then you should consider this when sending emails.
2. Day of The Week – Just like the time of day, you should consider your audience when determining the best day of the week to send marketing emails.  For office workers, studies show that Mondays are good days to send B2B emails.  Your audience may have unique factors that will determine the best day to send email, and you should do split-testing to determine what days are best for your recipients.
3. Frequency - In my opinion, if you already have great content, frequency is the most critical factor to consider when determining the best timing for your emails.  I say this because of my own personal reaction to receiving email too frequently from some senders:  Even if I like the content, if a sender is sending me emails too frequently, I start to ignore them.  Again, the correct frequency for your emails will vary depending on your audience and content and you may have to do some experimentation to optimize your sending frequency.  When you experiment, I suggest erring on the side of caution and try hard not to send too frequently because once you lose a reader, its very hard to get them back.  At the same time, if you don’t send frequently enough, you may not hit your audience when they are ready to hear your message.

One last note on frequency:  During a recession, its very easy to succumb to the temptation to substitute email for other marketing methods because email is so inexpensive.  This can quickly lead to a situation where you are sending way too much email without a clear strategy, desperately hoping that something will stick.  Sending so much email will make it harder to come up with good content and recipients will soon get tired of the barrage of emails and will start ignoring them.  Email should not be viewed as a substitute for other marketing efforts; it should compliment your other efforts.