Let’s Get Your Emails Read!
In Musings on Perfect Timing, Part 1, I laid out the fundamental differences between two types of perfect sending technology.
One, I dubbed time zone sending and the other I called algorithmic-based sending.
Just to quickly recap, time zone sending is when your email service provider sends out emails at the same local time for everyone. For example, if you choose 3:00 PM, then the campaign can theoretically run for up to 25 hours to span the world.1
On the flipside, algorithmic-based sending is when your email service provider analyzes data to determine the best response time. With this option, you simply choose the date, and the system picks the optimal send time.
So, Which One is Best Practice for Email Marketing?
The algorithmic-based sending one, right? WRONG. Well kind of. There are different strokes for different folks.
I know many would like to just sit back and let the software run its course, but we need to remember that we are using the software to market to people. And therefore, we need to use brainpower to ascertain which scenario to use for each particular send (assuming your ESP offers both solutions).
To help you determine this, I firmly believe you need to understand the goal of the email beyond the open rate. Invariably, getting emails read is great, but what do you want people to do with the information you send them?
Do you want them to go to a store? Sign up for a new product? Is your email time sensitive? What is your call to action? There are so many questions to ask. So for now, let’s focus on a few use cases.
My Top Reason Email Marketers Should Never Use Best Send Time
First the outlier. That last question above about time sensitivity is a great one, because in this scenario you may not even want to send out a perfectly timed email. For example, if you are running a promotion that ends at midnight Eastern time and use a time zone force to send it out at 9:00 PM, your customers on the West Coast will get it at 9:00 PM their time, but that will be midnight Eastern Time, which is not a great retention strategy as you won’t be able to convert them, and would go down as an epic email marketing fail!
And forget about the algorithmic-based send because they might get it later that! If this example resonates with you, I would not send with the ESP’s perfecting timing; rather, I would go with your perfect time – after all, you should know what works best for your business and funnel.
Zone into the Funnel
On the topic of funnels, there is another element of perfect timing that you need to consider. In cases where you are driving traffic down a funnel and the whole process could take time, I believe you should go for the time zone force type of sending.
Well, why not algorithmic-based sending and let the ESP do the heavy lifting? The reason is that your ESP builds up data about best engagement time for emails. Emails. That is it. Just emails. And since it is most likely not tracking website performance and conversion – we have Google Analytics for that – I do not believe that this is a good yardstick.
In this case, it is better to use a forced time so that everyone gets their email with ample time to take action. For example, if you figure it takes a total of 30 minutes to read the email and go down the funnel and make a purchase, work backward from the optimal time to buy is. If your list is responsive in the afternoon and your online shop sales peak at 3:30 PM, then send the email out at 3:00 PM.
The Case for Algorithmic-based Email Marketing Sends
All said and done, I do see the value for best time sends based on an ESP’s algorithm and this for driving traffic to a site with evergreen content, meaning it’s not important when the traffic hits home – just that it does hit.
In cases like this, it’s a great resource to use to maximize open rates and click-through rates. A great use case is a newsletter that is not super time sensitive, an email that announces a new promotion (with plenty of time before it ends), or if you want to update your subscribers about a new account executive joining the team.
Whatever email you send, be sure you send it at the right time… whenever that may be. Finally, split testing your email marketing campaigns using this as a split test, ain’t a bad idea!
1 Yes, Kiribati is UTC +14, while American Samoa is UTC -11.
This, by the way, poses scheduling challenges for people, especially in the US, because in order to schedule a campaign like this, you must plan at least 2 days in advance, because once the new day starts your ESP needs to be able to fire those emails away to your subscribers on the eastern hemisphere. Or as Mailchimp says:
Timewarp Campaigns can’t be edited when there’s less than 24 hours until sending begins. It’s a timezone thing, and we can’t time travel yet.
Mailchimp’s explanation of its Timewarp Campaigns and Time Travel feature.
