eBook - Silverpop

How to Ask Key Questions to Get
the Answers You Really Need
What’s the best day and
Q: time to send email?
“What’s the best day to send email?” or
A:
“What’s the average open rate?”
The problem with these questions is either that
they are fundamentally unanswerable, or the
answer won’t lead you to a meaningful conclusion
or action.
Further, I believe that a question like “What
is the best time to send?” is simply the wrong
question to ask. More on that later. First, let’s
look at five factors that make the “ideal send
time” question so complex:
1. Artificial rules don’t hold up.
Don’t mail on Fridays. Never send B2B emails
over the weekend. Send B2B emails on Sunday.
Don’t mail to moms in the morning. Tuesday at
10 a.m. works best (in which time zone, by the
way?).
You’ve heard them all. Even if you believe one
of those scenarios worked best at the aggregate
level, have you really tested all scenarios to
know for sure?
Years ago, I worked with a motorcycle accessories
site and was convinced that its normal
Sunday broadcast mailing times were not optimal.
We tested several different scenarios, but
Sundays did in fact perform best.
In hindsight, Sundays seemed logical to reach
people who rode their dirt or touring bikes over
the weekend. But I also believe that years of
Sunday mailings probably trained recipients to
expect messages then.
Rules are meant to be broken. A rule that works
for one marketer might not hold true for your
entire customer base, let alone your individual
subscribers.
2. Mobile changes everything.
Email marketers got themselves all in a lather
a couple of years ago over a Nielsen study that
found social media and games were the most
popular online activities, with email falling to third.
Overlooked in that study was a finding that
showed email is far and away the No. 1 activity on
mobile devices.
See all those people walking around and staring
at their smartphones? Checking email regularly is
clearly part of what they are doing, which complicates
the theory that many consumers check their
email at regular times throughout the day.
3. “In the inbox” isn’t the same as “ready to
buy.”
The “best time” issue assumes either that individuals
will immediately act on your messages when
they open them or that there is at least a correlation
between inbox receipt and conversion.
However, people who check their personal email
frequently at work or on their mobile devices
might not act on them until later at home. So,
when is the best time?
In theory, then, a more accurate picture would be
to correlate historical purchase/conversion time
with time of email engagement. But at minimum,
an “ideal” send time would have to incorporate
testing dozens of scenarios and be tied to revenue
or conversion, not opens or clicks.
4. Behavior determines/triggers timing.
The “best time to send” question is really one
reserved for broadcast messages. Lifecycle and
behavior-triggered messages eliminate the ques-
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