A simple how-to for Email Marketing campaigns timing.
Emails, emails, emails…
How many of those you are getting every day and every night? Isn’t it annoying having hundreds of newsletters and spam in your inbox?
These days, with increasing interest in content marketing and direct marketing, companies put more effort into email campaigns. I have to admit, that with a rise of marketing automation solutions, email marketing became smarter and more effective than it was two years ago. Companies such as Marketo, Hubspot, Autopilot, MailChimp and other successors are doing an excellent job of email marketing: scheduling email campaigns, segmenting subscribers and allowing you to see advanced reports on all activities.
But are they really doing great?
They are. Tools, mentioned above, can give you the best what you may need for email marketing campaigns. You can automate user journey and newsletters as you wish, with a vast amount of solutions and extra integrations available. That’s clear.
Or it’s you who is an annoying email spammer?
Email marketing tools are nothing but just a code, a program, a service. You are the one who is configuring them the way you want. Nothing to blame email distribution services for. You are the master here, and it will work as you set it up. Or maybe you just forgot to look under the hood of settings and decided that to import a list of emails and click send is enough?
Welcome to reality — email marketing is effective only when it’s done right. One wrong step and you are blacklisted. Forever.
What should I do for effective email marketing campaigns?
The answer is simple — do not assume. Look on your data and your stats, get to know your readers, understand who they are, where they are and what they do. Only after that, you can go and read what others are advising you to do in email marketing best practices or elsewhere.
How do I keep readers engaged and keep them on a list for a long time?
Afraid that “unsubscribe now” will be a number one link on your emails? You really should if you are not.
Build a communications machine with each email campaign.
I receive a huge amount of emails into my inbox every day. An email client is probably the most visited app on my laptop and a smartphone. Yes, I do receive spammy invites to webinars, conferences, industry related news and so on… Yes, they are annoying. Why don’t I unsubscribe? I wish I could, but can not do this simply one-click action just because there may be something important tomorrow or next week.
The Huge mistake of email marketers is overloading emails with not necessary information, too many images and too much outdated info. Keep it straight forward if you target busy guys. Keep it simple and… in time!
Time. What is the best time to send email?
Finally, we got to a question that everyone asks. You can find a good post from MailChimp below or just google it if you haven’t done so yet. No need to talk about it over and over again.
So what’s the best time?
The answer is simple — Who is your reader and what is he doing. When he is doing that and when he has lunch? When he comes to office and when goes home? When he has a dinner and when he is taking his pants off to take evening shower?
You should be a human with your campaigns and not just a machine.
Put yourself in my shoes or anyone’s of your subscribers. So simple and so easy to do. Just ask yourself “How will I feel if I get 30 emails at 5 am?” or something like that. See, not so cool 🙂
Time to send emails is the most important setting in email campaigns management. So do it right!
I hate all you, email marketers, sometimes. Look, I’m ok with your emails as I signed up for them, but for what sake would you want to send me your newsletters at 6pm when I’m already packed to get my ass out from the office?
Depends on the topic of your emails, time should be different. I definitely don’t want to read about your product updates at 10 pm and I don’t want to see your weekend promotions when I’m busy on Monday afternoon.
Let’s go back to important things again — know your audience, what they do and when they do it. Only after leveraging all that data you may say “I’m ready to launch a marketing campaign”.
Emails at 3 am. Are you serious?
Ok, I have email notifications on 24/7 as I can’t skip any important email. And if some weirdo decided that I will feel happy after checking bullshit promotion after you woke me up, you ar wrong.
Email subscribers want to communicate with you or your brand, not to get disrupted by your cheap spam.
“Unsubscribe”. Congratulations spammer. I think I’m not the only one who just opted out. So better don’t do it if you don’t want subscribers to hate your brand or you personally.
Timezones as an excuse.
It’s simple to manage email sending time when your subscribers are from one location. And you age good guy who did everything right: learned your audience, created a stunning design for the newsletter, got good content there. It all sounds great! But what if…
…managing email campaigns with international targeting?
Congratulations again, you are a bastard if you forgot to set correct timing for scheduled campaigns, even if everything was so good before clicking on a “Send” button.
You have to consider time zones of your subscribers. And if your email marketing tool doesn’t allow you to manage it — better switch services provider to another one. Having the option to deliver emails to recipients based on their current time is a Must Have solution for email marketing campaigns. Well, if you are doing big mass email sendings, better get a marketing consultancy to help you out.
Nothing is so important as relevance. And if your emails come in not proper time — we get an increase in a bounce rate.
Or else… Your email campaigns will be another budget and time wasting machine. Don’t think we want this to happen.
Do it right. Or better stop.
