I’ve commented before on the issue of when the best time is to send out emails.  My thought has been that every time some particular part of the day or day or the week is announced as being best, then lots of firms flood into it, and that changes everything.

There are three factors involved:

a) The behaviour of the people you are emailing (different types of people open email at different times)

b) When everyone else is sending emails (if your email hits with loads of others, that knocks it back)

c) What you want the person to do (if you want them to call you quickly you need to reach them when that can be done).

Now the first surveys are coming in showing that the optimal day/time for sending out emails is a moving target. Monday is generally not so good (but this is a generalisation and the three factors above will cause this to vary) probably because most firms believe it is good (“get them at the start of the week when they are fresh”).  In fact Monday is often right at the bottom of the days to choose – and I have to say, my email in box is generally horribly full on Mondays.

In 2005 Friday was found to be a good day to get a higher open rate, but then after that report everyone started hitting Fridays.

As for the time of day, there is a general movement towards late in the morning, which is often a time I use – and which seems to work quite well.  Automatic systems are seemingly fixed to fire off the billions of emails at 9am, so it is good to wait until that rush is over.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday generally seem to fare ok, because they are straight working days, not the start of end of the week, and few reports have highlighted them as prime time.

However one recent report suggests that on a Thursday one should be ”keeping the message friendlier and less aggressive.”   Hmmmm is about the best reply I can do to this.

I still believe that it is the quality of the writing that affects the message, and that this is such a powerful tool, that assuming you have a decent mailing list, the effect of the writing swamps everything else.

If you would like to discuss bulk sending of emails, writing emails, and everything else to do with emails – do give me a call on 01536 399 013.  Alternatively there are details of our email services for business and consumer lists on www.yesmail.org.uk and on www.emails.gs for our schools lists.

Tony Attwood