Pick A Day For Email Overload
Last Thursday, I was lucky enough to have time to participate in the Hub Spot webinar, The Science of Email Marketing. I say “participate” because Hub Spot did a great job of integrating Twitter into the experience, encouraging people to comment and ask questions using the hash tag #emailsci. The information presented challenged much of what I have learned about email marketing, both through experience and from other sources.
For example, way back, a whole 2 years ago, when I first started writing email newsletters, the company I worked for presented statistical evidence that the best day to send marketing email messages is Tuesday. Mondays are too busy, they said, and on Fridays everyone is bored and tired of working, and obviously, no one is working on the weekends. Hub Spot, though, surveyed 95 million email users and found the highest click thru rates occur on the weekends.
In my experience, the best day to send your email is different and it totally depends on your audience and your business. For example, I have one client who builds custom furniture and sends out a monthly newsletter. His open rates are much higher if it goes out on the weekend. However, I have another client who sells plants wholesale to garden centers, landscapers and the like. He sends out a weekly newsletter. His open rates tend to be better during the week.
It should be noted, however, that the Hub Spot statistics focused on the click thru rates, not the open rates. Obviously, if your recipients are clicking on your links, they are more engaged and that is great. But my own experience – personal and professional – tells me that it’s the open rate that is more important here.
Personally, I read lots of emails but don’t always click the links in them. Professionally, I send email newsletters for a wide range of businesses and some of the most successful sales campaigns have happened through newsletters that didn’t get a lot of clicks. Of course, my clients generally have very small lists so my observations apply to really small companies. Hub Spot probably consults with much larger companies.
Another interesting conclusion of Hub Spot’s survey was that 88% of those surveyed do not separate work and personal email, which seems connected to the previous statement about click thru rates on the weekends. I don’t care how many people they surveyed – I doubt the veracity of this one.
People who work for corporations, as administrative professionals, or other sort of “regular” jobs do not like working on the weekends, even if that work is opening emails. I know this because I’ve had a good many of those jobs. When I was an administrative professional, I spent the weekend trying hard to forget about the office entirely. As a teacher, I worked on the weekends, but it was grading papers and writing lesson plans, and definitely NOT checking work-related email.
Finally, Hub Spot showed statistics that seemed to say there is not much risk of sending out too many emails. My issue with this one is purely personal. I will unsubscribe from any list that over-sends. The only exceptions (for me) are LivingSocial and Amazon. With LivingSocial, I knew I was signing up for daily emails, so that makes it okay. As for Amazon, I want certain things and to get them I have to put up with receiving a whole bunch of crap I do not want – especially at Christmas. And to tell the truth, I delete 95% of the email I get from those two companies without looking at it.
One of my clients suffers from serious email overload. He wakes up to 100s of emails just about everyday, and feels that just about the only thing he has time to do is respond to email. In order to get that person to read your marketing email, you better be offering something he needs desperately. It seems rude to me to send something “just to keep your name out there” to people like him weekly or even daily.
What are your email behaviors? Will you click all the links? Do you separate your work and personal email? Do you prefer weekend emails? Is it possible to over-send to you?
I believe it that the highest click through happens on weekends. Purely Poultry customers have day jobs and our customers shop for baby chicks on nights and weekends. Those who are able to be there during the day are at home moms, farmers, people calling in from work. I would say that weekends probably would have higher rates. Yes I would say that open rate is more important metric for the Newsletter. However the MOST important metric is how many dollars of sales would be generated by the newsletter. That is more important than open rate or click though rate. But it is more difficult to track. I do believe that 88 percent of those surveyed don’t separate work from home. I am currently debating how best to separate my work and home email. I created the tyler at domain dot com like was discussed in your prior post. I have somone helping me manage my emails now at a new address. But can I really entirely separate my personal emails from business emails effectively. My personal google account is home to so many good things that cannot transfer to a different google account. I am considering changing phone companies and getting a new phone. A droid, but that uses all of my google stuff. But which account, personal business…. I would bet that most small business owners do not separate their work from personal emails. It is just annoying to have to check two different email inboxes. As a student I know MANY teachers who do check their email regularly on the weekends. As far as how often to send, I feel as though it is okay as long as the reader is okay with the frequency prior to adding themselves to the list. Every daily or more often email I unsub from. Anything weekly or less can stay as long as it adds value.
Thanks for the input, Tyler. It was a really interesting webinar, and one thing they touched on that you mentioned here is that the number of people who check email on mobile devices is big, and growing all the time.
You are also right about the small business owners not separating work/personal email, but I bet most corporate-types do separate – but that is just a guess. I think you are also exactly right about weekends being the best time for you to send a newsletter – or evenings if it must be during the week. Although you may have some customers who raise chickens for a living, most probably have other jobs. If you were sending to commercial farmers or some other segment of the farming industry, it might be different. Interesting perspective.