EMAIL ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS
Environment - What environmental factors are your emails competing with?
_ Competing Time-Sensitive Newsletters: If your content is time sensitive, do you need to get your information in the hands of recipients before competing newsletters? Or does your content provide more analysis such that being first isn't why your readers subscribe to your newsletter?
_ Offline Media: Do you publish a magazine, for example? If so, do you want your subscribers to receive your newsletter before, at the same time or after they receive your print publications?
_ Peak Spam Waves: While spam arrives at all times, it seems that a lot of spam is sent during the middle of the night and on weekends. If you send late at night or very early in the morning, you risk getting lost among your recipients spam bloated inboxes.
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Message - What type of message are you sending and how often?
_ Message Type: Most recipients of corporate newsletters expect to receive them during the heart of the business day, say 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. News-oriented newsletters are generally expected early in the morning with the previous day's news, or in the afternoon with news from the current day. The key here is timeliness of the information. Promotional and consumer ecommerce emails might be appropriate in the evening, on weekends or during the business day. It really depends on what you are selling and to whom. For example, an EmailLabs client has found that Sunday at 7 a.m. is the optimum "send time" for its mostly adult male motorcycle-riding customer base. ACTION: If you aren't sure what the optimum open time is for your emails, test different days of the week and time periods. Make sure, however, that you test against a control group and that you measure not only open rates, but click-through percentages and Web site actions such as transactions and downloads.
_ Frequency: For emails sent frequently (and the frequency is known and expected by recipients), then consistency is really more important than time of day or day of week. If you send a newsletter at least two-times per week, then sending at the same time for every newsletter is recommended. You want recipients to almost be able to set their watches by your emails. For example, two newsletters I've been receiving for a few years arrive at about 3:15 p.m. and 5 p.m respectively - times some would suggest are bad for email. But when my Outlook bell goes "ding" at about these times in the afternoon, I almost always check to see if it is one of these expected newsletters. For monthly newsletters and irregular ecommerce emails, a consistent day or time may be of little importance - but the right time/day could make a huge difference depending on the recipients' demographics and the nature of your content.