Email Marketing 101: Best Times to Send Campaigns

In continuation with our Email Marketing 101 series, we are covering the best times to send email marketing campaigns.  We provide these blogs to help financial advisors grow their businesses. Using our personal experience and outside research from sources like Constant Contact and Vertical Response, we hope this post allows you to learn the best ways to choose email times. Making it possible for you to effectively reach out to current and prospective clients.

Use Industry Trends to Determine Best Email Send Times

The best place to start when attempting to choose a time to send out your company’s email marketing campaigns is to look at industry trends.

According to data from Constant Contact, the best time for financial advisors to send their emails is on Monday at 6 pm (local time). Messages sent around this time showed to have the best average open rates. This is likely due to subscribers being refreshed and engaged after the weekend. Before their schedules for the week have been filled up with plans and commitments. Research completed by Vertical Response also noted that messages sent this day and time had the highest ROI.

Research shows that in general, subscribers are more likely to open email after 12pm

 

Use These 3 Tips to Optimize Your Email Send Times:

1. Know Your Audience

Looking at industry trends is a brilliant starting point, but it’s still important to consider your unique niche audience. Think of your “average” client and your company’s target audience. Are there any overarching routines that these people have that may affect when they check and open their emails? Do they tend to be morning people or night owls? Are they people who continuously check their phones or do they open their emails once or twice a day? Knowing your audience and personalizing your email campaign’s send time is essential to ensuring your message hits with the biggest impact.

 

2. Consider Each Unique Campaign

More specifically, it is key to consider each campaign uniquely. When first starting out, you should choose a send time and stick with it. This makes it so that your subscribers can expect when to hear from you. This also puts them on the lookout for your next message. Each campaign is different so this isn’t always the most efficient tactic.

For example, if you send a message asking your clients to attend an upcoming event, a sense of urgency is necessary.  Emails that are sent weeks in advance will not be as effective as sending an email close to the registration date. People respond to a sense of urgency, so breaking your consistent send date and time may prove effective in certain cases.

3. Try Testing To Find Your Best Send Times

Considering industry trends, personal audiences, and each unique campaign will provide you with a good idea of the best time to send your email campaign. However, the best way to pinpoint a prime send time is to look at your past send data and continuously test. Take note of the average open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates for your previous campaigns, and then look for any links to optimal times and days. If you have a longer list of subscribers, segmenting your email list may prove extremely effective as well.

You can also experiment by sending the same message out on different days and times and check your analytics to see how each message performs. With this kind of A/B testing, it is important to remember to keep all factors, aside from the send time, the same.

 

Editing note: This article was originally published on September 20th, 2019 and has been updated to ensure consistency

Let’s Sum It Up

Determining the optimal time to send your email campaigns may seem like an afterthought, but it is vital that the decision of when to send your campaigns is a well-thought-out and educated one. We hope this post helps guide you in choosing the most effective time to reach out to your clients with your company marketing email campaigns.