Email Marketing: Tips to Your Success

Email marketing is still one of the most popular forms of online engagement with potential clients, so how can you maximize the success of your email marketing campaigns?

We all know about the power of email marketing. E-blasts continue to be one of the top choices for online marketing when it comes to engaging with an audience of either existing or potential clients. The only problem with email marketing is that returns are low, and it takes at least six blasts before you start to see some engagement.

Below, we have featured a few great tips to help you boost your email marketing to increase opens, decrease conversion time and optimize your time spent on A-B testing in order to turn your email marketing into a winning strategy.

When Should You Send Your Email?

This is one of the most frequently asked questions when it comes to email marketing. When is the best day or time to be sending an email? Now, of course, every experience is going to be different. Statistics may suggest one thing, but it would be irresponsible to say, point blank, that, “Tuesdays at noon are the best time of the week to send an email.” However, that is not to say that with the use of some of these statistics we can determine a formula that is very close.

Let’s start with the best time of day. Statistics collected in a study conducted by GetResponse show that there are two time periods throughout the day that have higher open rates than any other: early in the day between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. and later in the afternoon between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. Average open rates and click through rates (CTRs) can increase by 6% at these times during the day.

With regards to the best day of the week to send an e-blast, you should be looking towards the middle. Contrary to what some may think, the weekends are notoriously quiet for email activity, and thus weekend campaigns are largely ignored and unsuccessful. The beginning of the week (i.e. Monday) has people feeling down and catching up on what was missed over the weekend. Therefore, your promotional e-blast will likely be tossed in the virtual trash. So. the middle of the week is your best bet, particularly Tuesday and Wednesday.

Now as for that blanket statement as to when you should be scheduling your email marketing, the numbers suggest that late afternoon in the middle of the week would be your optimal point of success.

When Are Emails Read?

It may be nice to think that weeks after you send out your email campaign someone may click through to your page, but realistically, the likelihood of that falls somewhere in the realm of rare to never. The truth of the matter is your email has a shorter lifespan than you might think.

Now, when compared to the shelf life of a Facebook post (experts argue that it is relevant for up to three hours) or a tweet (anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour at most) an email can live for an eternity. But with each passing minute, the likelihood of an open or a click shrinks considerably. According to the GetResponse study, 23.63% of all email opens will occur in the first hour. 9.52% in the second, 6.33% in the third and downward from there. This is why the timing of your message is important. Scheduling an email campaign for midnight so that it is the “first thing they’ll see in the morning!” will get you nowhere.

Pay Attention to Time Zones

Where is your audience? Are they primarily on the East Coast? Are they living on Pacific Time? Maybe they all work out of Hong Kong. Regardless of where they are, if they are not in the same time zone as you, they are not going to be getting the email at the same time. So while you might think that an email marketing campaign going out on a Tuesday at 3 p.m. will generate the best results, if half of your audience is based on Hong Kong and you haven’t factored that in, you’re dead wrong.

Luckily, many mailing services (such as MailChimp) offer the option of setting time zone fluctuation so that your emails are sent at the same time in every city in the world. Some of these features are for premium members, but that’s a small price to pay for increased conversions.

TEST!

While these might be some helpful tips backed by some strong numbers, that still does not mean that you are guaranteed success. Make sure you test your campaigns from a variety of angles before making a decision as to the best avenue for your future success in email marketing. At the end of the day, this is the only way to truly see what your best options are!

Where have you found success when it comes to email marketing? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!