Triggerfish Email Marketing Tips: Timing isn't everything

One of the most common questions we get asked when setting up an email marketing program in conjunction with a content calendar is how many emails is too many… and is send time optimisation really a thing?

Depending on your audience, list and email type, there is only one way to say for sure and that’s to conduct testing to find out - based on your goals. In the meantime, here are some email marketing common practices for frequency, timing and testing that will help you from the outset.

Timing

Different email platforms suggest that Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are favourite days to send email campaigns, with Mail Chimp confirming that Tuesday and Thursday are the two most popular days to send email communications.

Research has shown:

• 6am – 10am: is popular for promotional emails for events, restaurants, and consumer goods.

• 10am – 3pm: Most people are busy working and email open rates are down

• 3pm – 5pm: Recipients open emails connected to property and financial services more than any other email type

• 5pm – 10pm: Promotional or sales emails have more opens

While the above can serve as a general rule, understanding your demographics is arguably the most important thing when deciding when to send your emails.

By audience

It’s important to remember first your email’s audience before deciding what might be the best time to send your email. When you know your audience, you can consider what their day might look like. Are they commuting to and from work and have the ability to check emails? If they’re likely to have typical 9:00am-5:00pm work hours, sending before or after work could lead to higher open rates once they arrive to work, or home in the evening.

By device

Consider using your device type metric when deciding a time to send your emails. If your list typically open on a mobile device, you could assume they’re opening their emails before work, during lunch or after work rather than while they’re at their computer during work hours. Use this information to optimise your send times.

Frequency

How many emails is too many? There is no hard and fast answer to what the perfect cadence for email sends is, so it’s best to look at your data. If you start over-mailing your subscribers, you might start to experience:

• Increased unsubscribes or opt-outs

• Decreased engagement leading to lower conversion rates

• Flagging your emails as SPAM, risking an IP ban by the internet service provider

You shouldn’t be guessing about whether you’re sending too many emails - look at the last few months of email data you have to get an understanding about how your specific lists are receiving your emails. If by sending four emails per month you’re losing subscribers, try sending only two per month and measure their success.

Once you have found a cadence that suits the audience you’re sending to, focus on optimising your emails themselves through compelling and lead generating content. You can read about content best practices in our blog here.

Avoiding SPAM filters

SPAM filters can be triggered for a number of reasons. Here are the main ones:

• The subject line contains a SPAM trigger word

• Your email contains all capitals

• Your email has a lot of exclamation points

• You’re using attachments

• Image to text ratio is high – don’t use too many images (read more about using images on our blog here)

  • Emails less than 500 characters should contain a supporting image

  • Emails over 500 characters are not significantly impacted by image/text ratio restrictions

• Too many different fonts and/or styles

• Low historical open rates

• Email is unsolicited – recipient may mark as SPAM

Some SPAM trigger words include:

Do you need help with your emails?

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