You can take a horse to water….but can you make it read your email communication?

So, you’ve set up a fantastic email template and have cracked deliverability so your recipients are definitely receiving your email campaigns….there’s just one more question you need to ask yourself…. are they reading them?

One of the key considerations which email marketers must take into consideration is: making their content relevant to each recipient. If a recipient knows that when your brand arrives in their inbox, this email is definitely something they have expressed an interest in and want to read, they will act on that. The best way to implement this is to effectively segment your database so you know what your customers are interested in and therefore what content will be the most relevant. By asking your database to update their profiles and preferences and, for those tech savvy marketers, using web analytics to track behaviour (read a case study on Halfords abandon basket programme), you can promise and provide only relevant and engaging communication.

With your content over the relevancy hurdle, you need to consider when to send your campaigns out. Here is the dreaded question which has been long debated by email experts!

Unfortunately, there is no formula or overall ‘ideal time slot’ which you can follow to achieve this elusive ‘golden hour’.  There are a number of factors that go in to your decision: what time is best to hit the send button?

Who are your audience? – are you B2B or B2C?

For a B2B audience, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the optimum days. As we all know, Mondays are spent getting back in to the swing of work after the weekend and Friday sees offices winding down for the next weekend. Saturday and Sunday are redundant as offices are closed!

For B2C email marketing, timings are very different. Consumers will mainly be checking their personal emails in the evenings, during lunchtimes and over the weekends. B2C sending can be a bit of a lottery without thorough testing of your specific target audience.

Is your campaign seasonal?

For the B2B sector, marketers must avoid sending their campaigns over Easter, Christmas, peak holiday season and of course Bank Holidays.

Again advice for the B2C sector is entirely opposite. If relevant, a seasonal approach can boost additional sales and therefore revenue.

As mentioned briefly above, an optimum time for any recipient to receive your communication is when they have shown an interest in your brand or product. Using trigger campaigns, based on browsing behaviour or when they last clicked on or opened an email gives you a clear indication as to when to send the email and what content to include. I recently visited Dorothy Perkins’ online store and noticed, during the check-out process, that I was able to save 10% by signing up to their email newsletter. Ever the bargain hunter I willingly supplied my email address and waited for the 10% to arrive. And waited….and waited…with my pending order in one tab and my inbox in the other, playing tab tennis. Eventually I gave up on the email arriving and made my full price purchase. The next evening when I checked my personal emails, the email had arrived. I feel like this was a missed opportunity for both parties. I missed out on 10% discount and Dorothy Perkins missed out on some free word of mouth promotion and a happy and engaged customer. As this message appears on screen during the check-out process, Dorothy Perkins should be utilising triggered emails to respond as the action is being taken and the customer is at their most engaged.

To avoid these needless mistakes implement a testing process:

Look for patterns in your open and click-through rates or other email metrics. Do certain offers work better when sent at one time or another? Are there any influences that make your campaigns more successful, like payday? Are you responding to your customers at the optimum moment?

The only way for you to determine what works best for you is to, as always, test, test, test!