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Testing Part II - Leverage the three "T's" of Email Marketing -- by Chip House In the last article, I covered tips on the best practices for email testing - the first of the "Three T's of Email Marketing." Email success often means paying attention to the details, which is why testing is so important. Another detail that must not be forgotten for successful email marketing is the importance of timing. Sending your message at the right time and frequency for your audience can have a dramatic effect on your readership and your ROI! When to Send your Email There is no universal rule for when to send an email promotion or newsletter. The best answer is "it depends." It depends upon several factors: your audience (business vs. consumer, or technical vs. non-technical), what you are selling (high-price vs. low price, or service vs. product), and your objective (sales vs. leads). As I discussed last week, the best way to determine the appropriate day and time of the week to send your email communications is to test. There are, however, some general common sense guidelines that you can follow that will get you off to a good start. Business-to-Business In general, emails that focus on a business market should be sent during the middle of the business week, between late in the day Monday and Thursday afternoon. The goal is to avoid the Monday morning "inbox glut," as well as Friday afternoon when business people have already mentally "checked out" for the weekend. This includes business emails that feature news, products or services of interest to other business personnel. You need their full attention and their time, and you are most likely to get it during the heart of the business week. Business-to-Consumer Determining the time to send emails to a consumer population is a little more involved. The type of product/service you are selling and the location of your audience will dictate when you should send your message. Many consumer products and services will get attention during the business week and in the evenings, depending on where your customers access their email. Some products will do better on weekends when your audience is likely to have a little more free time to give to your offer. For example, testing I have done with clients selling tax products or computer games shows that these products do much better on the weekend than during the week. How Often to Send your Email Before sending any email promotions or newsletter, you should first determine the frequency that you intend to send these communications. Based on my experience, sending an email to a specific email address list more than twice per month will increase the attrition rate of your list, and lead to unhappy subscribers which may cause list burn-out. Twice per month is the maximum number of contacts I recommend for most audiences unless the topic's timeliness is of key importance to the communication (such as daily news updates, etc.). Frequency works differently in the world of email than it does in the "interruption marketing" realm of TV, print or radio advertising. With email, the number of times you show your ad and brand to a consumer is directly proportionate to the likelihood that they'll remember your business and buy your products. Permission-based email marketing works the exact opposite. Your subscribers and prospects have agreed to receive your communications by opting in to your list. This agreement is a bond of trust: you agree to send them only information that is of value to them. It is also an implicit agreement that you will not abuse your relationship by sending them too much email. Doing so will likely turn off your subscribers, and they will leave your list in droves. Use Urgency Dates to Increase Response Rates Getting your subscribers to take action now is one of the most important things you should strive for in an email promotion. People are so busy these days, especially if they receive email at their workplace, that if you don't catch them now they are much less likely to respond later. If their inbox reaches a certain depth, they may just delete your email. Get your customers to open your email by including urgency dates in the subject line and in the body of your message. For example, a company selling payroll services might use a subject line such as: "Cut Payroll Prep Time in Half. Offer ends April 30th!" This effectively uses an expiration date to increase urgency and will achieve a higher open rate and response rate. When coupled with an appropriate re-mail plan (see below), the use of urgency dates is even more powerful. Re-mailing Will Increase your Revenues As I said above, two communications per month should be the maximum. However, you can operate within these guidelines and still achieve great results. Many businesses create and send email promotions for a single delivery only. What they are missing by doing this is the portion of their population that either didn't understand their offer the first time or ignored it. Re-mailing an offer a second time, with a slightly different subject line, layout, or messaging will often achieve a response rate as high as your initial mailing. A re-mail strategy is most effective when you plan ahead. Take the payroll service company example above. They could send their first mailing near the beginning of April and announce the April 30th end date of the promotion. Then near the end of the month (ideally 14 - 21 days later), they could send a re-mail that uses language like "Last Chance to Cut Your Payroll Costs," or "Just one week left. Offer ends 4/30!" This re-mail strategy works, because businesses that missed the offer the first time will have a chance to react now, and those that just set the email aside and forgot about it will now have a compelling reason to act. Planning ahead will allow you to reap the rewards of an effective re-mail campaign. Timing and Testing I'll say it again: The information above is a great starting place for developing an effective timing strategy for your email program, but you need to do your own testing to see what works best for your business and your audience. Testing different delivery days, urgency dates and levels of frequency will be the best way to find out how to increase your response rates via optimal timing. Next month we'll cover the important data points you'll need to understand to get the most out of your tracking your test results. |
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