Email Doesn't Like Mondays

Gwynne Young
Managing Editor, CustomerThink
Member

Posted 15-Mar-2005 03:59 PM
A new study contradicts the popular belief that open and click rates are highest for emails sent out on Mondays. An article in DM News cites a study by email service provider ExactTarget, which found, among other things, that:

* The best day for open rates is not necessarily the best day for click-throughs
* Monday has consistently ranked fifth or sixth for "best day to send"
* Starting in July, the best days to maximize open rates are later in the week. For July to November, Friday performed best but was less than a half of a percent ahead of Wednesday and Thursday in average open
* Sunday and Saturday yield the highest click-through rates
* Results vary by industry, with high-tech companies doing well Fridays; membership organizations doing well Wednesdays; and online retailers doing well Sundays.

Jesse Sandqvist
Member

Posted 17-Mar-2005 09:18 AM
"I hate Mondays!"

I believe that it can be explained pretty much by common sense that Mondays are NOT good for sending emails, click through rates, or conversions.

Coming back to office after a weekend usually means full inboxes, monday meetings, and just genrally busy days trying to organise the upcoming week. I personally feel that I do not want to get commercial emails while I am going through all the emails that arrived on the weekend (which usually are mostly spam I never signed up for in the first place). I would never advice my client to send anything on Mondays (and really wonder who came up the "popular belief" that Mondays are good days to communicate...?)

Precicely for the same reason sending messages on the weekend might work for a certain target group but for business email addresses the effort is wasted. Those emails will go directly to the trashcan along with all the other inbox clutter...

Friday afternoons are also bad but obviously just for different reasons. I believe that most people are already thinking about leaving the office and do not have enough focus / interest to be persuaded to click-through to a campaign site for a product...

On a more scientific approach, from our campaign reporting tool we have seen that Tue, Wed, and Thu are usually the best days to send messages and to get responses. That is when we launch most of our campaigns.

Of course there are exceptions and differences between industries just like Gwynne quoted above. It is just important to have a good transparency on the campaign websites and communication platform to be able to see what works and what not.

As a final though, I would like to stress that the MOST important thing (whichever day you plan to communicate with your customers) is to actually have a real relationship with your customer. This results into them WANTING to receive your communication. Many companies still believe that mass is a substitution of quality, but they should stick to mass marketing like banners, bought lists, TV and Radio.

Jesse Sandqvist
Director
Responsewave Ltd.
www.responsewave.com

Edwin Setzpfand
Member Council
Member

Posted 07-May-2005 02:33 PM
Jesse just hits the nail on the head at the end of the contribution:

quote:
.. the MOST important thing (whichever day you plan to communicate with your customers) is to actually have a real relationship with your customer. This results into them WANTING to receive your communication...

for I subscribe to this weekly newsletter for professional reasons that comes in every Monday (US time). It even is called something like the "ABC Monday Morning Newsletter".

And indeed I look forward to receive it and at the end of the day I've read it all (not in one piece, though).

Edwin

Graham Hill
Guru
Member

Posted 10-May-2005 12:32 AM
Jesse, Edwin

You both raise an interesting question: When can you legitimately email a customer?

You both suggest that the only legitimate condition when you can email a customer is when you have a real relationships.

Putting the semantics about what constitutes a 'real relationship' aside, you seem to suggest that you shouldn't use email for a whole range of activities, e.g. contacting customers who have only bought once or twice and who cannot be judged to have a real relationship. Or customers whose relationship is failing and you would like to save. Or customers who have left the relationship but you would like to winback. And what about brand building activities? Or managing prospects who are not yet customers?

I agree with you that spam is a big problem. But I don't think the restriction you suggest is appropriate. I do think that you can use email legitimately with much more than just customers with whom you have a real relationship.

Graham Hill
Independent CRM Consultant

Jesse Sandqvist
Member

Posted 10-May-2005 05:45 AM
Hi Graham,

What I mean by having a relationship is that the customers have given you the permission to target them. (and that's also the legal part what you asked for..)

Obviously you should respect the privacy policy they have agreed to. The privacy policy is like a "contract" between you and your customer on how the relationship will function—that is the relationship.

This is of course independed of how long the customer relationship has existed or in which customer life cycle the customer is with your company. However there is a real relationship because they have given you the permission and they are truly interested to receive communication from you (as agreed in your privacy policy). That's my definition of it. You might have misunderstood what I meant.

Taking this further... my whole point was that you also want your customers to act on the email you send them. An open- or click through rate does not tell me much but if they are even as low as single digit percentages I can imagine how low the conversion (response) rate is going to be. The key—personalisation (and differentiation)

Unfortunately the majority to today's email marekting falls into the category of MASS email campaigns (let alone all the spam). Many marketers seem to only see the cost effectiviness of email and ignore the most important factor of the power in targeting and personalisation of the messages.

From personal experience I can tell you that I have given my permission to multiple marketers to approach me. They promise me great benefits and this & that (even I am not a customer). Thus far only a few companies have lived up the promises. For the other ones I have TERMINATED the relationship because I perceived no value in their communication to me. They have lost me as a customer already and can never approach me again via email...

Depending on the customer life-cycle you need to differenciate which kind of offering to target which people. Retention offer is much different to a acquisition offer...

I also think for this reason it does not make too much sense to buy email lists... no real relationships. Sometimes you might get over 10% open or click through... should you be satisfied?

Jesse