Best Day of Week & Best Time of Day for B+B Email

[Kingalan1]

For business to business email, should we avoid sending on Mondays and Fridays? The nature of the service is commercial real estate brokerage for office space in New York City.

We are mailing to corporate decision makers in various industries (technology, finance, law). Should we avoid mailing during certain times of day? Or is there a best time of day to send the email.

Thanks, 
Alan

[Kelly_Edwards]

Hi!

I work in a B2B and we never send emails on a Monday or Friday - they don't get the engagement or open rate as compared to sending on other days.

A quick way of finding out the right day for you is to check your Google Analytics. What days and times is your site most popular? I'd go for that time to start with.

We find that 10am and 2pm are great for our business but that may be different for you. We've confirmed this through testing too.

I'd say, start by checking the right time/day on GA, then move onto testing. Split your group (if you send to more than 1k subscribers) and see which time they engage with most. Send half at one time and half at another. You'll then get a good answer for your business as to the best time and day to send.

[Tenlo]

Alan,

I work with a number of different B2B companies that use email marketing regularly.  You are correct that Mondays and Fridays are bad days to send as we have done a good amount of send time testing and those days always perform poorest.  We have found, across almost all of our clients, that Tuesdays between 11am-1pm EST are the best time to send in the US for our clients, but as Kelly mentioned, you should conduct your own tests to find out when your audience is best engaged.

[Kingalan1]

Thank you Kelly and Michael for these excellent answers to my query.

Another related question: if a recipient clicks on a product pages (an office rental in Manhattan) and goes to my website, I have the ability to send them an automated email once they click the link or even several hours afterwards.  Will doing so increase my conversion rate? If I do not set this feature up, am I missing a key opportunity?

Also, the package I am working with allows me to send a follow up email if the recipient opens the my promotional email. Is it best practices to set this up?

I don't want to harass of spam any potential customer. At the same time I don't want to miss an opportunity. So what is best practices?

Note I have a mailing list of about 12,000 and intend to send emails targeted by industry during about 10 business days a month. Don't want to send more than one mailer a month to each recipient, scared they will opt out if I over do it.

Any thoughts????

Thanks, Alan

[Tenlo]

Alan,

Triggered emails can be very effective when done right, the key I have found is making sure that your follow up email provides your potential client with value (not money or a discount, just value). A

As for to many emails, you should be able to cap your send frequency to people so that you do not get excessive. I try not to send more than 2 emails a week and only if the person does a high value action or specifically requests it.

When you first start sending emails (especially if you have not been using this list regularly) you will see a larger amount of unsubscribes, this is normal anytime you start getting in front of customers more often, don't worry, the people unsubscribing from 1-2 monthly emails were not going to become customers.  Really what it comes down to is you will need to feel out your niche, some industries it is great to do weekly sends, others once a month can be to much.

[Kelly_Edwards]

I completely agree with Michael - triggered emails are great, but only when they add significant value.

They tend to work best in eCommerce where you know the user has intent to purchase and where that decision is a quick one.

To follow your example, if your first email was an office rental in Manhattan, then you may want to follow up alternatives to those customers that clicked on the email as they're likely to be interested.

You could then segment your audience based on their potential location-based needs - which would then allow you to send them more tailored emails. This is especially great if your email platform allows you to add conditional content?

As for sending follow up if your recipient opens the email, I'd personally say no, unless you're reminding them of a time-limited offer. We also find that sending to those who unopened the email has about 1/2 the engagement level of the first email if that's useful for you to know!

It's all worth testing in your own environment though as what works for one business won't work for another. Try testing the engagement levels when you send 2 emails a month to see if it increases conversions. 2 emails a month isn't going to offend people or make people actively unsubscribe unless you've send them really close together.

Hope that adds to Micahels response.

[BartonInteractive]

I'm in agreement with Kelly, and have seen a ton of success with this type of triggered email in ecommerce. We have set up clients so they'll receive not only cart abandonment and checkout abandonment emails, but also product and category abandonment emails. These have the highest conversion rate -- far beyond all typical marketing emails we send.

In B2B, perhaps one could do something similar with an abandonment email -- but for a particular service. Something along the lines of "Still interested in service xyz?" with an email showing top examples and best alternatives or pairings below. Something you could consider, and as advised above, test out.

Best of luck!

Zack