Perhaps the most popular question asked around email campaigns is this:
When is the best time to send them?
You’ve asked it, I’ve asked — everyone in charge of email has asked it.
The answer seems simple, but then you realize… it’s not.
It’s hard to know the best time to send your emails.
Your contacts have busy lives, different schedules, and likely even live in different time zones. So how do you plan your send times to catch every person at just the right moment?
Let’s talk about a couple of options, shall we?
Option 1: Use Industry Standards For Send Time
So…
Generally speaking, there are standards that are good to use as a jumping-off point when you’re just getting started.
And they are as follows:
- 8am to 9am EST
- 3pm to 4pm EST
Why EST?
Standards tend to stick to East Coast times since the majority of the US population lives in that timezone.
However…
You may find that most of your contacts don’t live in that timezone. Or there may be something about these timeframes that don’t work for your brand.
So while these are good send times to start with, you shouldn’t stick to them like some sort of strict diet regimen.
You can definitely use them to see metrics what your open-rate and click-through-rate are for your sends. Also, trying different days of the week to gauge how both time and day affect those metrics is a good idea.
But, look…
That’s a lot of work for something that should still be pretty simple.
That’s why we think it’s better to go with the second option for finding the best email send times.
Option 2: Let Your Contacts Behavior Tell You The Best Send Time
Your brand is unique. Your contacts are unique.
So it’s easy to reason that your email list is going to need a customized send time that likely doesn’t fit with the normal industry standards.
Being able to discover the best send time and then send your emails at that perfect moment every time can have a huge impact on your email marketing as a whole, so this is important.
That’s why we believe using behavior-based tracking to automatically study and find that golden moment!
No, it’s not just some pipe-dream.
We’ve actually built this feature into our platform called Machine Learning Open Predicability.
I know, I know.
The name is a bit long, but what it does is awesome.
For example, when you use this feature in Sendlane, it takes the behavior of every contact you send to and learns when to send emails to them.
So if one contact usually opens emails in the morning, and a different contact shows they open emails at eight at night, we will send your email in the morning to the first contact and in the evening to the other.
Did you catch that?
Yup.
With this feature, send times are personalized to the behavior of each person to make sure that every send has perfect timing for everyone.
How awesome is that?!
How To Turn On Machine Learning Open Predictability in Sendlane
Don’t worry.
This is really easy.
Simply go about creating an email campaign like you normally would.
Once you have everything in tip-top shape, click on the Schedule button, and you’ll see this pop-up window.
Simply choose the day you’ll send your campaign, and then toggle the button that says Machine Learning Open Predictability.
Click save and that’s all there is to it!
You can login now to put this feature to good use for your next campaign!
And if you’re not a Sendlane user just yet, you can check out our send time feature (and everything else we offer) with a FREE 14 day trial!