When Is the Best Time for Small Businesses to Send Emails?

Experts say that the best times to send out emails are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 10 a.m. and between 3 to 4 p.m. But this data isn't carved in stone.  

As the leading SEO and marketing company in West Palm Beach, we believe that demographics and other information about your target audience dictate the best time to send emails.  

Although sending your emails at improper times can indeed lead to lower open rates and engagement levels, email timing isn’t just about when the right hour or date to blast your communications is.  

It’s also about other factors, such as life milestones, purchasing behavior, and many more. So, how exactly can you conclude when’s the best time to send out emails with all the possible variables you need to consider?  

In this article, we will share with you tips that will help you identify when the best send times are so you can apply them to your next email campaign and generate the best results!

Email Timing Tips for Small Businesses

1. Use Data to Inform Your Email Send Times

Cold email outreach is a great way to initiate a conversation and start a relationship with prospective customers. It can help you generate an ROI of $36 per $1 spent, which can't be matched by other marketing strategies.  

The only problem, however, is that most email marketers ignore cold hard data, and believe that all it takes is simply sending an email.  

The average open rate across various industries is around 20%, while click rates are between 2% and 4%.  

Having relevant data is crucial. The more information you have about your target audience, the more you can identify the best times to send emails and convince your recipients to open and engage with your emails.  

This is why you should take the time to do customer profiling and create personas.  

If you don’t develop one and you have thousands of email addresses to work with, then you’ll end up sending generic, ineffective emails that appear as spam.  

By getting to know your recipients, how they behave, what their recent purchase from you was, and their likelihood to buy at any given time, you segment similar customers together and develop separate email marketing campaigns that they’ll likely respond to.  

Here are the data points you should collect:

• Demographic data – Determine their gender, address where they live, job title, and their chosen persona.  
• Behavioral data – Ask what a customer does with your product, what they buy, if they're free or paid users when they last opened an email, and when and how often they buy.  
• Customer sign-up date – This allows you to determine which stage of the sales cycle they're at. Determine if they're new users or loyal customers.  
• How and when they open your emails – Find out what browsing device they use and when they want to receive your emails and how often.  

You should also take note that many consumers sign up for the sake of discount codes and freebies. It's important to confirm that you're reaching out to people who are interested in what you have to offer so you can collect accurate data.  

2. Segment Your Email List

Many marketers are focused on the specific date and time of when they should be sending their email to boost their campaign’s open and engagement rate.  

But like we said, this isn’t the only factor you should consider.  

Imagine if a certain percentage of your target audience are workaholics who will most likely check their emails over a cup of coffee early in the morning, this means that the best time to send them an email is overnight.  

If some of your prospects are self-employed parents, then they might not be able to open their emails until the weekend. So, it’s probably best to only send them one email at the end of every week.  

What we're trying to say here is that each of your recipients is different and sending them an email on Tuesdays at 10 a.m. might not always be the "best time" to try and get them to buy something.  

What you should do instead is start by sending out emails according to what experts say the best times are.  

Once you have enough data about your recipients, segment them into similar groups so that you can begin experimenting with email timing.  

Here are some tips on how to start segmenting your email list:

• Decide what customer data to use and how you’re going to organize that information.  
• Identify who your best customers are and create a persona for them.  
• Segment your email list according to these personas.  
• Choose a segment to experiment with.  
• Find the right voice, craft the right message, and design email copy based on the data you’ve collected about them.  

• Conduct an A/B email test to see which copy is more compelling.  
• Use an email segmentation tool to help you segment your email list and send out multiple emails easily.  
• Measure results, make adjustments, and repeat until you achieve the results you want.  

3. Consider Other Elements That Are Just as Important as Timing

Sending your emails at the best times is crucial to boosting your email open rates and click-through rates. However, a perfectly timed email that’s irrelevant to its recipients is still ineffective.  

That’s why you need to incorporate the following elements into your perfectly timed emails:

• Keep your subject line short, straight to the point, and address your recipient by their first name. Use it to grab their attention and spark interest.  
• Use a familiar “from” address. Your recipients need to know the email is coming from you and not from some spammer.  
• Make it very clear what your recipients are getting out of the deal. Point out the experience, emotion, or solution they're getting if they take action.  
• Share success stories, customer testimonials, and other examples of the people they could become with your products or services.  

• Invoke a sense of urgency or a fear of missing out to get them to make a purchase decision faster. Limited time offers usually do the trick.  

4. Automate Your Emails

Sending the right email to the right person at the right time has never been easier thanks to automation! Automated email campaigns have 70% higher open rates than typical emails.  

Use trigger email to automatically send emails to subscribers as a response to a particular reaction or action they make.  

Examples of triggered emails are:

• Welcome emails – Sent automatically after a new user has successfully subscribed to your sign-up process. They’re a great way to make new subscribers feel welcomed and provide guidance for the next steps.  
• Onboarding emails – Intended to encourage your new subscribers to give your products or services a try. They come with incentives to convince users to take action and convert.  
• Transactional emails – Usually triggered by a purchase. They are a great way to keep in touch and update your customers about their orders until they receive them.  
• Product inventory updates – Sent when products are out of stock or back in stock. These emails are a great way to alert customers about restocks for their favorite products.  
• Event or promo announcements – Sent whenever you want to promote something. Keep your customers in the loop with company events, new product launches, exclusive deals, and promos to make them feel involved and special.  

Email automation helps you nurture leads and makes your recipients more responsive. It also helps boost brand awareness and keep your existing customers interested.  

As your trusted SEO company in West Palm Beach, we’ll share with you the best way to build automated email workflows or email drip campaigns:

• Plan your email workflow ahead of time to ensure that your efforts are aligned with your objectives. An email workflow is a series of automated emails that work together to accomplish a goal, such as onboarding new subscribers or getting them to buy something.  
• Personalize your subject lines, "from" or sender address, and email copy to create compelling emails that convert.  
• Send your recipients helpful email content before asking them to subscribe, visit your store, or buy your products. Provide them value first and they’ll return the favor by participating in your campaigns.  

• Set workflow goals so you can move a subscriber from one group to another workflow to continue engaging and keeping your subscribers interested.  
• Clear your email list frequently. If you see that someone’s simply uninterested in your emails, delete them from your list. Don’t spam them.
• Avoid sending back-to-back messages. These can overwhelm recipients.

Make the most out of your automated emails by personalizing your content, providing value, planning ahead, setting a goal, and learning from common mistakes!

5. Promote SEO Content

SEO plays an important role in making sure that prospective customers can find your business when they search for your products or services online.  

But how can email help with this?

By promoting targeted SEO content via email, you can drive qualified visitors to your site and boost engagement signals that can increase your ranking in the search results.

If you’re putting your email content on your site and linking to it, the SEO experts at our SEO company in West Palm Beach suggest that you optimize for SEO.  

This is an effective way to gain social shares and build backlinks, which can also help increase your visibility online.  

Are Your Email Campaigns Not Getting the Results You Want? This SEO Company in West Palm Beach Can Help You!

By collecting data, creating a customer persona, segmenting your email list, personalizing your email content, automating your emails and optimizing them for SEO, you'll see a significant increase in your engagement rate, open rates, and click-through rates!  

Digital Resource is an SEO company in West Palm Beach that specializes in helping small businesses achieve success online through effective SEO and digital marketing strategies.  

Want to achieve an ROI of $38 per $1 spent on your email campaigns? Contact us today! We can help.

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