The timing of email marketing campaigns has always been a dilemma for marketers. The goal to improve open rates and increase sales is dependent on optimizing the timing of the email in the inbox. It’s always a great feeling to know you were at the top of the inbox.The best timing varies from company to company and the audience you are targeting. According to Morgan Stewart, cofounder and CEO of Trendline Interactive, a marketing consulting firm, “the best way for companies to get ahead is to try to understand their target market and how their product meets those customer’s needs.”The timing of email campaigns definitely impacts the results of the campaign. Sending out a bi-monthly business email newsletter so it arrives the first thing in the morning is a huge gamble because it is likely to get deleted with many of the hundreds of other messages in the inbox. Most readers are in the habit of just deleting everything first thing in the morning especially on Mondays when they are deluged with emails. At the very best, it will get put into a folder and forgotten. To get better results, why not try sending it after 10 but before 4 on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays instead?A great tactic is to look at your sales patterns and web traffic to determine when your customers are online and ready to place an order because they are more likely to open an email if they are already online.Once again the marketing test is the most important way to find the best way to reach your audience. But a great subject line is just as important as the timing for email responses. Try testing long vs. short, specific vs. vague, brand vs. no brand, etc. Use Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn ads to test the message that gets the most clicks. At the Denver marketing firm, Revenue River Marketing, we evaluate the target and prospective target market and the patterns for social media as well as online buying trends.In addition to the timing and subject line, some of the best practice testing you might try include:The From line.It is the key branding aspect of every email. It’s the first thing a recipient sees in his inbox, and it’s the first impression the recipient has of your brand and message. Test your brand’s name against a more personal connection (a sales rep’s name, for example) to see which gets a higher open rate. Personalization achieves more engagement than a generic from. Part of that personalization can be a local branding so if you are a Denver based company marketing to a local audience, Denver branding could be used in the from line.Opt-in form and process.How easy is it for someone to sign up for your emails? How soon after they sign up do they get an email from you? You might ask your friends and family to go to the website and sign up for your emails, and then ask them about the experience. Is it easy to sign up online? Or, if not online, was it easy for them to sign up in your locations? Many companies have loyalty cards that include email addresses that make it easy for the customer to get emails. When they clicked “submit” or dropped their completed customer loyalty form in the box, how soon did they receive a welcome message? How often do you hear from them? These answers can provide valuable insight and can give you an objective glance into ways you can improve for your customers.Dan Zarrella, a social media scientist at HubSpot, an Internet marketing company, partnered with Mail Chimp for a research project and conducted his own focus groups as a part of the project. The bottom line from Zarrella and others is to gather best practices from industry research and then apply it to your unique brand. “If marketers want to get exceptional results, they must start using data. Use the best practices as a starting point, but experience testing and closed loop reporting are super important.”If you test your campaigns – keep it up! If you’re not testing, why not? Testing your campaigns can give you very useful and actionable information to improve future email marketing campaigns immediately.
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