When is the best time to email blast?

Testing is really the only way to know for sure. For example, it used to be the general consensus that Monday was the WORST day to send emails, so as a result the volume of Monday emails went way down.but then someone got the bright idea to send their emails on Monday and suddenly Monday became the BEST day to send theirs.

There are benchmarks out there but its hard to find one that mirrors your product, your offer, your demographic, your timing, etc.

I have used this list of pros and cons in sending email for each day of the week, which originally appeared on the 60-Second Marketer, written by Jenn Abecassis, as a general guide.

Monday -

Pros: Office work has not filled inboxes yet.

Cons: People are in “work mode” and won’t be focused on non-work tasks.

Best Practice: Send emails late Monday morning, after people have cleaned the weekend spam from their inboxes.

Tuesday -

Pros: People have organized their week, and can find personal time for emails.

Cons: Emails poised for a weekend response may be too early.

Best Practice: Use Tuesday for emails that request action during the workweek.

Wednesday/Thursday -

Prose: People are planning their weekends and gearing up for personal time.

Cons: Time during the workweek is running short, and requested action may be pushed back to the following week, or even forgotten about.

Best Practice: Focus leisure and weekend notifications during these key weekend planning days.

Friday -

Pros: Studies indicate fewer total emails sent compared to the rest of the week, increasing visibility among the myriad of other messages.

Cons: People hurry to leave the office early, and may not take time to view non-work related emails.

Best Practice: Send emails early in the day to give consumers more time to take action. An unopened email from Friday will sort to the bottom of an inbox on Monday, and is often discarded.

Weekends -

Pros: People check emails on weekends, too, so weekends may have untapped potential.

Cons: A B2B weekend email may seem overly-intrusive to some people.

Best Practice: By all means test. People tend to be less stressed and tolerant on weekends. Plus with mobile devices outselling laptops, emails are opened and read at all hours after work.

So, The BEST way to move forward is to:

1. Use the guidelines above in making an initial educated guess
2. Test to see whether your guess was right or not
3. Once you've got the best day nailed down, try experimenting with what time of day works best
4. Make sure you maintain accurate reports so you can benchmark your results moving forward.
5. Be careful about general company metrics. We have seen completely different test results within the same company for different business units.

Thinking outside the Inbox

Ten Tips for “Outside of the Inbox” Email Marketing

1. Forget the “batch and blast” technique and consider your email campaigns as part of a conversation. Begin to think of each email campaign you send out as part of an ongoing dialogue with each prospect. The way to keep the conversation going is to listen (how are recipients responding to the campaign), be relevant (what are their projects and interests), and engage them in meaningful ways (if they visit your product page, your next communication should focus on products, not your blog).
   
2. Move beyond open and click-through rates – what else are your prospects and customers doing? The standard email success metrics are great, but explore all the valuable information available to you. After each email campaign, see where prospects went on your Web site, how often they visit, and whether there are new ways to think about how to segment your prospects based on the behaviours they exhibit.
    
3. While we’re on the topic of segmentation… Combine the “standard” segmentation approaches (lead source, industry, etc.) with behavioural data (e.g. who opened up an email, downloaded or, spent more than 30 minutes on your site and visited more than 3 pages) to create more complex segmentation strategies. 
    
4. An email message is called a “message” for a reason. A great way to test what messages about your product or service resonate with your audience is through email. Use campaigns to tailor your messages according to your prospects interests and actions and see what really strikes a chord with certain segments.
    
5. Automate what you can and leave more time for creativity and strategy. Use a marketing automation solution as the extra marketing resource you never had. Set up automated campaigns based on event and behavioural triggers and rest assured that you’re building up relationships with prospects every time. 
    
6. Mix up your campaign styles and methods. Experiment with a variety of email campaign types, some from marketing (HTML), some from sales (Outlook), and even some from you! You’d be surprised how receptive people can be when they know the message is coming from a real person—even a “marketer.”
    
7. Take deliverability seriously. Your creative strategies are no good if your emails can’t even get through to your prospect’s inbox. Use a tool such as Marketo, Pardot, Eloqua to proof how your campaign will look in di¬fferent email readers and identify if the HTML or content will cause trouble with spam filters before you hit “send.”
    
8. If you’re not testing, you’re guessing. Email testing shouldn’t be difficult to execute or understand the results. Testing subject lines should be a standard process to optimize open rates, but try to incorporate A/B testing into your campaigns whenever you can. All you need is two versions of an image, a piece of copy, or a promotion, and you’ll be on your way.
    
9. Dive deeper into your email reports without touching Excel. Use reports and dashboards that are built with the marketing user in mind, letting you publish detailed reports without needing to jump into Excel or creating the much dreaded pivot table. Use all of the details given in the reports to understand each prospect interaction and use this to inform your next campaign and prove marketing ROI!
    
10. Use “check in” emails to continuously build your relationship with each and every prospect over time and gain useful feedback. Prospects and customers will appreciate a “check-in” email from you or a sales rep every once in a while. These are great opportunities for you to ask how you’re doing as a marketer and ensure that your email communications are useful and informative. Ask what they found most useful about your spefic programs and what they’d like to see in the future.

Taken from http://www.marketo.com/library/marketo-email-marketing.pdf