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Mar
14
Bad Days for Sending Email to Small Biz Owners
March 14, 2007 | Anita Campbell
If you send out B2B email blasts, newsletters and other marketing communications, the traditional wisdom is not to waste them by mailing near holidays when your prospects are likely to be out of the office and not reading emails. However, for emails to small business owners and staff, different considerations may apply.
Prospects to Go has created a helpful calendar showing bad days to send email to corporate recipients. For instance, according to Prospects to Go, the following calendar shows the bad days for sending out emails during the Memorial Day holiday season — because executives are likely to be out of the office during these times.
Now the big question is, does this calendar apply to small business owners and managers? To some degree, yes. But perhaps not to the same degree as for corporate types.
My experience is that many small-business people have a tendency to read emails on the weekends and around holidays. It’s often the only free time they have for catching up on their reading.
For instance, Sundays have decent open rates, based on my own newsletter to over 5,000 recipients. Why Sundays? Because the business owner is not in the office with a million things vying for his or her attention and has an uninterrupted hour or two to handle email and to read. And your email gets a little more of their mindshare on a Sunday. The same concept applies to some holidays.
Of course, there are holidays … and then there are holidays. The Christmas-to-New-Years holiday is never a good time, because of all the focus on family get-togethers. Nobody is working if they can avoid it.
But other holidays with less intensive celebrating, such as Memorial Day weekend, may find small business personnel thinking those extra weekend days are an ideal time to catch up on email. So don’t overlook holidays as reading catch-up time when establishing your email marketing schedule to small businesses. And don’t be afraid to experiment.
Hat tip to PR Tech for the calendar link.
Comments
3 Comments so far
As a business owner myself, your article is right on target. But the early morning hours during the week should not be overlooked as a good time to catch business owners. They are usually getting organized, catching up on emails and online news. AND they actually answer the telephone. Business owners are usually at the office before everyone else and don’t like the sound of an unanswered phone because it could be the next great client.
I agree, Rose, the lure of that telephone is too much to pass up! And the same goes with an interesting email subject line. If your email looks like one worth reading, they are more likely to open it, or at least pay attention to it and put it in a folder for later reading.
Sales pitches disguised as newsletters or updates will quickly turn off most business owners, as will too-frequent communications (my biggest reason for unsubscribing). So it should go without saying, make your email communications worth reading if you want owners to read them.
Anita, that’s a really interesting point about email readership on Sundays. This blog would prove very helpful to small companies that have not been around long enough to figure out reading patterns themselves.
Another benefit on sending out newsletters on Sundays is not having to compete with as many other emails in your recepient’s inbox, since most businesses send their materials out during the week.