The Email Wars

So I challenge you to open the past month’s email campaigns you have either sent out OR received (if you save them all in a folder like me) and look at the calls to action. What we are seeing in almost every industry is heavy discounting and competing for sales on price alone.

This trend led me to think a little bit more about the timing of email campaigns to try and test something besides sales and savings. What came from this was looking at the day of the month that the campaign was sent. Now you might think “Where am I going with this?”, well let me tell you. I believe that testing the day of the month for your email campaigns to coincide with paydays of your target audience might be in order. Why well think about it a little bit. What if you sent emails for new product releases etc on paydays for consumers and at the beginning of a quarter or month for a business to business campaign when pockets are fatter?

Now I have not run any tests on this notion yet, but I think it is worth testing the psychology behind the fat wallet. If you think about it a little bit when we get paid or have new budgets we are more open to thinking about spending a little more freely than we might typically be inclined to after bills are paid, media budgets are allocated and software contracts renew. When someone has more cash to spend they are in a buy mode.

I did a little research and found a story about a retailer in Seattle that runs a children’s business that had tested this concept successfully. What she found was when she sent her email newsletters on the first Tuesday of the month, her sales were higher. She was able to get the best response and it was up to five times more effective compared to her mid-month campaigns when people can get bogged down financially.

When you can target your email campaigns based on when your target audience has more discretional income you run the highest chance of driving higher returns on your efforts.

So will you take this idea and run with it? I know that I am going to test it with some of our retail and consumer clients and see what the conversion differences are.