The danger of conventional wisdom in email marketing

July 10, 2012 By

There’s a significant danger lurking in conventional wisdom in email marketing. What do we mean? Here’s an oft-repeated piece of advice:

“The best day to send email is [insert day here]“.

You see this sort of advice repeated like a bad kitten meme on social networks everywhere, whenever someone publishes a new “study” (with questionably sourced data) about email marketing or social media. The current conventional wisdom is that Tuesday is the best day to send email, and it appears based on what our data center’s aggregate statistics are showing that people are following that advice slavishly:

IMG_0234
Our daily email monitor in our Atlanta office lobby

Every Tuesday, our aggregate volume spikes predictably as people go for what they think works. Meanwhile, days like Saturday and Sunday are left somewhat neglected.

Now flip this conventional advice on its head. You and your competitors are all flooding customers’ inboxes on Tuesday. There are literally 4x as many emails flooding in on Tuesday as on Sunday. If you’re looking to grab someone’s attention, should you send email when they’re the most swamped or the least swamped?

We’re not saying that Sunday is the best day to send email. Please don’t take that away from this post. What we’re saying is that you need to question the advice you are reading in marketing publications and blogs (especially online) that give too-easy, too-pat answers, because there’s a good chance everyone else is following the same advice. Instead, test, test, test for yourself. Send email using our 168 hour method and see when your audience responds best, as opposed to just blindly following overheard advice.

Christopher S. Penn
Director of Inbound Marketing, WhatCounts

18 Ways book cover
Audience to Evangelist
Learn 18 different ways to find and grow your email marketing and social media ROI! Promote email with social, social with email, learn how to set up a Facebook Page for email subscriptions, and much more. Download the free eBook now.
 Lifecycle email marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in digital marketing, but how can you make it work for you? Download our free eBook and learn 5 lifecycle frameworks plus practical applications to your email marketing program.

Share this page:

Filed Under: Delivery
  • http://waldowsocial.com DJ Waldow

    “What we’re saying is that you need to question the advice you are reading in marketing publications and blogs (especially online) that give too-easy, too-pat answers, because there’s a good chance everyone else is following the same advice”

    I like.

  • http://www.facebook.com/timbrechlin Tim Brechlin

    Amen. The most frustrating example of this is when I’m in a seminar at a conference, and a speaker says something like, “Tuesday is the best day to send email” … and then the hashtag gets absolutely flooded with people blindly parroting this newfound kernel of wisdom without taking so much as a moment to think about it. It’s maddening.