When is the best time to send an email during lockdown?

15/06/2020

The best email marketing relies on research and analysis to find the often marginal changes that will give them a step up above their competitors. One of the areas of research has been around when is the best time to send campaigns out. With the recent lockdown due to coronavirus resulting in many more people working from home, the key times for dispatching emails has changed.

Recent research suggests that the traditional mid-morning spike in email campaigns being sent and also being engaged with is being replaced by an earlier spike at 9am. This has been attributed to the reality that many people will likely check into the office earlier on and have other responsibilities to fit in before lunchtime. There are subsequent spikes in engagement at 1pm and also later on at 6pm. 

Taking the above information into account, sending emails mid-morning is now not the best time, as people are just getting settled into work or homeschooling their children, not taking a break to check their emails until lunchtime or the afternoon when they might have some more spare time. Sharing this information with whoever looks after your social media could be beneficial too, as they may be able to alter the times they post to alternate with the new email schedule, which could boost engagement for social media channels.

This is now the perfect time to really dive into researching your customer base to figure out what times would suit your subscribers best. If parents are your target audience then sending out emails to them early in the afternoon may be better compared to people who may be working from home who might be more inclined to look at their emails at the beginning of the day before getting stuck into work.

As this data has only been collected over the last month or so, there’s no telling how the results may alter over time as we settle into this new lifestyle - which is ever-changing too. This means it’s more important than ever to look carefully at your email interactions over the following months to see how the patterns could change as the lockdown is lessened and we settle into our new daily routines.