Friday best time to send B2B email?

Various newspaper articles and blog posts of late have covered the growing phenomenon of businesses encouraging or mandating employees to enjoy "email-free Fridays."

I'm going to be contrary and suggest no-email Fridays are great for B2B marketing emails sent on that day. (Don't look at me like that.)

If you take a closer look at these new policies, they don't impose a blanket ban on using email. Instead, they attempt to get employees to avoid email for internal communication.

There do not appear to be limitations on reading email, or communicating via email with others outside the business. So people will still use email. They'll just get less of it from colleagues.

Which means less competition for attention in the inbox. (That's the "AHA!" moment.)

Now I'm being a little unfair here.

For example, if you're not using email for internal communication, then you might check email less frequently or not at all on Friday.

And then there's the question of whether Friday marketing emails catch people in the right frame of mind anyway, given a likely focus on finishing work and getting home for the weekend.

The real message is that there's more than one way to interpret changes in behavior. And the only real way to know what day works best for you and your unique audience is to test.

(Hat tip to Tom O'Leary for putting me onto this issue.)

More reading on the phenomenon:
A day without email is like... (The Email Wars)
No email Fridays transform office (ABC news report)
...no email day is next (Intel plans a pilot project for engineers)
Fridays go from casual to email free (USA Today)

More on timing | Tags: email marketing, email timing, best day to send email

Permalink | October 12, 2007 | 0 comment(s)
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