In my job in email marketing, I am always getting asked by
clients when the best time is to send an email for optimal opens and
responses. Our response back to them is
always test, test, test. I cannot tell you
the best time to send an email for your brand without having some data to back
it up. Some questions to consider
include:
- Are the majority of your users viewing on a mobile device?
- Is both your email and website optimized for mobile?
- Is the call to action easier to complete on a desktop or mobile device?
- What are the demographics of your audience?
- What are the trends in past behavior?
There have been many studies conducted on the best times to
post on social media and some conclusive trends found, though many recommend tailoring
to your brand by testing as well.
Timing is all about knowing
your audience and targeting them when they are most likely to be using the
app. For instance, Pinterest use is high
on Saturday mornings perhaps due to people looking for fun DIY (do-it-yourself) projects to do
that weekend. Although many companies
block social media sites, they are generally visited before starting work in
the morning or perhaps as an afternoon break after lunch, thus the best times
to post would be early morning or afternoon.
The key to blog posting is to post regularly and on the same day each week
and then to link to your blog through your social media sites during the
optimal times listed below (Bennett, 2013).
Here are a few highlights that can be seen in the
infographic below.
Twitter:
- Best: Weekends, 1-3pm
- Worst: 8pm – 8am
Pinterest:
- Best: Saturday morning, 2-4pm, 8-11pm
- Worst: 5-7pm, 1-7am
Facebook:
- Best: Weekdays 6-8am, 2-5pm
- Worst: All Weekends, 10pm-4am
Blogs:
- Best: Monday, Friday, and Saturday at 11am
- Worst: 11pm-8am
References:
Bennett, Shea. (2013). The Best Times To Post on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest. MediaBistro. Retrieved February 12, 2014 from http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/social-best-times-post_b49546.
Meagan,
ReplyDeleteLooking to explore the idea of maintaining all social media for my current organization, I found your posting to be extremely helpful. This provides a great base line strategy Business2Community posted a nice supplement article to your posting. Number nine states you are not posting at the right time. The infographic they provide is insightful, but basic. “Optimal publishing times can vary drastically according to platform and industry” (Liubarets, 2013). I am interested to see if these times can be industry specific. In the non profit sector, especially for the foundation it is about exposure. We try to build awareness through our postings and tweets. If we do these at the most optimal times, it will have a greater influence on our awareness campaigns.
Do you your clients come from a variety of industries or are they one industry specific? If so, can you provide some insight to the differences in needs? Do you find that there are specific industry needs for the timing of social media postings?
Thank you again for sharing such important information that we can all take away from!
Reference:
Liubarets, T. (2013, September 5). 15 ways to make your social media strategy a complete fail. Retrieved February 12, 2014, from Business 2 Community: http://www.business2community.com/social-media/15-ways-make-social-media-strategy-complete-fail-0607328
Hey Meagan,
ReplyDeleteVery interesting topic this week. In my current position, we are always debating as to the best times to reach our audiences and maximize our social content efforts.
One thing that I have learned is that while statistics showcase when the 'best times to post' are, it really isn't good to follow a generic outline. Different organizations target different audiences, take a look at Scott's chapter on buyer personas. Getting to understand your audience is half of the battle.
Social Media Today addresses this in the following article: http://socialmediatoday.com/brianna5mith/1453951/best-times-post-social-media-infographic
They state the while the infographic [in the link] "will give you a great base to build from, it is definitely not the answer for every business. When determining when to post on social media make sure to consider your customers, your product or service, and the types of messages you are posting. For example, the ideal time for a local bakery to post on Facebook is most likely very different than that of a national brand. In addition, if the majority of your customers live on the east coast and your company is based on west coast, you will want to post on LinkedIn before and after their workday, not yours" (Smith, 201).
Scott also provides a template on pages 178-180 indicating some best practices for developing marketing campaigns around buyer personas. "The second page points out that when you publish valuable information (videos, blogs, Twitter feeds, e-books, and so on), you are creating the sorts of links that search engine algorithms love" (Scott, pg. 181, 2013). Therefore, when posting on social media sites, you should be conscious about when your posts are being exposed to external search engines as well, once again, maximizing the value of your content.
I think it is safe to say that regardless of statistics indicating post times, content creators and managers should focus on the personas of their audiences instead of average social usage times in order to get the best bang for their buck.
References:
Scott, D.(2013). The New Rules of Marketing and PR. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated.
Smith, B.(2013, May 10). Best times to post on social media. Retrieved on February 12, 2014 from Social Media Today: http://socialmediatoday.com/brianna5mith/1453951/best-times-post-social-media-infographic
Great points Becky and Brianna! The timing is absolutely dependent on the industry, product, service, etc. As I mentioned above, the recommendation to our clients is always to test prior to rolling out a firm deployment/posting time.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to the email space where I am most familiar, I have seen a variety of optimal times across my clients. I work with a large banking client and even their different lines of business choose to deploy at different times. Their mortgage banking division deploys around 12pm on Wednesday and Thursdays while their credit card division deploys at 9am Monday through Friday. I even have a hotel client that has done extensive testing and has found that deploying on a Tuesday rather than a Wednesday has lifted responses for them. It really does depend on your industry, what your message is, and which social media platform you are using.
The difference with email and social media is that customers usually check all unread emails when they check their email, however if you sent a Tweet an hour ago and their Twitter feed already has 100 more tweets on top of it, they may never even see it.
Becky - although some sites do not recommend weekends as optimal times, I would argue that they may be good times for non-profits as people are more personally active on weekends and are interested in events, news, etc. as a break from their day to day work-life. They are home with their families and are more likely to be planning upcoming trips, events, and visits with family and friends. Have you done any aggregation from your Facebook page that would tell you when most people are interacting? I would be interested to see if that corresponds with any of the studies out there.
Thanks for your comments!
Meagan,
DeleteI have not done any aggregation from our Facebook page. That is a great idea. Do you have any suggestions on how I might go about doing this? Anyone with particular experience in this would be appreciated! Thank you.
Meagan,
ReplyDeleteGreat example. The banking industry certainly has different segments, providing a challenge to social content managers when developing target positing times.
I love the comparison that you addressed between email and Twitter. My organization actually faces many email communication challenges, one being that corporate floods inboxes on various initiatives from 'generic' addresses, not one specific individual. The end result is that emails often get deleted and overlooked. From a Twitter perspective, although it might not appear at the top of my news feed, I can go directly to a page or click on a popular hashtag to 'review' content that I might have missed.
Obviously both systems have flaws and truthfully rely on the habits of the audience, same as with content posting. Understanding the habits of your target audiences can not only help define what content to deliver, but in fact the method of delivery to gain the most responses.
Do you think organizations will migrate away from overusing email and begin implementing more social communications, whether it be from an internal or external perspective?
Hi Brianna,
DeleteI think it will be hard for companies to cut the email cord because they're so used to being able to blast all of their customers with one push of a button. However, we're already seeing companies starting to move more towards social with the new challenges faced with the introduction of Gmail tabbed inboxes. Email service providers already automatically delete spam emails and now, with Gmail, move all promotional emails to a separate tab that the user may or may not even check. I think we will start to see more and more of this and companies will be forced to move to different channels if they want their consumers to see their messages.
Meagan,
ReplyDeleteMy company utilizes Google Mail as our office wide email provider. Coupled with Postini, a spam provider, it is honestly not business effective. I personally like using Outlook for business purposes, and, even with my own personal Gmail account, I have removed those filtering tabs simply because they do not segregate my emails the way in which I would like them to be presented to me.
Sometimes these changes to technology are not always user friendly. While the users must adapt to the change, it is still difficult to adapt when these providers make decisions on your behalf [and they are not always reversible].
Take for instance when Google allowed all Google+ users to email ANY Gmail account. TechCrunch reported "you’ll now be able to directly email your Google+ contacts from Gmail, even if you don’t know their email address. And by default, anyone on Google+ will be able to email you as well, thanks to this new option, if you don’t adjust your settings" (Perez, 2014). They also go on to say that this new feature is "actually somewhat practical, though also potentially invasive" (Perez, 2014).
Do you think technological changes to user systems, including changes/enhancements to social sites [Facebook's timeline shift, for example] should remain at the discretion of the user, or forced on by the provider? How do these changes affect businesses and their ability to keep up with such changes, in the event it begins to affect their content management and strategy plan
References:
Perez, S. (2014, January 9). New Gmail Feature Allows Anyone On Google+ To Email You & Vice Versa, But Opt Out Is Provided. Retrieved on February 13, 2014 from TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/09/new-gmail-feature-allows-anyone-on-google-to-email-you-vice-versa-but-opt-out-is-provided/
Brianna,
DeleteIt is definitely a sensitive issue between forcing technological changes and allowing the changes to remain at the discretion of the user. At first, everyone was apprehensive about the Facebook timeline but now we forget what life was like before it. I think layout changes like that should remain across the board, but in your Gmail tab example, I do think that it should remain at the discretion of the user. It is a fundamental change in how you receive your emails, thus you should be able to accept or reject the changes. I also believe any major changes in privacy settings should be at the discretion of the user.
This does present a challenge to marketers if some users adopted the change and others did not. Do they need two messaging streams and different strategies? It has definitely been interesting seeing how companies are modifying their messages in order to get into the main Gmail inbox.
Meagan,
ReplyDeleteAs someone who flips through my news feed in the morning as I get ready for work, I appreciate that timing is everything when it comes to social media response. I know this class is a limited time period, but I wonder if we can find a way to apply this concept to our blog posts, tweets, and pins to our work in class. As most of us are working during the day, is it best to post a tweet about our new blog post before work or after work to draw more attention from our classmates? Do we receive longer blog responses during the week or on the weekend?
I found an article on mashable about how to find your best times to tweet, check it out on my pinterest.
http://www.pinterest.com/courtneymariewa/social-media/
Brianna,
In response to your question about letting users choose to update their social site systems, do you think having multiple systems in place because some will refuse the change their current systems will cause strain on social sites themselves? I feel like if users aren't forced to evolve with the company, growth will eventually stagnate and users will become bored and stop using the sites.
What do you think?
Courtney,
DeleteI had no idea that there were so many sites out there just to help you figure out the best time for you to Tweet! Thanks for sharing on your Pinterest board. The consensus seems to be during the afternoon time frame.
Good question about how to apply this timing to our blog posts. Even if you post your blog late in the evening, I think we should wait until the next day to Tweet and post on Pinterest to drive traffic to the blogs. People are checking Twitter on their way to work, during lunch, during a mid-afternoon break, or on their way home so we should target to catch them during that time so they take action on the Tweet and visit our blogs. I'm very interested to see how our final papers turn out after we analyze 6 weeks of blogs and social media traffic.
Hi Meagan,
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I really like the questions about ensuring the experience is the same between website and mobile, and understanding which outlet your consumer prefers. By knowing that, it will be easier to create the right interactions at the right time. Which is why I especially like the point you make about timing being everything when connecting with your consumer. Because the consumer can edit and monitor the amount of advertising that comes at them, its even more important to understand when they will be on certain channels in order to make that connection (Socialnomics, 2013). Gilt, however, is a luxury brand shopping site that has specific start times for its sales, so its trained its consumers to interact with the site at those times, rather than waiting for the consumer to come to them (Fastenberg, 2012). Do you think other businesses could benefit from this model?
Fastenberg, D. (2012, November 12). Gilt Groupe's Alexis Maybank: The Woman Behind the $1 Billion Company. AOL Jobs. Retrieved from http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2012/11/12/gilt-groupes-alexis-maybank-the-woman-behind-the-1-billion-co/.
References
Qualman, E. (2013). Socialnomics. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Sabrina,
ReplyDeleteGreat example with Gilt! They are geniuses in sending out their daily emails just before the sales start at 12pm EST. I know I am a victim myself of opening the email and continuing to click refresh until the sale starts. : ) I do think that other companies could benefit from this model because it uses urgency and exclusivity factors to encourage action and they time their communications perfectly. As you mentioned, they retain the control by opening sales at the same time each day and driving customers to the site at that time, rather than waiting for them. Do you think that this model goes against the movement to more consumer control inspired by the emergence of social media?
Hi Meagan,
ReplyDeleteGreat question. I think mimicking an experience that is exclusive to a location, like Gilt does with NY sample sales, on the web to bring it to the masses is unique. While consumer control is important, so is the feeling of being part of something exclusive, which Gilt also did so well with its original platform of requiring another member to "invite" you to be able to buy the product. Pretty genius all the way around!
I wonder if there's a way for a typically negative consumer experience like air travel to mimic this same idea. Might help gain some positive goodwill!
Hi Meagan,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post about Social Media messaging and timing. You mentioned at the beginning of the post that you deal with e-mail marketing as a main part of your profession. I am curious, as we move forward, and social media being the preferred form of communication for millennials, what are some steps your organization is taking in regard to marketing via email, verses marketing through social media channels? I did some searching around to gather more information on millenials and their relationship with e-mail in general. I came across one blog i found interesting which discusses non-profit organizations, and how millennials might respond to their emails. There was some interesting points in the blog, which illustrate how to fashion an e-mail that would be acceptable to view by a millennial. I will copy and paste the link below:
http://www.achieveguidance.com/how-to-make-your-email-campaigns-stand-out-with-millennials/
In regard to the timing of your message via social media channels, the above infographics are very informative in relation to when to send your messaging. Its amazing how minor changes in your overall social media agenda, especially having to do with the timing and content of your messaging, can affect the overall success of your plan. And I agree with what you said above, test, test, test. All you can really do is release content, test the results, tweak your messaging and or timing, or both, and repeat, until you get as close to the desired results as possible
- Dan
Dan,
DeleteThank you for the blog on Millenials and their interaction with emails! I am going to share this at work as it shows that email is still a viable marketing tool with Millenials, IF marketers use the correct tactics such as simplifying, clear call to action, and providing relevant content.
Social media has many benefits to it. It allows you to network with different people in the same niche as you. This results in highly targeted traffic if you work this strategy correctly.
ReplyDeleteSocial Media Marketing Training