Best Times to Mail

Clients often ask us if there is a particular day of the week or time of the day that’s best to send to their distribution list. This is a hard one to answer. Although there are periods of time that are generally accepted as being most likely to return the best results, day of week and time of day depends greatly on the client and the purpose of the email.

Below are some things to keep in mind regarding email timing by day:

Monday - Inboxes are filled from the weekend, and people are trying to get back into “work mode.”  If you plan to send Monday its best to send mid-morning after office workers have had a chance to clean out their inbox.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday - These 3 days are generally accepted as the best time to send. Why? By this time inboxes should be cleared from the weekend rush and your recipients should be in full mid-week mode. For office workers this entails reading through work emails as well as checking personal mailboxes for your messages. For stay at homes, timing may vary here, but usually at some point within this period (whether it be morning or night) individuals will most likely check their mailboxes.

Friday - There is research that suggests that sending out emails on Friday could present lower opens than other days of the week. On Friday people are itching to start their weekend and checking emails may not be high on their priority list.  If you do plan to send out on Friday, morning is generally best as it gives users a chance to check their message before leaving the office.

The Weekend – Business workers are generally out of the office during this period, which means if they don’t check mail from home they wont see your message until Monday morning when its lost in a sea of weekend emails. Try to avoid bulk mailings on the weekends unless to circumstances are conducive to this type of send.

In regards to time of day, we at Kobemail generally suggest to clients a send time of around either 10am or 1pm in the afternoon. Although time of day will have less of an effect on opens than the day itself, these times are great as a benchmark because recipients have already sifted through morning and lunch break messages.

Keep in mind, with the progression of mobile devices and the increase is accessibility to email these rules tend to fade. For individuals with smartphone devices, emails are checked as they come in and day tends to matter less.

We can’t stress enough that these are simply guidelines and tips for sending; what’s most important is proper analysis of your email marketing campaigns. Know your demographic, look through past data result trends, and experiment with times to find out what works best for your mailers specifically.

Happy Mailing!

- The Kobemail Team

Multi-Use Content

Creating quality content takes time and as marketers we understand that time is always of the essence. In a rapidly changing industry where new technology brings about new ideas, products, offerings in shorter and shorter periods it is important to present relevant content to the user across multiple channels.

Taking the time to draw a roadmap of your digital marketing strategy equipped with an outline of business offerings, target markets, and company goals will help make your content moldable to work for you in numerous outlets.  With basic content draw up all you have to do is analyze the posting location and make it work for that specific outlet.

Let’s look at Social Media channels as a perfect example. If you read an interesting article that you want to share don’t just post the link on your website and be done with it. Write a blog which incorporates aspects of the article while keeping your company’s bottom line in mind. After posting the blog manipulate its content to turn it into an informational mailer for loyal customers. Tweeting about the article or wall post in a creative manner would always be great multiuse examples of one piece of content.

When creating quality content think of ways to use it across all digital media outlets and for multiple purposes in an attempt to save time and maximize benefit.  

Social Media and Email Marketing – It Doesn’t Have to Be One or the Other

Incorporating social media efforts into your email marketing campaigns is an effective way to increase brand exposure and drive traffic to your company website. The union of these two marketing heavyweights can help to create dialogue with consumers, drive content, and ultimately point your future email campaigns in the right direction.

Linking your social media to emails can create a cycle of give and take – consumers have the ability to ask questions, tell you what they want (and what they don’t want), and you have the ability to respond. As the marketer you have the means to formulate your marketing strategy around user opinions and use this cycle to create positive conversation and successful future campaigns.

With the vast sea of information floating over the intertubes recipient appetite for quality content suited to their needs is growing exponentially. Logically, the users actively searching for information, and the ones that are linked up to multiple social media outlets, are the ones who ultimately receive, open, respond, and forward information – these are your most influential users. Making email a one stop shop for all virtual outlets is the most effective way to engage these recipients and encourage them to engage others.

Here at KobeMail we encourage our clients to utilize smart channel connections to increase web traffic and improve brand recognition. We understand the importance of keeping up with a changing marketplace and adapting to new marketing practices in order to provide our partners with the best results possible.

The direct correlation between heavy email consumers and social media engagement proves that if you listen and allow customers to have a say – they will notice. Email marketing is no longer a one way street, so move over and make some room for social media.

Keep an eye out next week for “Social Media and Email Marketing- Ways to Connect”

Author: Caitlin Durand
Editor: Roopal Rawani

How To Analyze Bounces

Bounce rates are, in relation to emails, the number of email that do not get delivered and returns to the sender. There are many different reasons why an email fails deliverability. They can be divided into four different categories, which are:

1. Hard Bounce – Emails that are permanently undeliverable. Example; bad email addresses.

2. Soft Bounce – May not have a permanent reason for why the email is not going through. Example; full inbox, server is down or message is too large. Tip to keep in mind is to remove users after the 3rd soft bounce to avoid bad ISP reputation.

3. Blocks – Internet service providers reject emails due to spam filters. This can be due to black listed domains or when users manually mark domains as spam.

4. Other – Non-verified/Inactive accounts.

Usually when inquiring a bounce message you will receive some information to help the sender understand why your email was not delivered. Message may include:

• Date and time of bounce


• Identity of the mail server that bounced your email (example@example.com)


• A reason/ error message (mailbox full or unknown user)


• Header of the bounce message and some of the email content

If you are experiencing high bounce rate, a good step to keep in mind is to first clean your email list. Having a rate of 20% bounced emails is considered high. It is important to cleanse your mailing list and remove all email addresses that are misspelled, have bad domains and that are inactive. The more bad emails you have the higher the chances of having spam filters red flag you as using stolen or bought list leading to a higher spam score causing more bounces.

Having a low bounce rate is good only when you are satisfied with the size of your email list and when you know your message is actually delivered. There can also be the issue of having email testing as a false-positive (when your email is not rejected, but is directly filtered to Trash). Analyze your low bounce rate by checking in your major ISPs for open and click-through rates. This will help you uncover any underlying problem in misreading the reports of your low bounce rate.


Author: Adeline Zeledon
Editor: Yasifur Rahman

Emails a 2 Billion Dollar Industry by 2013 ... Sweet!

A very interesting article by Gavin O'Malley @ Media Post. Talks about how Direct Mail is on the verge of doom and budgets being redirected to online email efforts. According to the article ... "Borrell credits the rise of coupons online with the demise of direct mail"

You can read the complete article @ http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=106491

Happy Emailing ....

Outlook 2007 Rendering Issue

Over the past year most of our clients using Outlook 2003 have upgraded to Outlook 2007 as their email client. Various rendering issues have Creatives that had previously looked perfect on all ISPs and Oulook 2003 now look completely different/broken when tested. This post will be an on going post of any issues that arise with rendering in Outolook 2007. What has changed? ...

Background Images – Background image no longer render in Outlook 2007. Although background colors still work.

Background Colors - Simple table background colors render. Complications occur and renders incorrectly when nested tables are used.

Font Styles has to be defined in each table - If you want the correct font to display make sure you that you have it defined within content table inline styles. Otherwise it will automatically default to "Times New Roman".

No flash or animated gif's - We never advised using Flash in your creatives but now animated gifs are out too...

CSS floats and positions a no no - Do not use them if you want your creative to render correctly on Outlook 2007. Use tables instead

To be continued...

Revival of the Blog...

I have been meaning to update the blog on a more regular basis but higher level priorities has been taking precedence. Apologies to all readers for such a long silence (close to year and a half to be exact).

It has been a strong 2008 for KobeMail which has taken up much of my time in development and building strategic relationships. I look forward to posting on a much more regular basis.