Over the past few months a few eagle-eyed readers have noticed I no longer send my email each day at 6:30 am PDT like I used to, with such exact precision you could set your watch to it.
And recently I was asked why?
Why not send it at 6:30 am anymore?
Is that no longer the BEST time to do it?
Answer:
It was never the “best” time to do it.
There are some times that are better than others, depending on your market and what your competition is doing, and I know of some people who have found a time that gets them more response than others overall. But even if there was a best universal time that worked for everyone, it wouldn’t be best for long.
Example:
Many moons ago it was declared 2:00 PM EDT was best.
So what happened?
A bunch of goo-roo fanboys blindly started sending their emails at that time.
And, what happened then was, everyone’s inboxes were getting an email from the same vulture-like cadre of small-thinking marketers at that exact same time, ruining it as being the “best” time, even if it had been. The amusing thing is, it wasn’t really the best time anyway — it only was best for the marketer who supposedly tested it. I say “supposedly” because I believe practically all email tests should be taken with a huge grain of margarita salt at best, and most likely should be defied.
Especially when it comes to open rates.
But that is a story for another time…
Back to the mythical best time to send emails:
After discovering there were dozens, if not more, marketers in a niche similar to mine — i.e. we had some of the same people on our lists — blindly copying the time I sent emails, I decided to make it completely random.
No rhyme or reason.
No strategy or master plan.
Not the way I usually operate at all.
And no, I didn’t notice any less response because it’s not really the time of the day doing the selling anyway. The best time for me is whenever I feel like sending it.
Yes, ideally, I would email at the same time each day.
If for no other reason than that’s the kind of ordered way I like to live my life.
But, the copycats have ruined that. However, instead of rueing the fact, I simply go with it and use it to my advantage best I can.
All of which brings me to another important & related point:
This is yet another reason why I say the business world is overrun with “S’s.”
And recently, I’ve been shown how most people on the planet are “S’s”
“S” is a Myers-Briggs term that describes people who don’t think future-wise.
According to Stefania Arroyo, who in my completely biased (but correct) opinion is the foremost expert on using Myers-Briggs to sell & market with — i.e. she is not one of these bat shyt life coaches on facebook who treat Myers-Briggs like astrology — S’s are almost like gold fish. They can merely react to what’s in front of them, and have a hard time thinking forward, or about the consequences of their actions or decisions. There are many advantages to being an S, though. Like, for example, in one-on-one selling. But when it comes to long-term marketing and planning and thinking forward, S’s are the ones that can only react… swipe, imitate, copy, clone, and steal, with no ability to think forward about even the obvious consequences of doing such things — like everyone sending their emails at the same time.
This is also why S’s have a hard time with my Email Players methods, too.
In fact, I will let you in on a little secret:
Despite how it appears on the surface, I don’t teach email.
I teach long-term marketing and sales strategies, with email being the main vehicle driving those strategies. You could just as easily apply what I natter on about with email to social media, video, audio/podcasting, content marketing, or anything else. People who have been subscribed to “Email Players” since this last April’s issue especially — when I consciously decided to start teaching this almost exclusively — know what I babble about with this.
In fact, many S’s have wisely thrown in the towel and quit since then.
And they were smart to do so.
It’s too mentally uncomfortable for them to think forward or have the patience to lay the groundwork and implement long-term thinking-inspired strategies, rather than just swipe subject lines or calls to action or whatever.
That doesn’t mean S’s can’t do what I do.
There are still quite a few who have stuck around and use it.
And, they wisely use the newsletter for accountability, and to keep them on track, and to learn how to think differently, and not as something they can just swipe.
Anyway, top line:
The best time to send an email?
For me, it’s whenever I push send.
Because it’s not the time doing the selling, it’s the principles, strategies, and, yes, tactics (a naughty word to S’s who heard someone else say something they heard someone else say on flakebook about what the late, great Jim Camp taught on the subject, all out of context) doing the work.
If you want more instruction on this way of using email, go here:
Ben Settle
