anyone have good/bad experience sending email the week of a summer holiday in the US? Specifically Memorial Day? We anticipate lower open rates as some people make take the rest of the week off, but is it so bad that we shouldn't send on the Tuesday after?
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I'm a big A/B tester. I would say run an A/B test, then you will know for sure. If it's not time sensitive, send one out the week of Memorial Day, and then one the week after. Then you will be able to apply the same logic via proxy to other holidays in the year as well, rather than guessing. While we all have a gut feel, you will never know for sure until you test.
Can you just delay until Tuesday? If it's a business related email, I personally think that it's inconsiderate/not a good example of sending emails. If your database is segmented by country, I'd send to your US segment on Tuesday with perhaps a note to the holiday of the day before in the subject line.
I agree with Kristen Malkovich that you should avoid most major US holidays for sending emails.
Is this a nurturing flow or a batch? I know some folks will pause their nurtures during holiday weeks, so this is an option to run a batch and say
if member of engagement X
Cadence=Paused
Wait 4 days
Cadence=Normal
then schedule it to run this thursday or Friday.
Depends on your product. We are in the travel / leisure space, and our newsletter actually goes out every Saturday, around 7pm local time. This is after thorough A/B testing.
Our theory is that people like the extra time to engage with our longer form blog content. But if you are B2B (corporate addresses mainly), or pushing a transaction, then definitely avoid the holiday.
just to clarify - this is in reference to the whole week; we wouldn't send anything on the actual holiday (that's a no-brainer for our industry), but follow-up the day after... Is Memorial Day week like sending something between Christmas & NYE -- where everyone is on vacation? Or do we still see average open rates the day or two after this holiday?
I'm a big A/B tester. I would say run an A/B test, then you will know for sure. If it's not time sensitive, send one out the week of Memorial Day, and then one the week after. Then you will be able to apply the same logic via proxy to other holidays in the year as well, rather than guessing. While we all have a gut feel, you will never know for sure until you test.