What my sleep has to do with your email campaign

You can find endless statistics on what time of day is best for posting on social media, sending emails, etc. This post, however, is going down and dirty with the real reason you need to be concerned about the timing of your email marketing campaign:

Smartphones.

What’s my logic?

Sleep (or lack there of).

Here’s the deal: 90% of people between the ages of 18 and 29 sleep with their smartphones. And 95% of people use their phone for something right before going to bed (so chances are, the phone is still nearby while they are asleep).

Do you know how frustrating it is to be woken up by the sound of email notifications going off at 2 a.m.?

And before you jump in with the whole “you can turn off your notification at night, you know” just hear me out. There are reasons some people don’t (or can’t) turn them off:

• Smartphones are smarter than the people operating them (many people don’t even know how to turn off their notifications)
• Emergencies can arise, therefore smartphones stay nearby and on at all times
• We’re a high-stress, overworked society (sad, yes…true, still yes) so it might not occur to everyone that notifications are still on/need to be shut off
• We want to feel wanted and have an insane need to “check in” every time we hear a noise coming from our phone; though we’re disappointed when it just turns out to be a sales pitch

Email marketing is not just about when the message lands in my inbox and is available for me to view it on my computer anymore–it’s pretty much real-time marketing and, to put it plainly, is annoying if you don’t think about the lifestyle and needs of your collective audience.

It’s just as easy to schedule your email campaign to hit my inbox at 7 a.m. as it is for 2 a.m. The next time you schedule your e-newsletter or greatest offer, keep me–er, your customers–in mind and send it out for a time of day that they might actually be awake to read it.