Are you constantly battling with managing your email marketing campaigns due to time constraints or global audience reach? The challenge of sending emails at the optimal time to ensure maximum engagement is a common headache for B2B CMOs and marketing directors. Fortunately, the digital age has brought us email scheduling tools, a game-changer for email marketing strategies.
From automating your email campaigns to aligning them with your audience’s timezone, we’re here to guide you through leveraging these tools for enhanced efficiency and effectiveness. Stay tuned as we explore each tool’s unique features and how they can transform your email marketing efforts.
The Best Email Scheduling Tools You Should Try
Mailchimp
Mailchimp isn’t just an email marketing tool; it’s a powerhouse for scheduling and automating your email campaigns. Its user-friendly interface allows you to plan your emails well in advance, ensuring they hit your audience’s inbox at the perfect moment. With Mailchimp, you can segment your audience based on their engagement level, location, and even purchase history, tailoring your message to resonate deeply. The platform also offers detailed analytics, so you can continuously refine your strategy based on real-time feedback. Implementing A/B testing with different send times can further optimise your campaign’s performance, making Mailchimp an invaluable asset for your marketing toolkit.
OnceHub
OnceHub goes beyond mere email scheduling; it’s about smartly aligning your emails with your sales funnel stages. By integrating OnceHub with your CRM, you ensure that your communication is timely and relevant, nurturing leads with precision. Its powerful scheduling feature can detect the recipient’s timezone, sending your emails at a time when they’re most likely to engage. This tool is particularly effective for B2B businesses that operate on a global scale, ensuring no lead is overlooked due to timezone discrepancies. OnceHub’s analytics provide deep insights into the best times for engagement, enabling a data-driven approach to your email marketing strategies.
HubSpot
HubSpot stands out for its comprehensive CRM capabilities, tightly integrated with email scheduling functionalities. It allows for seamless automation of email sequences, ensuring timely follow-ups that feel personal and targeted. With HubSpot, you can tailor your emails based on the recipient’s interactions with your website, delivering content that matches their interests and stages in the buyer’s journey. The platform’s rich insights and analytics enable you to measure the effectiveness of your timing strategy, offering opportunities for constant improvement. HubSpot’s A/B testing feature further refines your approach, ensuring your emails are not just timely but also compelling.
Zoho Mail
Zoho Mail offers a robust suite of tools tailored for businesses seeking efficiency and precision in their email marketing efforts. Its scheduling feature ensures that your emails are sent at the optimal time, maximising open rates and engagement. Zoho Mail’s integration with Zoho CRM enables a synchronised marketing approach, where every email is an opportunity to deepen customer relationships. The tool’s detailed reports and analytics help refine your scheduling strategy, ensuring your communication is always timely and effective. Moreover, Zoho Mail provides customizable templates, making it easier to craft messages that align with your brand and resonate with your audience.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign differentiates itself with its advanced automation and predictive sending features. It not only schedules emails but also predicts the best time to send them based on the recipient’s past behaviour. This level of personalization ensures that your messages are not just seen but acted upon. ActiveCampaign’s seamless integration with various CRM platforms enhances your ability to nurture leads through timely and relevant communication. The tool’s analytics capabilities allow you to track performance and tweak your strategy for optimal engagement. By leveraging ActiveCampaign, you ensure that your emails reach your audience at the moment they’re most receptive.
Why You Should Schedule Emails for Later
- It Gives You Time to Change Your Mind
Have you ever hastily sent an email only to regret a detail later? Scheduling emails offers the flexibility to revise your message, ensuring it aligns perfectly with your intentions and strategic goals. This feature is crucial for marketing teams aiming to perfect their messaging. It provides a valuable buffer, allowing for last-minute adjustments that could significantly impact the effectiveness of your campaign.
- Draft Early, Schedule Later: Start by drafting your emails early in the campaign planning phase. For example, if you’re launching a new product, draft an announcement email weeks in advance. This early preparation allows you to schedule the email using a tool like Mailchimp, providing ample time for team feedback and revisions to ensure the message aligns perfectly with your launch strategy.
- Leverage Analytics for Timing: Utilise the scheduling tool’s analytics to identify when your audience is most active. If your analytics indicate a high open rate on Tuesday mornings, schedule your emails for this time. This not only optimises engagement but also allows you to adjust content based on any last-minute industry news or competitive actions, ensuring your messaging is always relevant and timely.
- A/B Testing for Perfection: Implement A/B testing by scheduling different versions of your email to small segments of your audience. For instance, test two subject lines to see which generates a higher open rate. Adjust your final email based on these results, ensuring the version that goes out to the broader audience is the most effective one.
- Incorporate Feedback Loops: Create a process for gathering and incorporating feedback on scheduled emails. After drafting an email, share it with your team for insights. This might reveal new angles or corrections, enhancing the email’s impact before it’s sent.
- Emergency Pause Feature: Familiarise yourself with your email tool’s emergency pause or cancellation feature. If an unexpected event makes your scheduled email inappropriate or irrelevant, use this feature to stop the send. This could be crucial for maintaining brand integrity during unforeseen circumstances.
- You Can Work Whatever Hours You Want
The modern workplace is increasingly flexible, with teams spread across different time zones. Email scheduling aligns with this flexibility, enabling you to work when you’re most productive, without worrying about sending emails at odd hours. This flexibility is especially beneficial for global teams targeting audiences in various time zones. By scheduling emails, you ensure your messages reach recipients at the optimal time, regardless of your working hours.
- Understand Your Audience’s Time Zone: Use tools that adjust sending times based on the recipient’s timezone, like OnceHub. If your audience is global, scheduling emails to arrive during their daytime can increase engagement significantly. This tactic ensures that your emails are read at the most opportune moment, regardless of when you actually work.
- Create a Global Email Calendar: Develop a global email calendar that marks when emails are scheduled to go out to different regions. This helps in visualising your entire email campaign strategy across time zones, ensuring consistent communication. For instance, schedule a product launch email to hit the inboxes of your European audience at 9 AM CET and your North American audience at 9 AM EST.
- Automate for Efficiency: Automate email sequences to nurture leads at various stages of the buyer’s journey. By setting up a drip campaign in ActiveCampaign, you can automatically send a series of targeted emails based on specific actions, like downloading a whitepaper. This ensures continuous engagement without manual intervention, allowing you to focus on other strategic tasks.
- Batch Your Work: Dedicate blocks of time to writing and scheduling emails. This could mean setting aside Friday afternoons for email creation, allowing for focused work that can then be scheduled out over the coming weeks. This approach not only improves efficiency but also ensures your messaging is cohesive and strategically aligned.
- Leverage Quiet Hours: Take advantage of your audience’s off-peak hours by scheduling emails to arrive first thing in their inbox. For example, scheduling an email to send just before the start of the business day can make your message one of the first things they see, potentially increasing engagement rates.
- You Can Respond to People Immediately
Being able to respond to enquiries and customer feedback swiftly can set your brand apart. Email scheduling allows you to craft immediate responses after receiving an email, scheduling them to send at a more appropriate or strategic time.
After-Hours Enquiries
When you receive an enquiry outside of business hours, draft and schedule a response to be sent first thing in the next business day. This ensures your reply is timely without requiring you to work overtime. For instance, using HubSpot’s scheduling feature, you can prepare a response to an enquiry received at 9 PM to be sent at 8 AM the next day, making it appear you’re always on top of communication.
Automated Follow-Ups for Webinar Registrations
If someone registers for a webinar, schedule an immediate thank you email with additional resources related to the webinar topic. This can include a link to a relevant blog post or a white paper. For example, with Mailchimp, set up an automated email that goes out 15 minutes after a registration, providing attendees with preparatory materials and increasing engagement ahead of the event.
Time Zone Consideration for Global Teams
For global teams, respond to emails received from other time zones during your work hours but schedule them to arrive in the recipient’s inbox during their work hours. Zoho Mail allows you to select the recipient’s time zone when scheduling, ensuring your message is timely and considerate of the recipient’s working hours.
- You’ll Have Less Email Stress
The constant influx of emails can be overwhelming, making it difficult to prioritise tasks. Scheduling emails allows you to manage your workload effectively, reducing stress and increasing productivity by allocating specific times for email communication.
- Batch Email Processing: Instead of constantly checking your inbox throughout the day, dedicate specific blocks of time for reading and responding to emails. Then, schedule these emails to be sent during your next email processing block. This method, known as batch processing, reduces the temptation to constantly switch tasks and helps maintain focus. For instance, set aside two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon exclusively for emails, using ActiveCampaign to schedule responses accordingly.
- Prioritising Email Responses: Evaluate the urgency of each email. If a response can wait, schedule it for a later time or date. This helps in prioritising tasks that require immediate attention. A tool like OnceHub can be used to categorise emails based on priority and schedule responses to be sent at an appropriate time, ensuring urgent emails are dealt with promptly while others are scheduled for later.
- Reducing After-Hours Work: To protect your personal time and reduce the stress of feeling like you need to be always available, schedule emails to be sent during work hours. Even if you work on an email after hours, using tools like Zoho Mail to schedule it to be sent the next business day respects both your time and the recipient’s, promoting a healthier work-life balance. This approach signals to your team that after-hours work is not the expectation, fostering a more balanced and less stressful work environment.
How to Schedule an Email: The Step by Step Methodology
Step 1 – Write a New Email
Crafting an email in Outlook starts with not just penning down your thoughts but strategizing the communication for maximum impact. This initial step is where your message begins to take shape, laying the foundation for effective scheduling.
- Focus on Clarity and Purpose: Start by clearly defining the purpose of your email. Are you informing, requesting, or calling to action? For example, if you’re announcing a new product launch, your email should highlight key features and benefits, enticing the reader to learn more. Use bullet points or numbered lists to make the information digestible.
- Personalise Your Message: Use Outlook’s mail merge feature or integrate with CRM software to personalise your emails. Addressing recipients by name and referencing their specific interests or past interactions can significantly increase engagement rates. For instance, “Dear [Name], we noticed you enjoyed our last update on [Topic]…” makes the email feel tailored and relevant.
- Craft a Compelling Subject Line: Your subject line determines whether your email gets opened. Use actionable language that speaks directly to the recipient’s needs or curiosity. A subject line like “Unlock Exclusive Insights on [Topic]” promises value, prompting the recipient to open the email.
Step 2 – Access the ‘Delay Delivery’ Feature
The ‘Delay Delivery’ feature is a powerful tool that allows you to control exactly when your email gets sent, ensuring it arrives at the most opportune moment for the recipient.
Navigating to Delay Delivery
After composing your email, navigate to the ‘Options’ tab and select ‘Delay Delivery’. This action opens a dialogue box with several options, including ‘Do not deliver before’. Here, you can specify the exact date and time for your email’s delivery. For example, if targeting a recipient in a different time zone, schedule the email to arrive during their local business hours to increase visibility and response rate.
Strategic Scheduling for Engagement
Use the ‘Delay Delivery’ feature to send your emails at times when they are more likely to be seen and engaged with. Analysis from email marketing data can guide you; for example, Tuesdays and Thursdays mid-morning often see higher open rates. Experiment with scheduling to find the sweet spot for your audience.
Reminder Emails Without the Hassle
For follow-up communications, such as reminding attendees about an upcoming webinar, the ‘Delay Delivery’ feature ensures you don’t forget to send timely reminders. Schedule a series of reminder emails immediately after setting up your event, spacing them out to keep your event top of mind without overwhelming your recipients.
Step 3 – Set Delivery Date and Time
Selecting the optimal delivery date and time for your email is crucial in ensuring your message not only reaches the recipient but also garners the attention it deserves. This step is where strategic timing comes into play, enhancing the email’s impact.
- Understanding Your Audience’s Schedule: Before setting a delivery time, consider your recipient’s typical workday and email-checking habits. For B2B communications, early morning on weekdays (just before the workday begins) can be effective, as it places your email at the top of their inbox. For instance, scheduling an email to arrive at 7:45 AM on a Tuesday could increase visibility, as many professionals start their day by checking emails.
- Leverage Insights from Analytics: If you’re using a CRM integrated with Outlook, analyse past engagement data to choose the best time for email delivery. For example, if historical data shows higher open rates for emails sent at 10 AM, schedule your important communications around this time. Use these insights to tailor your scheduling for each segment of your audience, optimising for when they’re most likely to engage.
- Adjust for Time Zones: When dealing with recipients across different time zones, Outlook’s ‘Delay Delivery’ feature becomes indispensable. Adjust the delivery time to match the recipient’s local time zone, ensuring your message arrives at a convenient time. Tools like World Time Buddy can help you plan across time zones, preventing your email from being buried overnight or lost in weekend unreads.
Step 4 – Click ‘Close’ and ‘Send’
The final step in the process is both the simplest and the most crucial. After carefully crafting your message and strategically planning its delivery, it’s time to commit to your schedule by sending your email into the queue.
- Review and Final Check: Before clicking ‘Send’, take a moment to review your email thoroughly. Check for any grammatical errors, ensure all links work as intended, and verify that the ‘Delay Delivery’ settings are correct. For example, if you’re sending a crucial client update, a final review could catch any last-minute errors or omissions that could affect the email’s effectiveness.
- The Importance of Confirmation: After selecting ‘Send’, Outlook will store the email in your Outbox until the scheduled delivery time. It’s a good practice to check your Outbox to confirm the email is there, ensuring it’s queued correctly. This step is particularly important for emails scheduled well in advance, as it provides peace of mind that your message is set to reach its destination as planned.
- Leveraging Outlook’s Capabilities for Strategic Follow-Up: Once your email is scheduled and confirmed, consider setting a reminder for yourself to follow up on the email. Outlook allows you to create tasks or calendar reminders directly from the email message. For instance, if you’re scheduling an email to propose a meeting, set a reminder to follow up two days after the email’s delivery if you haven’t received a response. This ensures that your communication efforts are both strategic and persistent, increasing the likelihood of achieving your desired outcome.