I belong to a LinkedIn group titled ‘Internal Communications Best Practices’. I know – there’s no such thing as best practice, don’t blame me I didn’t title the damned thing!
There’s a discussion on the group just now prompted by someone who asks ‘Best time to send out newsletters?’. Putting aside the fact that someone in internal comms is having worrying difficulty in constructing a sentence just for a moment, let’s take a look at some of the responses received so far.
The optimum time to rollout an email newsletter is after 10:00 am and before 3:00 pm. The reason is based on the office timings and the core business activities.
I’m responsible for my company internal newsletter. It comes out on Fridays at 11. It includes articles across events happened in the week, but also short news and a calendar for upcoming events.
I am responsible for fortnight staff e-newsletter, mine goes out on Thursdays at 11 am…I know it is bit tricky to think when is the good time. I didn’t choose Monday because people may have other priorities at the start of the week and I didn’t choose Friday as quite a few people normally take the day off and stuff on Friday or trying to finish off urgent stuff…..but I really can’t vouch on it if it has made any difference, my readership analytics has remained about 45% and my system can track people who read the newsletter and mostly they are the same people who read them every time anyway !!
I currently send out an e-newsletter on the 1st and 3rd Friday of every month that captures all of our successes and news stories. It’s usually sent around noon. All of this information is then collated into a hardcopy at the end of the month to support our remote colleagues that can’t access email as easily. I’m hoping to start sending a Monday morning ‘in the loop’ newsletter soon – it will be very short and sweet, but contain an outline of the activities that are happening in each office that week so colleagues feel in the know.
At my previous organisation, our email newsletter was sent at 11am on a Wednesday each week.
Is it just me or does this all seem rather odd? Surely the time to send news is when you’ve got news to send, isn’t it? Aside from the fact that sending something on a fixed date and time each week forces you to come up with something to say, regardless of its usefulness or otherwise, A challenge with doing things so regularly is that people often dial it out, and don’t engage with what you are sharing so well.
One of the correspondents notes that it’s always the same people who read the stuff anyway. That makes me think, why not ask those who read the news why they read it, and maybe ask those who don’t why they currently don’t and what might change that too?
Isn’t it more engaging for the reader and more liberating for the sender to be driven by the need to share important and useful stuff rather than the need to send and receive at 11am on a Wednesday?
I would also ask, why are they asking an LI group> Simples – ask co-workers what information they would like shared, how they would like it, how they would like to get involved and Bob’s your uncle. If they don’t want to get involved or don’t respond, you probably have your answer.
Indeed – I hinted at that in the post and your version is much better. Can you repost it at 2pm on Thursday please? 🙂
check-the-box, check-the-box, check-the-box…
It seems we are using an overly broad definition of “communication”. As you point out, why worry about timing more than content? If it’s worth reading, I’ll read it. If it’s not, I’ll delete it – doesn’t really matter what time I receive it.
Thanks for this Broc – what you might call a timeless classic!
Hi Doug,
We did a similar experiment when sending out emails for all our surveys (and continue to keep an eye on this sort of thing, but not religiously).
The change in day/time only really seems to affect the *immediate* click-thru rate, not the *eventual* response rate. You can email on a Saturday and actually get a very good response rate overall. If the initial number of responses are low because it landed over the weekend, you’ll get a spike on Monday. If it was successful because it landed over the weekend, you’ll likely see fewer opens on the Monday than typical (for day 3).
Unless you email on a black Friday or cyber Friday or whatever day that is.
Or you’re emailing hockey results from Saturday’s games.
Variety is the spice of life!
Thanks Dan, this is a really helpful additional perspective which I would hope will encourage people to be a little more relaxed about these things. Appreciate hearing from you, and though I’m not too fussed about Saturday’s hockey right now, I’d love to know who is going to win the Seahawks/Saints matchup in the NFL tonight. Got any news on that please?
You’ll have to wait for my next post at 4pm on Friday 13th.
Precisely. Sent randomly at 10.43 on a Tuesday