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5 Best Practices for the Perfect Cold Email Drip Campaign Timing

November 5, 2017

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cold email drip campaign timing

This is a post by one of our Guest Authors. You can read the guidelines on Guest posting here.

One of the biggest mistakes that digital marketers can make is to try to close a sale through a cold email. Leads need to be nurtured through education, relationship building and engagement email follow ups.

As a matter of fact, nurtured leads lead to a 20% higher figures in sales opportunities compared to non-nurtured leads.

The best way to approach a lead nurturing strategy is through a cold email drip campaign that’s designed to turn prospects into customers. However, building a cold email drip campaign is easier said than done.

There are many challenges that marketers face from getting their emails opened to crafting the right message or content. Marketers especially often wonder how to time their emails for the best results.

5 Best Practices to Cold Email Drip Campaign Timing

If you are someone who is struggling to get the perfect timing for your cold email drip campaign, then the below tips are for you. Here are some best practices to follow when timing email drip campaigns:

Best Practice #1: Send Emails Based on the Buying Cycle

For new leads that have just come into your email list, you want to send emails out more frequently than usual. This is the best way to engage and build a relationship with your prospects quickly.

A good number to start is anywhere from two to four emails in a span of two weeks. You can email as frequently as every three days in the beginning but you slowly want to create more space between your mailings so that you don’t over inundate your prospects.

For leads that did not respond to your lead nurturing campaign and have gone cold, You can send out a cold email outreach campaign. Pardot recommends that you experiment with sending out a message every 6 to 45 days to reactivate the leads.

These reactivation campaigns should remind them of who you are and try offer value in the form of helpful content rather than attempting to sell your product or service.

Best Practice #2: Don’t Send Too Too Frequently

A big mistake that many marketers tend to make is building email drip campaigns that send emails to prospects too frequently.

The classic example is the 7-part eCourse that sends them a part of the series every one or two days. If you don’t space out your email frequency enough, you take away the opportunity for the prospect to really consume and get value out of your content.

You should at least allow for a space of at least three days between each email message.

Based on surveys from email marketers, it was reported that businesses should be sending anywhere from 2-5 emails per month. How many emails you send to your prospects really depends on your market and industry but you should aim to fall into this range as it tends to yield the best results.

Best Practice #3: Test Different Days and Times

One of the things you want to keep experimenting with is sending out emails based on different times and days.

You want to see which time frames and days result in the most opens and highest response rates. With that said, there are some days that work better than others. For example, Tuesday to Thursday should work best for email marketers. With Monday and Sunday coming right behind those days.

One important thing that many email marketers forget is that their prospects are in different time zones. You have to account for this and make sure that your email campaigns are being sent according to the recipients’ time zones. Not doing this will skew your email campaign data and lead you in the wrong direction on what times and days to schedule your emails.

Best Practice #4: How You Use Frequency is Relative to Urgency

While sending out emails too often can annoy prospects, it really depends on the situation.

If you’re promoting a limited time offer, you want to make sure that prospects get multiple notices to get a chance to act on that offer. Being too coy with your emails works against you if you have a valuable offer to present. This is also the case with abandoned cart emails.

In the eCommerce business, not following up on abandoned carts can lose you sales.

There can be many different reasons why consumers abandon their shopping carts. Sometimes it’s because they have buyer’s remorse.

Sometimes they forget to complete the check out. Sometimes prospects window shop and add products to their shopping cart for fun.

In any of these cases, sending frequent drip emails that adds an incentive for checking out can recover lost sales and boost profits.

Best Practice #5: Split Testing Email Timings

As mentioned earlier, finding the right times and days to send out emails will maximize your results. However, you have to think about how to conduct your experiments.

The wrong approach is trying to spend weeks figuring out which times and days to send out your emails. The better approach is segmenting your list into small lists for testing. For example, 500 subscribers will receive an email on Thursday and 500 subscribers will receive an email on Wednesday. This will help you get conclusive data on what day leads to higher opens rates.

You can even optimize this testing process by sending out emails to earlier time zones. Then, you can use that data to email the rest of your list with later time zones.

By testing your list via multiple segments, you can get the data you need and optimize your email drip campaigns very quickly. This concept can also be applied to mass mailings for subject lines, call to actions, offers and more.

Conclusion – What is the best cold email drip campaign timing?

Getting a cold email drip campaign timing right is essential if you want to maximize your campaign. It’s common for marketers to test subject lines, leading paragraphs, designs and other elements in their email campaigns.

However, many marketers that create drip email campaigns never bother to optimize the timing of their emails. As a result, they end up leaving a lot of unclaimed profits that they would’ve earned.

Don’t make the same mistake. Put in the little effort into this aspect of optimization and you’ll see a big difference in the results of our email campaigns.

About the author 

Dilip Kumar  -  

My name is Dilip. I am a fan of the internet and love the many opportunities that the world wide web provides. If used constructively , the internet can give you an opportunity to lead a life free of the 9-5 treadmill and will be able to give more time to your family members.
Read about internet entrepreneurship at my blog.

My name is Dilip. I am a fan of the internet and love the many opportunities that the world wide web provides. If used constructively , the internet can give you an opportunity to lead a life free of the 9-5 treadmill and will be able to give more time to your family members. Read about internet entrepreneurship at my blog.

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