Whether you are emailing channel partners to recruit them to your content syndication program or to let them know of content updates and promotions, the timing of your email significantly affects how many partners read your message.

Dan Zarella, Social Media Scientist at Hubspot, put together a very informative webinar called The Science of Timing. In this webinar, Zarella presents extensive research regarding the best times to reach people through email.

Here are some takeaways regarding email timing that you can apply to optimize communication efforts with your channel partners:

What Time Should You Email Your Channel Partners?

Zarella’s research shows that more people read emails in the morning than at night, with open rates particularly higher early in the morning between 6:00 A.M. and 7:00 A.M.

If you are not in the office that early, you or your channel managers can schedule your partner communications for delivery during one of those times. It is pretty easy to schedule emails with Outlook, and you can find add-on extensions for most other email clients.

What Day Should You Email Your Channel Partners?

Zarella’s research also shows that open rates are higher on weekends than on weekdays. This may not be too surprising since people are usually not as busy on weekends and may have more time to go through all their emails. However, it’s important to note that spam reporting is also higher on the weekends.

Before you start blasting weekend emails to your channel partners, consider the subject of your email and whether or not your partners would be more receptive to reading it during the week.

Put yourself in their shoes. When would you be most receptive to the email you’re sending? Is the content heavy and work related? Or is it just informative and easy to relay?

How Often Should You Email Your Channel Partners?

The research data shows unsubscribe rates are not significantly affected once you get past sending 4-5 emails per month. Surprisingly, there was no substantial difference in unsubscribe rates between companies that sent 4 emails a month to companies that sent 33 emails a month.

A possible reason for this is that most subscribers who are not interested in your content will unsubscribe after the first few emails. Once this initial group unsubscribes, you have a qualified base of subscribers who are interested in your content and are less likely to unsubscribe from your mailing list.

Your channel partners are already a qualified list since they have opted into a partnership. While you don’t have to worry about unsubscribe rates, this data is useful in getting an idea of an acceptable amount of emails that won’t annoy or push your partners away.

While 33 emails a month does seem excessive, the takeaway here is that most companies are not even close to sending too many emails. So unless you’re already sending out a daily email, consider increasing the frequency of your emailing efforts.

Understand Your Partner Base and Find YOUR Optimum Timing

While these are all great starting points, the research data is based on a large aggregate pool. Habits and reading tendencies are likely to differ across different audiences. Use these takeaways as starting points and experiment with sending more emails during different days and times to find the optimum time to reach your partners.

Have any timing insights based on your experiences? Share with us in the comments below.

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