For many years now businesses have been trying to figure out the answer to the question when it’s the best time to contact customers. Mastering the art of timing will not only increase your chance to strike a deal with potential customers or upsell to existing ones, it will also make your work a whole lot more efficient and leave you with more time for other activites. So, what does the research show? Below you’ll find some valuable insights.
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Send emails in the morning, afternoon or middle of the week
A recent report from CoSchedule has summarised ten different surveys on email marketing and found that the best times to schedule your email marketing are:
- Weekdays in the order of: Tuesday, Thursday and Wednesday. These are the days your emails will usually see most effect.
- Hours of the day: There is no perfect time, however, most surveys points to sending out emails in the morning och before lunch is the recommendation, since people usually haven’t booked up their calender with meetings yet.
That means, if you’re about to send out an email to a prospect or customer and want to boost the chance for it being read, that you should make sure to send it on a tuesday morning or a thursday morning to have the highest impact possible. For obvious reasons you can’t restrict you email correspondence to just one day of the week. However, try to avoid mondays and fridays and don’t send out emails when the customer is likely to have their lunch break since they’ll be focused on other things than reading emails during that time.
Calls are most effective in the morning, afternoon or mid-week
A phone call has many advantages when you want to communicate with potential and existing customers. Calling up a customer has a more personal touch than just an email and gives you the opportunity to discuss and respond to complex questions much faster than possible in an email conversation. However, a phone call can be disruptive to the one you’re calling and to be successful you need to have the recipients full attention. That’s why your timing is critical for the success of your phone call!
Salesmate has done a survey to find out the best days and times for a successful sales call:
- Weekdays in the order of: Wednesdays, Thursdays and Tuesdays.
- Hour of the day in the order of: 16.00-17.00, 10.00-11.00, 15.00-16.00
To increase the chance that the person you’re calling will pick up and spend time talking with you, you should call them on a wednesday between 16.00-17.00. Avoid making calls on fridays between 15.00-17.00 if possible. Most people are busy wrapping up their week during this time period and looking forward to going home for the weekend, it’ll be hard to present them with new ideas during this time.
Tip! You should break the rules if you have received a lead to contact. The chance of the lead picking up your call drops by as much as 11 times after an hour. In other words, if you get a lead from your website or support team, call it as soon as possible!
Fridays are good for closing deals
The best thing about working in sales is winning and closing deals, but how do you improve your chance of closing more deals? Apart from your own sales efforts, statistics show that there are some weekdays when you’re more likely to get deals finalized.
A significant number of deals are signed on wednesdays; however, this may be because that’s the day of the week when sales reps are most active with their sales calls, mailings and meetings. No wonder more deals are closed when you really put in the extra effort!
However, data shows that fridays are actually the day with the highest conversion rate in most countries. If you think the chance of closing a deal isn’t particular high on fridays it might be time to rethink that aproach! Although fridays are less ideal for prospecting, they are actually perfect for nurturing existing sales discussions or to finalize the deal that’s been dragging on for a while.
Now that you’re armed with the knowledge of what times you should communicate with your customers you’ll instantly see better results!
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