Worldata

By Roy Schwedelson

Seasonality was a key concern in the list business. It was right up there with Recency, Frequency and Monetary value. I along with many of my peers never had to think about when to mail for our clients – the Kleid Company made sure we all had their seasonality study to help us along.

There were the best months for women’s apparel, other times for business magazines and still other periods for consumer electronics. Of course, mailing on a regular set of dates and seasons seemed to work for other direct marketers.

In our new world of around the clock (24/7) direct marketing seasonality seems trivial. Time of the week and hour of day is regularly targeted for maximum effectiveness. I’m talking email marketing and the speed of the results.

A quick look at what seems to be the growing tips for this type of timing are as follows:

1.	Don’t send a business email late on a Friday or one that arrives on a Monday morning. The reasoning is that the person’s mailbox is full from a weekend of receiving such messages and therefore, they’ll be erased instead of read.
2.	Same logic applies for delivering emails right before a long holiday weekend (such as July 4^th).
3.	Consumer email is best read on weekends, especially Sundays. Logic is simple – most time to read it.

4.	Best time to reach business people with email is lunchtime. You’ll have to time your deliveries for this one.
5.	Friday is getaway day, go light on emails and none in the p.m.
6.	This is a big one: We can’t do merge/purge just yet. This is not due to technology, but a ‘growing pains’ thing with the newbie email companies. So the question is- How do you avoid sending duplicate messages out to the same name? And, this is a timing issue. Answer: Space out the drops between each list by a day or two. This will avoid everyone looking silly or sending out SPAM.

These few tips were really timing issues and not seasonality. So let’s get back to the times of the year and when to send email.

This is one of the few elements of direct marketing that haven’t changed. People still want to receive the right seasonal offer at the same time. The problem is in the planning and delivery of the messages. Less turn around time, more demand and less services (legitimate ones) to send the messages. There are currently fewer lists of the true ethical opt-in type and less expertise in how the offer and copy must be structured. Therefore, the planning and use of lists affects the timing/seasonality.

Offers should be sent out early in the correct season. Waiting too long into the season to use a specific list could make a legitimate offer appear as SPAM. It is not list fatigue; it is consumer fatigue that will plague the tardy user of an email list even in the correct season.

As the market matures and more lists become available this condition will pass. However, today, and for the near future being early will only help your cause.

Roy Schwedelson (roy@worldata.com) is CEO of Worldata, Inc. (www.worldata.com),
a leading List Marketing, Electronic Marketing, and Database Services company;