Credit Union Marketing Corner
So… you have crafted content that will speak to your members, reviewed the dos and don’ts of email, and now you need to get it to them! Email campaigns are the most cost-effective solution to reach out to your members with a recent promotion or offer. Even though our article on campaign strategy vs. one-offs will point out that multiple marketing products and approaches will overall show more substantial results, email is unmistakably an active player in the marketing game. Credit Union email timeliness scheduling can be very complicated, but I am sure we can come to some simple rules for generality’s sake.
Once you have a visually appealing layout and personable promotional content, your email is ready to send! But don’t press mass to submit yet. You need to consider a critical factor in effectively getting all that hard work in front of your members… TIME!
Because emails are so cost-effective, almost every company with a consumer’s email address will consistently reach out to them. That means your members have unread emails in very, very high numbers. Your email campaign should do everything possible not to get tossed in the unread folder, which then becomes the trash folder. Timing when your members receive emails from you is a huge step in determining your place in their inbox.
To determine these times, you need to consider your FOM. If you are serving occupational common-bond, you have a strong idea as to what their schedule might look like. If you are serving a community, you may want to consider the most common times one would check their emails – mainly in the morning or beginning of the workday, and heavily avoided on weekends.
Optinmonster found that the best days to send a promotional email are Tuesdays or Thursdays, and Wednesdays are fantastic for engagement rates. You also might want to consider Hubspot.com’s breakdown of the weekly opportunities when emailing your members daily.
Credit Union Email Timeliness Scheduling
Monday — Use this day to promote content outside of your campaign, like boosting a product stack that’s related to your upcoming campaign.
Tuesday — For Tuesday’s email, tease your campaign. Give readers a quick video or an announcement, and prepare them for more details for the following day.
Wednesday — This is the big day for launching the campaign, so put your best email forward on this day, where you’ll find the most openings.
Thursday — Choose this day to push interactive email content, like a case study video, product demo, or specs involving your campaign.
Friday — For a Friday email, choose something that readers will find fun, such as social media hype over the new campaign, or a “Here’s what you missed” round-up of the week.
As for the actual time of day to send emails that stay out of the trash… consider the common workday, including commutes. Open and click rates are highest at the beginning of the workday (9-10 a.m.), at around lunchtime (1-2 p.m.), and after you settle in at home (around 6 p.m.). There is no magic answer as to when your members are most likely to open and engage with your email campaigns. The best way to determine when and where to target your members is by trial and error with metrics and data analysis.
Oak Tree is not currently taking on new clients for marketing services, but we still love helping the Credit Union Movement, and one way we do this is through drafting and publishing the content on our Credit Union Blog and sharing our marketing insights.
