Don’t Forget to Adjust Your Automated Features!
Brrr! It’s cooled down in a hurry this week. We’ve seen people in offices around Atlanta sneaking over to fiddle with the thermometer and much to their chagrin, the master control trumped their wishes to fire up the heater.
We love automated features that make our lives easier but hate it when they backfire on us. At Online Outbox, we get a lot of clients who like to program a campaign to run long term. They dub it “set it and forget it” and choose to rely on our site’s convenient automation. The feature is very reliable, just as a thermostat is when you program it to self-regulate. But what happens when the weather changes? You need to revisit your programming and adjust it for new conditions. Can you see where we’re going with this?
It is important to adjust your advertising matrix based on the levels and types of responses your former campaigns generate. Our automated send-outs and reporting tools are time-saving features, but should not be used as a substitute for the human touch. Take for instance, timing your messages. We can suggest to you the best time to send an email to your clients based on industry standards and our experiences, but those guidelines are no substitute for what you know about your business.
What do we mean? Let’s take three individual clients and consider their best send out times. General industry guidelines suggest the best time to send an email is Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday during the 10 a.m. or 1 p.m. hour.
What if that time slot isn’t working well for these three clients? How would you tweak their delivery schedule?
| - A nightclub advertising featured bands | |
| - A natural, herbal sleep-aid | |
| - A doughnut shop |
Right. You would look at when their audience is most likely to be actively engaged in their product line. For the nightclub, we’d look at after-hours toward the end of the week when people are making their weekend plans. The sleep aid company might do substantially better by reaching out to people in the middle of the night—when potential customers are suffering from the problem and likely to be idling on the computer. And the doughnut shop? Generally they’ll do their best business in the morning, so it’s important to strike when the iron is hot. They could look at early morning hours to encourage their clients to pick up a box of goodies for the office meeting or use the drive-thru for a treat on the way to work.
Sending effective campaigns isn’t about following the formula other companies use. It isn’t about when it’s convenient for you to hit the send button during a hectic day. It’s about understanding your customer base and providing relevant content to them when they need it. Pairing our tools with your business savvy is just one more way you can maximize your results with Online Outbox.