The Newsletter Sent at Three in the Morning

Scheduled for ten, delivered at three

The newsletter was written on Thursday, checked twice and scheduled for Saturday at ten in the morning.

It went out at three in the morning, Pacific time. Nobody at the business noticed, because nobody there was awake to see it arrive.

The mailing service did exactly what it was told. The instruction was ten o'clock in the account's time zone, and the account was not set to British Columbia.

The mistake is common, and the fix is a single setting.

Where the hours go

Every mailing service schedules campaigns in the time zone saved in the account settings, usually chosen when the account was first opened.

Some services start new accounts in Eastern time. Others use UTC, the reference time servers keep, which is seven hours ahead of BC in summer and eight in winter.

So ten o'clock UTC is three in the morning in Vancouver now, and two in the morning from November to March. Six o'clock Eastern is three in the morning here all year.

Clocks that may be set wrong

The mailing account is rarely the only one.

• The mailing service, which sends campaigns by its own clock.
• The website, which stamps posts, comments and form entries.
• The online store, which dates orders and ends sales.
• The social media scheduler, which publishes queued posts.
• The booking system, which sends reminders before appointments.

The second is the clock nobody thinks to check. WordPress starts every new site on UTC, so a post scheduled for nine appears in the middle of the night and form entries carry the wrong hour.

Why the middle of the night costs readers

Email is read in the order people find it, and most of it is now read on phones.

A newsletter that arrives at three is buried under everything that came in overnight by breakfast. People clear that pile with a thumb, and a sender they like gets swept away with the rest.

One that arrives while people are already looking at their phones gets seen on its own, with a moment of attention.

And phones that chime for new mail wake some customers up, which is not the impression the newsletter was written to make.

Checking the setting

Open the account settings in your mailing service and find the time zone. It should say Pacific time or a BC city, not Eastern and not UTC.

Then open the report for your last campaign and compare its sent time with the time it reached your own inbox. If they differ by hours, earlier campaigns were probably off by the same amount.

Check the website at the same sitting. In WordPress the time zone is under Settings, then General.

A worked example

A pet food store in a suburban plaza sends a newsletter twice a month: new foods, a coupon for the weekend and the date of the next nail-trimming clinic.

The owner scheduled each issue for Saturday at ten, when customers plan their errands. Then a regular mentioned at the till that hers always arrived in the middle of the night.

The account had been opened by a previous manager and was still on UTC. Every issue since the clocks changed in March had arrived at three in the morning, and all winter at two.

Nothing was wrong with the content. One setting, made once by someone else, decided when every customer saw it.

The time zone was changed to Pacific, a test went to two staff phones, and the coupon, which used to say today only, now covers the whole weekend in case someone reads it late.

The store is now comparing Friday evening with Saturday morning over several issues before settling on one.

A time that suits your customers

The right time is when customers have a moment, not when the newsletter happens to be finished.

People buying for themselves often read in the evening or at the weekend. People reading for work tend to read on weekday mornings, after the first rush of the day.

Think about what the email asks them to do. A weekend sale belongs before weekend plans are made, and a class with limited spaces belongs when people can book straight away.

Customers in more than one time zone

A business selling across Canada has a harder choice. Nine in the morning in Vancouver is noon in Toronto and one in the afternoon in Halifax.

Choose for where most subscribers are, which many mailing services can show from the locations of past opens.

Some services can also deliver at the same local hour in each time zone, often on paid plans. For a list spread across the country, that option is worth asking about.

Write for when it lands

Even a well-timed newsletter is read hours or days later by some people.

Name the date rather than writing today or tomorrow, give every offer an end date and time, and say which time zone a deadline is in when customers are spread out.

Let the report decide

Most mailing services show opens hour by hour. After a few issues at a sensible time, that pattern shows when your readers actually read.

Change one thing at a time. Try a different day or hour for two or three issues, compare, and keep whichever suits your list.

Do not judge from a single send. One issue can be pushed around by the weather, a holiday or an unusually good subject line.

The counter-case

For some lists the hour matters less. Customers who wait for a particular newsletter, such as a monthly price list, open it whenever it arrives.

A very small list gives too few opens to compare times, and the content does more of the work than the clock.

Neither changes the first step: set the account to your own time zone, so the time you choose is the time it sends.

Before the next send

1. Open the account settings in your mailing service.
2. Set the time zone to Pacific time.
3. Compare a past campaign's sent and received times.
4. Check the website's time zone too.
5. Pick a time when customers have a moment.
6. Write dates instead of today and tomorrow.
7. Read the hourly opens after each issue.

Step three is the one that shows how long this has been going on. If last month's campaign arrived hours early, the ones before it probably did too, and the report confirms it in a minute.

The other common slip when sending to a list is covered in group emails sent with every address visible.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.