Contacts and channels
What time to send
The same message answered or ignored depending on when it lands, and the hours to avoid.
Content decides whether they answer well; timing decides whether they answer at all. It is the cheapest adjustment there is — it changes not a word of the message — and the least used, because almost everything gets sent when the sender has a gap, not when the recipient can deal with it.
How each moment behaves
| When it lands | What usually happens |
|---|---|
| First thing in the morning | Read attentively; it is when outstanding items get cleared |
| Just before lunch | Read and deferred, and deferred is forgotten |
| Mid-afternoon | Works well for anything needing calm reading |
| Friday afternoon | Answered on Monday, if at all |
| Out of hours or at weekends | It arrives, it irritates, and it speeds up nothing |
Important
The last row matters more than it seems when you write to people rather than companies. A message to a phone on a Sunday night does not bring the reply forward and does leave the impression that you are the disorganised one. If you write it then because that is when you can, schedule it for Monday: the effect on you is nil and on the recipient, considerable.
What does change the outcome
- 1
Schedule instead of sending
Write when you can and let it go out when it should. That is half this article.
- 2
Match the recipient's working day
A bakery, an accountancy firm and a law office do not start or finish at the same hour.
- 3
And do not send two things the same day to the same person
The second competes with the first and usually both lose.
Watch out
Watch time zones when writing abroad. A send that leaves at nine in your morning lands in the middle of the night across much of Asia and late afternoon in parts of the Americas; and automatic reminders inherit that hour unless scheduled. It is the commonest reason an international campaign gets far less response than the same campaign at home.
With reminders
Worth knowing
Scheduling a send counts as one action, just like sending it now: waiting until Monday costs nothing extra. What does add up is resending the same thing three times because each send landed at an hour when nobody was going to open it.
›Is there a magic hour?
No, but first thing in the recipient's morning beats the rest almost always.
›What if it really is urgent?
Then the hour is now, and better through a channel that reaches a phone.
›Can reminders be scheduled too?
Yes, and it makes sense: let chasing go out at a good hour rather than whenever the clock fired.
A real case
The situation
A company sends its requests on Friday afternoon, which is when it has time.
What you do
- Writes them Friday and schedules them for Monday first thing
What you get
First-request response rises without changing a word of the message.
The situation
The notice goes out on a Friday afternoon.
What you do
- Schedules the send for Monday
What you get
The notice arrives when somebody can act on it.
The situation
The notice arrives in the middle of the night and irritates.
What you do
- Sends within reasonable hours
What you get
The notice does not create resistance.
The situation
It goes out in August and nobody replies.
What you do
- Adjusts dates to the sector's calendar
What you get
Response rates do not collapse.
The situation
It goes to a recipient in another time zone.
What you do
- Schedules by their local time
What you get
The notice arrives within their working day.
The situation
Every notice goes out at the same time and saturates.
What you do
- Spreads the sends out
What you get
Each notice is read separately.
This article answers
- best time to send a request
- schedule sends for the next day
- sending messages out of hours
- when to chase a supplier