Ahhh Sunday, the seventh day of the week, the day to recoop before the work week. Or is it? It seems that a growing trend for Sunday has started - checking business related emails. I can remember my marketing manager telling me that she couldn’t get through the night on Sunday without checking her email at somepoint during that day.
A recent study by MailerMailer — Email Marketing Metrics Report — examines how work anxiety urges professionals to check their email on Sundays instead of waiting until Monday morning when they arrive at the office.
Does doing our best at our jobs now mean sacrificing a few hours of our Sunday in order to make it to Monday? Let us know what you think.
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December 9, 2008
I have definitely come to find that checking my email on Sundays, evenings and even vacations, helps me to feel less stressed in the end because I can ease back into the work world instead of being thrown into it.
Plus, often times your co-workers or clients are waiting on a response from you before they can continue with a project so the quicker you can get them an answer, the more productive you can all be.
December 9, 2008
In the past, checking my emails on Sunday and every night for that matter, was a ritual. At the time, it seemed that it did help alleviate the stress of being inundated with emails first thing in the morning. However, after years of this practice it began to take a toll on my personal life.
This new world of technology has made it easier to be in constant contact, but is it really a good thing? After starting a new job and having a boss that stresses personal time, I have now become a big advocate of personal time! I think it is important to maintain a separate home life and work life as much as possible. We all need to refresh our brains and have down time on a regular basis. Trust me…once you start this practice, you wonder how you ever survived!
December 15, 2008
I think what’s most interesting about this study is that it shows that marketers should consider sending out their emails and newsletters on Sundays instead of waiting until business days. The original idea was that you could reach your audience more by sending them messages while they were at their office desk. The result of this study shows that maybe we need to throw that old logic out the door.
I’ve also read other articles that indicate that you should schedule your emails to go out at night so that they are in the users inbox first thing the next morning. I mean think about; most of us probably spend our first several minutes a day doing nothing but going through emails. I think this is pretty logical.
Has anyone seen an increase in open rates by sending out emails on weekends or week nights? Just curious.
December 15, 2008
I check my work e-mail almost every night before going to sleep and especially if I have pitches/queries out.
It’s amazing how many of us are awake during the night every so often. On the occasion that I can’t sleep, I begin working through e-mails and often get more than an auto-responder to my e-mails.
I agree with Lee that I feel more productive when I’ve got those responses back to clients and journalists.
January 15, 2009
Here’s another case study by Marketing Sherpa that indicates overnight send times yield higher CTR’s: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=30995
March 20, 2009
[...] you know that some research shows that Sunday is the best day for e-mail open rates? Obviously, your mileage may vary depending on content or audience, but it’s a strange thing [...]