When I get done with my morning routine and head toward my office (or desk in my hotel room), the first thing I do, as I’m walking there, is check my email on my phone. (I have a new habit that I adopted a few months ago that I don’t do any work until I’ve done my workout, walked the dogs, eaten breakfast, etc. When I get done at about 7:20, I can’t help myself and glance at my phone while I’m walking to my computer.) I respond to some emails at 7:20 in the morning that would get trashed any other time of the day. First of all, not many people are emailing me at that time so those emails don’t have 100 competitors battling for my attention. I also don’t have other fires to extinguish that early – I’m focused on my emails.
How about you? What do you do when you wake up? When you reach your office? How about at night before going to bed? What about the weekends? Now, think about your typical prospects. Below are some ideas of when a typical prospect in the security industry is most likely to open and reply to your email…
- For security or facilities personnel, early in the morning is your best option. Sometime between 7:00 and 8:00 in the morning.
- For upper management, extremely early is best. Upper management usually don’t put down their work. They have their smart phone tied to their hip. When they roll out of bed and head to the shower, they usually pick up their phone and check their email. If you send a request around 6:15 in the morning that is easy to read and reply to, then your response rate will increase dramatically.
- IT personnel and IT management tend to be night owls. If you send your emails between 7:30 and 9:00 pm, you’ll get an uptick in your response. This won’t be as great as your increase with the others because most IT people don’t really have a normal time cycle, but it will increase. Experiment with sending emails to IT on the weekends and see what happens.
- Finally, when you do get them on the phone or in a meeting, ask when the best time to email them is. (Also, ask them for their preferred method of communicating – phone, text, email, Twitter, etc.?)
By the way, don’t think you have to stay awake around the clock sending emails. Most email applications have an option to delay delivery of emails. For example, if you want to send an email to a security manager at 6:30 the next morning, write the email now and schedule it for delivery at that time.
Any stories out there on these ideas working (or backfiring) on you? How about other ideas?
