There's always time for email

As late night show host Craig Ferguson says daily "Yes, there's always time for email". Of course he says it with more pizzazz and flashy graphics, but hey when you working with a budget of $0 a title is all you get.

As I found myself preparing a mass email to send out to our prospects today I got wondering, What is the best time to schedule the email to be sent? Research places the best days to send marketing emails as Tuesday and Wednesday but what time of day do you want it to drop. Most would probably think just send it sometime early morning. Here is the issue, with blackberries and other smart phones in the marketplace many people have them rigged to beep when new mail comes in. Do you want to be the company waking up your prospect or client at 4 in the morning because you scheduled an email to go out then? I certainly don't want to be. Thats why I tend to schedule mine to arrive starting at 7am local time. My situation is a little easier because our targets are purely on the west coast, so only one time zone to deal with. But we are starting to push across Canada, and when we do more and more what do I do then? Obviously the easiest option is to segment my list based on provincial location and have a few seperate email lists. What if all I had was a big opt-in email list? Then I think I would probably try to shoot for a 9am delivery on the east coast which would put the mail into my west coast prospects hands at 6am, a reasonable time that is not too early.

I'm not sure if it has even come up that much because I am constantly getting emails from Marketing Associations anywhere from 2 - 5 am. I've had to alter my phone settings so emails come through silently.

Has anyone else run into this problem or thought deeply about their email distribution times?