Sometimes, it just isn’t the right time to send an email. It might be a busy time of day, or different time zones mean the recipient isn’t available. This could mean the difference between an opened email and one that gets buried. Being unable to send an email at the perfect can be a major barrier to efficiency.
Enter email schedulers. These nifty automation tools allow you to pick a precise time to send an email. That could be in days or weeks, or it could be in 15 minutes. You get to pick the exact moment.
Leveraging automation in email marketing is the best way to ensure the success of your campaigns and increase engagement rates. In this article, we’ll share insight into:
- What is email scheduling software necessary?
- The benefits of email scheduling
- Top email scheduling software of 2023
- Spotlight on Instantly's email scheduling software
Why is email scheduling software necessary?
Consider the world that we live in today. The traditional 9-5 is something of the past. People work remotely worldwide, and navigating time zones has become the norm. Flexible working means that colleagues aren’t all in the office simultaneously or on the same days.
Synchronized communication is a challenge. When a person reaches their desk and is faced with 50 emails that came in overnight, if yours is one of the masses, chances are it’ll be missed or parked. Compare that to an email appearing in their inbox an hour or so into their working window, and you have considerably more impact.
The process of scheduling emails isn’t really about your emails' content. It’s more about the mastery of time optimization. Picking the right window to best engage with the recipient and showing consideration toward them too.
The Benefits of Email Scheduling Software
The benefits of email scheduling begin to mount up quickly. It goes beyond simply sending at the right time. But, of course, that's the primary benefit.
Ensuring Timely Communication
If your email is received during working hours, the recipient is far more likely to open, engage, and respond. Not only is this better for engagement, but it’s also respectful of the hours that the person is working.
Productivity
You know when you are at your most productive. Drafting emails at that point and the scheduling allows you to harness your most productive hours. This is far more effective than waiting for the right moment and dragging your way through a draft.
Outreach Professionalism
You might like to write emails at 3 a.m., but not everyone respects that. In fact, it often looks like you’re somewhat chaotic. Worse still, some people might see it as a lack of respect. Using an email scheduler allows you to maintain a professional image.
Streamlined Marketing
Those conducting large-scale email outreach will immediately reap the benefits of email scheduling. Using a scheduler means your marketing messages arrive in the recipient’s inbox at strategically chosen times. You can plan for maximum engagement, even if that’s outside of your typical working hours.
If you’ve built a consistent schedule, you could even begin to build excitement and anticipation amongst your audience by adhering to it. They might actively look forward to receiving your communication at a particular time.
Reduced Errors
Everyone has sent that email and then had the sinking feeling that they’ve made a mistake. Your only option at that point is to confess to it and send a subsequent email. It's not a particularly professional look. This is a thing of the past with email schedulers. You can review and edit emails to your heart’s content until they are sent.
Our Pick Of Email Scheduling Software
The below list is the market leaders when it comes to email scheduling. You may find that some of them are already wrapped up in existing CRMs or other tools. Others are standalone email marketing tools.
Instantly
Instantly is a powerful email marketing tool that specializes in cold email outreach. Combined with AI-powered email account warm-up, Instantly allows your business to send thousands of emails without risking spam filters and with unparalleled deliverability.
These cold email outreach campaigns can be scheduled as you see fit. All you need to do is create a campaign, import your leads, and then you can begin to create your sequences. This is great for larger campaigns, but what about individual responses? Instantly has you covered. The schedule a reply feature allows you to reply to a lead at a later time or date that is convenient to you and the recipient.
Instantly also has the ability to generate layered schedules. That means you can only send your automated campaigns when your specified schedule allows.
Scroll down to learn more about scheduling emails with Instantly
HubSpot
It’s hardly surprising that HubSpot includes email scheduling in its suite of marketing tools. On the free level of the plan, users have access to the email scheduling tool through extensions and integrations. So if you use platforms like Gmail, the scheduler is visible within the platform itself.
There isn’t a limit to the number of messages and recipients that you can schedule, so you’re able to plan ahead without restriction. Alongside the scheduling, there are features such as business email templates, tracking, and sequencing that could work hand-in-hand with the scheduler.
MailChimp
Another email marketing tool that offers scheduling. MailChimp has recently upgraded its software to harness the power of AI. It’s certainly one of the most popular tools but has something of a steep learning curve for those new to software tools.
The free level has many restrictions, but paid plans start at only $10. Once you begin to pay, you can access more advanced scheduling options and audience segmentation.
Customers often find the AI-powered creative assistant helpful when writing emails, but the greatest benefit comes from the automated scheduling tools.
User.com
Another larger tool that covers a wide range of business activities but also includes email scheduling. The free plan has a great number of tools that you can access, including the email scheduler. An interesting take on email scheduling is to use their internal scheduling feature. This means you receive email marketing reports when you’d like to receive them.
Zoho
Zoho offers a huge range of products. The email scheduler forms part of Zoho Mail. Within Zoho mail, you can schedule individual emails, or you can set up recurrent emails to go at a particular schedule. Recurrent emails are often used internally as reminders or notes for important tasks.
GetResponse
This tool focuses on marketing automation and email marketing. The scheduler allows you to work in an unlimited way and use autoresponders too. Once your emails are sent, the data feeds into a comprehensive analytics suite. This is useful for you to gauge how successful you were with your scheduling.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaigns likes to focus on emails, and it's what they do best. There are various different marketing tools that include a scheduler. Their aim is for you to use the scheduler to automate outbound marketing. If you look to celebrate customer birthdays or anniversaries, then you can use the scheduler for that. Set up a template, create customized and personalized schedules, and launch the campaign.
There’s a 14-day free trial for ActiveCampaign. Once that is complete, you’ll need to pick one of their paid plans.
Other Tools With Schedulers
There are many other tools that include schedulers, including:
- SendinBlue
- Constant Contact
- Mailjet
- Boomerang
- BenchmarkONE
Your Email Provider
Many email providers include email scheduling within their platforms. Take Gmail, for example. They include a simple scheduler that saves your email as a draft and then sends it as and when you’d like it to be sent.
To access it, simply click the down arrow that makes up part of the send button and select “Schedule Send.” They’ll offer you a few standard choices, such as tomorrow morning, tomorrow afternoon, and Monday morning. You could also pick any date and time that you like.
Often you might work with recipients around the world. Be sure to change the scheduled time to match their timezone using the dropdown menu.
This is one of the easiest ways for you to access email scheduling. It lacks some of the more detailed and intricate tools that a dedicated email marketing tool might have to offer.
Spotlight on Instantly
We mentioned some of the scheduling features that Instantly offers. Now we can show how the scheduling works in detail. Starting with simply scheduling a reply.
Scheduling A Reply With Instantly
When accessing the email composer, rather than clicking Send, choose the option to Send Later instead.
Clicking this will open the calendar. From there, select your date and time, being mindful of the selected time zone.
When you’re done, click Schedule Send, and you’ll receive a confirmation that your email has been scheduled.
You can find all of the replies that you have scheduled by using the Scheduled button in Unibox:
If you need to edit or cancel a reply, you can easily do so from the screen that you’ve just reached. Simply click the email and edit or cancel the send:
Using Instantly Sequence Schedules
When creating a sequence, scheduling is incredibly important to maximize the effect of your campaign. This campaign could be for marketing purposes or made specifically for lead nurturing.
When creating your campaign, first create the email that you’re first going to send to your recipient. This can be sent via triggers such as signing up or being added to the mailing list.
Once this primary email is in place, you can click the Add Step button to add the next email in the sequence. At this point, you’ll schedule when the email is to be sent. Instead of picking a calendar date or time (given this will be different for every person on the list), you choose a number of days after the first email.
Once you’ve done this, feel free to add as many steps as you like. You can set the schedules as you see fit based on the campaign length. In general, for a cold outreach campaign, Instantly recommends at least 3-4 steps.
Key Takeaways
It’s clear that our emails need to be streamlined and efficient. The more of that we achieve, the smoother our businesses run. Scheduling delivers a huge dose of both optimized communication and efficiency. We can effectively communicate at the best times for recipients. We can respect each other’s working hours and maximize the impact that our marketing has.
There’s more to an email than simply pressing send. Emails are conversations. They deserve attention and care.
- Scheduling emails boosts recipient engagement and maximizes responses.
- You’re able to send emails at a time that is convenient for you and the recipient.
- Many tools offer email scheduling. The decision over which relies on the other elements you’d like to have in your arsenal too.
If you’re looking for an email outreach tool that delivers scheduling, sequencing and does the most possible for email deliverability, look no further than Instantly. You can get started for free today.
