• by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, August 31, 2016

It isn't just me, then. And it's not just you either. It looks like there are rather a lot of us checking our emails at the weekend. Not only that, we're also doing something about it. The weekends, it turns out, are fast becoming the optimum time for turning lookers into bookers via email.

In fact, this week's research from Yesmail suggests that conversion rates are 60% higher for emails received on a Saturday. For Sunday there is a 40% lift. It's an extremely interesting finding because there must be many in digital marketing -- myself included -- who presumed that weekends are sacrosanct. While consumers have long been expected to accept messages on a weekday, there is an understandable concern that any brand pushing out messages at the weekend might be pushing their luck a little too far.

This may well account for why email levels drop on the weekend, meaning that those that do arrive turn up in a far less crowded inbox. Not only are there far fewer brand messages, there are likely to be very few work ones too. The thing that many of us are probably coming to realise is that people still check their phones, regardless of whether they're expecting to receive updates or not. We're creatures of habit, and the email inbox is easier to make a bigger impression on over the weekend.

The obvious word of caution here is that Monday to Friday emails have become the norm not only because it appears more polite to reach out to people during the working week. It's also because that's when brands have staff on hand to take calls and handle orders. So a good example of when weekend emails just annoy would be a recent one I received asking me to call a certain well-known car manufacturer to make my final payment over the phone. I did so, right away. The outcome? After listening to a bunch of menus and making many selections, the necessary finance line was not operational until Monday morning. 

So if the intended action can be completed digitally at the press of a button or if you have a customer services team telephone number you operate throughout the weekend, then the discovery that weekend emails lead to the highest conversion will come as a hugely interesting discovery. Just don't send anyone on a fool's errand to complete a task that is impossible at the weekend, and you will likely discover that the conversion cycle doesn't just run Monday to Friday.