Here’s one thing to keep in mind when you’re devising your multi-step email campaigns.

Timezones.

One of the best ways to learn about effective and current techniques for marketing is to be on the lists of the top marketers! Sign up for their online email lists and even their offline lists if you can. Watch, learn and adapt for your own needs.

Best of all, it’s virtually a free marketing education.

One thing that I have noticed from a couple of recent campaigns is how timezones can affect the impact of your message.

Case in point: just today I’ve had a product offer close with a time-specific deadline — 5pm Eastern Standard Time in the USA.

(That’s a great “urgency” tactic — cutting off an offer at a very specific time, and sticking to your plan, not leaving the offer open!).

But… at 5pm EST it is 7am AEST in Australia — Australian Eastern Standard Time. Speaking for myself, that’s not generally a time of day that I’m online.

So… in this email campaign, there were two “last minute” email reminders… one sent out 8 hours before the deadline, and another 4 hours (”240 minutes”) before the deadline.

For me, the emails arrived at 11:32pm and 3:12am. Both arrived well after I was in bed asleep (around 10:30pm). By the time I saw them, it was 8:25am this morning — nearly 90 minutes after the offer had closed!

In this case, the Australian and New Zealand time zones are probably at the worst point on the clock compared to US EST.

Now that’s not to say that these 2 emails were the only 2 messages I received: I also received a “Only 2 days left” reminder and also the launch email 5 days ago — this was only a 5-day offer.

That means, in this 4-step email sequence, I missed seeing half of the sequence at a suitable time to act on the info as I was tucked away in bed sleeping.

The important issue here is sending out your emails when the majority of your audience will be seeing them. For this case, the number of Australian and New Zealand readers would be far smaller than the number of US readers… although I’d guess there’s still enough of us to be a reasonable market.

Because of the quality and expertise of the marketer involved (copywriting expert Clayton Makepeace), I’m certain he would always be testing that kind of offer, and would actually reach the majority of his list at a suitable time.

How well do you know your list? Are you creating deadlines that make sense to the majority of your list members? What if you knew where your list members lived and could personalise the offer and closing time based on that information?

The only real way to find out would be to ASK them, as even email addresses don’t necessarily reflect where you live. For my mailing lists, I use a gmail.com address — so it doesn’t readily give away that I live in “.au”. And friends of mine in Melbourne use yahoo.co.uk free addresses — and they’re 10 hours ahead of London time.

So, if you want to get that information… a short online survey (and maybe an incentive)… and suddenly you might have more of your list seeing your offer at a time of day when they can respond!