A Mother's Day Email That Arrives on Monday

The email that came too late

Every year, a few Mother's Day emails arrive on the Monday after. They were planned, written and approved; they simply went out too late to do anything.

Most late emails are not that late. They arrive on the Friday or Saturday before, when the shipping cutoff has passed and the customer has already bought something elsewhere.

To the business, the email went out before Mother's Day. To the customer, it went out after the decision.

A gift-occasion email has a deadline earlier than the occasion itself, and the timing has to start from that deadline, not from the date on the calendar.

The real deadline

For a store that ships, the deadline is the last day an order can be placed and still arrive. For a shop, a restaurant or a spa, it is the last day somebody can come in or book.

Count back from that. If your parcels take three or four business days, the last safe order for a Sunday occasion falls early in the week, and an email on Thursday is too late for anything shipped.

Write the deadline into the email itself, in the subject line where possible. An email that says "order by Tuesday" is useful when it is read in time, and honest when it is read too late.

Three emails, not one

Gift buyers arrive in waves, and a single email can only meet one of them.

• The planning email, about a week to ten days ahead, with the cutoff stated.
• The reminder, a day or two before the cutoff, shorter and plainer.
• The last-minute email, after the cutoff, offering what can still happen in time.
• The thank-you, afterwards, only to the people who bought.

The third is the one that tends to be skipped, and it is often the most useful. By then the customer is not comparing gifts; they are looking for anything that will work by Sunday.

What a last-minute email can offer

If your Mother's Day email has not gone out yet, this is the one to send today: something that does not depend on a courier.

A gift card sent by email, which arrives in minutes and can be printed at home. In-store pickup on Saturday for an order placed online on Friday.

Or a booking for a later date, with a printable card to hand over on the day itself.

Each of these has to work before the email goes out: the gift card page, the pickup option at checkout, the printable certificate.

And say plainly what is no longer possible. A customer who orders a shipped gift on Friday because the email never mentioned the cutoff will not blame the courier.

Why emails are read late

Sending on time is not quite the same as being read on time.

Gmail files a lot of promotional email under a separate Promotions tab, where it waits until somebody looks. Other people read email in batches, on the weekend, or only when the subject line gives them a reason.

That is another argument for the deadline in the subject line, and for sending early: an email read two days late still has time to work if it went out ten days ahead.

Check the send time in your email tool too, including its time zone. An account set to another part of the country can move a morning send to the middle of the night.

A worked example

A gift shop in a seaside town, with a small online store, sends a monthly email to its customers.

Last year, its Mother's Day email went out on the Thursday before, with photographs of new candles and gift baskets. Orders placed that day and the next arrived midweek, after the day itself.

The shop spent the following week apologising, and refunded several customers whose gifts had arrived late.

This year it worked backwards from its courier's delivery times. The planning email went out ten days early with the order-by date in the subject line, and a reminder went the day before that date.

Today's email offers gift cards by email and Saturday pickup at the shop, and says in its first line that shipped orders will now arrive after Sunday.

The gift baskets have not changed. Only the calendar has.

Leave out people who already bought

A reminder sent to somebody who ordered from the first email reads as a mistake, or as a hint that they should have waited for a better offer.

If your store and your email tool are connected, exclude recent buyers from the reminder and the last-minute send. If they are not, a short list exported from the store does the same job.

Those customers get the thank-you instead, and a note about the next occasion when it comes.

The rest of the year

The same arithmetic applies to every occasion, so put the dates in the calendar now, each with its first send date beside it.

Father's Day is June 16. Graduations and the end of the school year run through June, then comes Canada Day. Back-to-school runs from late August into the first week of September.

Thanksgiving is October 14, with Halloween close behind. Then the long run to Christmas, with Black Friday at the end of November and shipping cutoffs in mid-December that are earlier than most customers expect.

Valentine's Day and next year's Mother's Day close the loop. Each needs a planning date, a cutoff date and a last-minute option, written down before the season starts.

The counter-case

Not every business should send three emails about every occasion.

A business whose products are not gifts, such as a plumbing supplier or an accounting practice, risks annoying more people than it helps by joining in. Mother's Day is not its occasion.

A small list that hears from you rarely may only bear one email. In that case, send the planning one, early, with the deadline in the subject line.

Where gifts are what you sell, though, work backwards from the cutoff and send the first email at least a week ahead.

For the next occasion

1. Find your real deadline for each occasion.
2. Count back to the first send date.
3. Put the cutoff in the subject line.
4. Prepare a last-minute option before you need it.
5. Exclude buyers from the reminders.
6. Check the send time and time zone.
7. Write the year's dates into the calendar now.

Step four is the one that rescues a late email. A gift card that arrives in minutes turns a missed shipping date into something the customer can still use on Sunday.

What goes into the email, once the timing is right, is covered in the spring newsletter that says nothing.

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