Should I Send Sales Prospecting Emails in December? Part II — Electric Boogaloo AKA Da Remix FEAT St. Nyk
It’s that time of year — Thanksgiving is around the corner, Carolina basketball is tipping off, and the sociopaths among us have already put up their Christmas tree and are probably listening to Mariah Carey at this very moment.
And it’s during this time of celebration and magic that we’re thinking the exact same thing:
What should I do about my email prospecting campaigns over the November and December holiday breaks? Will we still get leads in December?
Asked and answered! See below.
(We’ve written about this before — twice actually. )
TL;DR
Although it’s been said many times, many ways — our data confirms that you should:
- Run at full throttle for the first few weeks of November.
- Stop all email the Tuesday afternoon before Thanksgiving. (No Wednesday email.)
- Resume at full throttle the first few weeks of December.
- Stop all email the week of Christmas and New Year’s.
- Resume at increased throttle the first business day of January to make up for the lost volume / activity from the December pause.
You’ll see some variability week-over-week, but we can say with a very high degree of confidence that November and December are productive months well within the margin of “normal” months — just with less volume through the funnel because we’re not sending during the days around the holiday.
The Math
In previous iterations of this annual holiday spectacular, I belabored the aforementioned points with lots charts, numbers, and whatnot.
I’m feeling a little extra festive today, so I’ll spare you the mind-numbing read and share a single graph that sums it up nicely:
This data is from 100s of clients and 10s of thousands of emails — it reflects actual, aggregate RevBoss client performance from Oct2020 through Jan2021.
Lead rate — the # of leads divided by the number of prospects emailed, the yellow line, affixed to the right axis — barely changes from Oct, Nov, Dec, to Jan.
So yes — keep sending, you’ll get leads, just not quite as many because we pause all of our clients for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years holidays.
There is some variability with open rate and reply rate — but frankly it’s just noise. They’re leading indicators for the metric that really matters, which is lead rate…which is remarkably consistent over the holiday period.
Happy (almost) holidays!
Eric Boggs
CEO at RevBoss
Puts up Christmas Tree day after Thanksgiving
Admittedly loves that Mariah Carey song.