It can take a lot of time and skill to create collection emails that avoid SPAM filters, grab the recipient’s attention with subject lines and preview text, and convince the reader to act with persuasive and personalized messages and calls to action. You don’t want the time and effort to be waste because of poor timing and frequency of your emails. With collection emails, timing and frequency of distribution matters.
Here are some things to consider when deciding on the timing and frequency of collection emails.
- Poorly timed emails can get lost in the clutter of many other emails in your recipient’s inbox, and go unanswered for days or be deleted without being read.
- Consider where a customer is located before sending an email. If the customer is three hours behind you in the Pacific Time zone and you are on the east coast, don’t send an email at 9:00 in the morning your time as the customer probably won’t start working for a few hours. By that time, your email will be lost in the mix of all the other emails the customer received overnight and be unread for some time if at all.
- Avoid sending emails at inopportune times. Take into consideration when a customer may be at lunch, on their break, when they leave the office for the day, or if they may be out for a long weekend. Never send an important email on a Monday or Friday. These are the days a person would be most likely to take off for a long weekend. By the time they return and have a chance to look at the pile of emails in their inbox, your email will be at the bottom of their to-do list.
- Sending too many emails can result in your customer not reading and responding to them. There is a fine line between too few and too many emails in accounts receivable collection. If you send too few emails, the customer may not understand the urgency and need to remit payment promptly. If you send too many emails, especially if they are generic and not personalized to their account, they may start ignoring your emails.
- Customize timing and frequency for each customer. Find the right mix that will maximize the likelihood your email will be read and acted upon in a timely manner.
- With Lockstep Collect sequencing, your team creates email templates that fit your message, and sets up business rules to fit the timing and frequency you need. For example, if you have international and U.S. customers, you can have separate buckets to ensure international customers never receive an email on the weekend.
- If half your past due accounts are not planning to pay, but the other half simply missed the original invoice email, continuing to send reminders will prompt the ones who missed the email invoice to pay.
The timing and frequency of emails is important. Customizing timing and frequency for each customer will maximize the likelihood that your email will be read and acted upon. Using automated credit and collection solutions can help you overcome collection barriers and increase collections and cash flow.
Lockstep Collect, a leader in cloud-based credit and collection solutions, provides automated solutions for managing credit and collections. Lockstep Collect is an experienced software partner that can help you maximize your collections and cash flow in the new normal.
If you would like to learn more about how you can benefit from automated credit and collection solutions, please contact Lockstep Collect at www.lockstep.io.
