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Identifying low-response times of year for BtoB campaigns
Most marketers carefully plan events and promotions to skirt holidays and special “off-limits” dates like September 11th or Memorial Day. But often, the same attention isn’t given to the campaign launch date when your e-mail invitation will go out. Prospects To Go has put together a calendar of dates to avoid for BtoB blasts in 2008.
Some celebrations — like Martin Luther King Day in January and Veterans Day in November — are one-day events that you can easily work around. But we’ve seen clients lose at least a percentage point in response (compared to other campaigns we’ve done for them at other times) if they mail during the major vacation and travel periods for Thanksgiving and Independence Day.
Of course you need to customize this even further to meet your own business cycle. Event marketers working on city tours can refine this calendar by being sensitive to important ethnic holidays in cities with a preponderance of minorities who will be observing them. Consumer and catalog marketers might want to take this calendar as a base and devote extra budget to marketing the heck out of the blackout dates!
For 2008 we noted more religious and secular holidays that may be interesting for marketers to remember. This is not meant to be a complete list.
Finally please keep in mind that the end of December, despite the winter holidays, is also the end of many companies’ fiscal year. Sometimes marketers have budget at the last minute and if they don’t spend it they’ll lose it. They don’t care that the timing isn’t the best, and they shouldn’t.
2008
 Print Calendar
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