By Jeffrey Hemker, national manager, Retirement Division, Invesco

Plan sponsors spend a significant amount of time crafting and deploying employee benefit communications, with 73% using e-mail to get the word out. Despite these efforts, 80% of participants do not open and read materials and, of those who do open, almost half don’t fully understand the content, according to an International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans’ Communications Survey in February.

Have you noticed a manic feeling on Monday mornings when your inbox is packed with new e-mail, but you’re in a hurry to get to work? You scan through this deluge quickly, routinely deleting the apparent “unimportant” messages. But wait … somewhere in this weekly rush may be opportunity lost—for you and certainly for employees.

As plan sponsors, you often have important information to communicate to employees about their benefits, such as retirement plan changes and health plan offerings, many associated with critical deadlines. It’s imperative that employees read and internalize the information to get the most of out of their benefits program—but how?

Fine-tune your timing

What’s the takeaway from this Monday-morning delete ritual? Simply that Monday isn’t the best time to send e-mails. In fact, research shows that most e-mails are read on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Interestingly, Tuesday and Thursday—two of the highest-volume e-mail days—are also the 2 days with the highest open rates, e-mail platform Mail Chimp found in 2015.

What is the optimal time of day to send your e-mail? Think midweek at midday: the highest percentage of e-mail open rates occurs on Tuesday through Thursday, typically between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m., and again from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., Mail Chimp said.

The ‘open’ question

At the heart of the art and science of sending e-mail communications is the question: How do I get my e-mail opened? The answer has two key parts: subject line and preview text.

1. The most effective subject lines are short, descriptive, and to the point. If employees read e-mail on mobile devices, subject lines typically cut off at somewhere around 30 characters. If, for example, your subject line is, “Learn more about how you can save and invest in your retirement plan,” the recipient may see only this: “Learn more about how you can …” That’s hardly a compelling invitation to open the e-mail. “Are you prepared to retire?” or “Hurry, deadline approaching,” are better subject lines.
2. Leverage preview text. Preview text is a snippet of copy—usually the first 75 to 100 characters—pulled from the body of your e-mail and typically displayed underneath the sender and subject line in a subscriber’s inbox. Consider this text your extended subject line and craft it carefully. Here are three preview-text tips:
   
   1. Keep it under 75 characters.
   2. Don’t repeat the subject line; elaborate on it.
   3. Use it as a teaser for your e-mail content.

Be judicious with content

What can be opened also can be closed—and usually is, if your e-mail content isn’t compelling. Be disciplined about what you include. Some pointers:

• Avoid randomly tossing every benefit and plan feature into your e-mail. Instead, pick a single hit-them-over-the-head theme and stick to it.
• Be punchy, use lots of verbs, and avoid flowery or hyperbolic language.
• Because most readers skim rather than read, make it easy for them by using bullet points and bolded key phrases instead of paragraphs.
• Finally, remember the Rule of Three: Readers are more likely to consume information when it’s presented in threes.

If all else fails, you can always consider snail mail—a radical idea, for sure.