EST or EDT? Get your time zones right in your marketing communications

This is one of my pet peeves, but it's also something that should be important to marketers of all types. I can't even tell you how many marketing communications I've seen (webcast announcements, event emails, direct mail pieces, etc.) where companies get this wrong. And it should be pretty simple.

Whenever you're writing a time on a communication that's going to anyone outside your immediate geographic area, you should specify a time zone. That's obvious. But getting it right is a challenge for many marketers.

It's the second week of April. Let's say you're in New York right now. You're on Eastern Standard Time, right? Wrong. You're really on Eastern Daylight Time.

Back to Time Zone 101 class: The second word in the the time zone phrase is meant to express whether or not you're on Daylight Saving Time. So in the U.S., from roughly November through March (the dates vary each year), you'd say "Eastern Standard Time." But during the summer months you'd say "Eastern Daylight Time."

So many businesses get it wrong on their voicemail greetings, on the hours posted on their website, and many other places. They'll just say "We're open 9am-5pm Eastern Standard Time" and they leave that message active all year round. So what are you saying, your company doesn't observe Daylight Saving Time? Their message is wrong more than half the year.

Don't want to think about it? Here's the amazingly simple workaround. If you're only communicating with a U.S. audience, just say "Eastern Time." If you don't use that middle word, you'll be less precise but you'll always be correct. People should always know what you mean. (The only place that might backfire is in a couple exceptions like Arizona and Hawaii, the only two states where Daylight Saving Time isn't observed. A few U.S. territories also don't observe DST. But unless you're communicating specifically with one of those groups, the general rule applies.)

Now if you're communicating with a potentially global audience -- let's say a webcast -- you should make sure you're specifying Standard or Daylight. Alongside that, you should also list your offset from Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), the standard upon which all time zones are based and most people outside the U.S. should be able to calculate from.

So if I'm holding a webcast today (in April) in New York at 2pm Eastern Daylight Time, here's how I'd write the time:

2:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (GMT -4, New York); or
2:00 p.m. EDT (GMT -4, New York)

Note what I've done here. I've told them the time zone (Eastern Daylight Time or EDT), I've also given them an offset from GMT (4 hours behind GMT), and I've told them the major city of the time zone (New York). With this info, just about everyone should be able to figure out when the webcast starts.

Of course be careful when you're doing this, because the offset changes from Standard to Daylight time. If it was December and Daylight Saving Time wasn't in effect, the offset changes to (GMT -5, New York). Remember, GMT never changes.

Once you get the hang of it, it's pretty simple. And I'm amazed schools don't teach this stuff -- or at least many people didn't learn it. You might look at all this and say, "But Michael, is anyone really going to get confused if I get EST and EDT mixed up? Won't they know what I mean?" If you're dealing with a U.S. audience, they'll probably figure it out and you won't have much confusion. But some people will notice your error. Why make a simple mistake like this when it's easily avoidable? You don't want to seem dumb in your marketing communications, do you?

Keys to a successful campaign

As a media provider, my team is often asked to answer marketers' questions like, "What's your average click-through rate on [X web ad placement]?" and "How many leads do you think we'll get if we run an ad in [Y newsletter]?" When I put myself in these marketers' shoes, I completely understand what they're trying to find out. These are good questions to ask.

But probably like many other media providers, we don't answer these questions with exact numbers. Sure, we're happy to provide a range so the marketer can get a feel for how well their ad might perform. But usually we'll present it in the context of "the best ads get X percent" (or X number of conversions) and "the worst ads get Y percent" (or Y number of conversions).

The reason we offer a high/low range is simple. In most situations, either the marketer or agency is controlling the creative message for the ads. During the buying process, when they're asking these types of questions, we have no idea how good (or bad) the creative will be. Well-designed, well-written, and well-thought-out campaigns will get much better results -- independent of the medium.

Even though it covers a lot of points all of us have heard before, this article by Harry Gold of ClickZ does a good job of reminding us of the keys to a successful creative execution. Start with the message and offer, then think about the landing page, and follow through to the post-action phase like confirmation pages and confirmation emails. Every step matters. Good ad creative can't overcome a bad landing page. A good landing page is useless if the creative message is wrong. And if a strong follow-up isn't in place, you're throwing away perfectly good opportunities.

One thing I'd like to add to Harry's article: Don't forget about what comes after these steps too. How will you nurture these leads? What's your sales team's approach for following up, taking the prospect through the sales cycle, and closing the sale? Often these tasks are not our job as marketers -- since this responsibility is passed along to sales in many companies. But if there's not a seamless plan in place, you know what happens. Leads and opportunities are lost, even if you did your job developing a successful advertising or marketing campaign.

When someone else messes up your perfectly-crafted work

In this post by Dianna Huff, she discusses the difficult situation marketers face when they have a boss rewriting their copy, often making it worse.

While I try not to press myself too closely into the inner workings of our clients' communications, I can usually tell when an ad was created by a boss or a committee of managers -- rather than by an intelligent copywriter who has an eye on results.

It's always wonderful to see the great performance a campaign that's well-crafted and "unfooled-around-with" (to steal the slogan of Simply Orange brand orange juice) can yield. But when someone in the process feels like they need to include "this is why our company is so great" wording, or they lose sight of the customer's desires and objectives, the results can be disastrous. I've seen click-through rates that have differed by a factor of 25 (yes, 25 times better!) when one well-written ad runs in the same medium as a poorly-written ad.

Aside from Dianna's suggestion of printing out that article and leaving it on your boss's chair, I'd simply recommend pushing back (delicately, of course). If you're dealing with a medium that's measurable, like most online ad campaigns, suggest some testing to see which ads perform best. Remind your boss to put themself in the prospective buyer's place (maybe using the personas you've developed). Sometimes it just takes a small nudge to make them remember the basics and snap out of their short-sightedness.