Living in an ‘always on’ society when we can access emails and the internet 24 hours a day, marketers are constantly on the hunt for the perfect time to send an email marketing campaign to maximise visibility. Timing does impact the effectiveness of a campaign, and to identify the perfect send time, marketers need to understand and consider a number of inter-related facts. Whilst there can be no guarantee of reaching all subscribers at once, with analysis of the right data marketers can find their own perfect send time.
Optimising campaign targeting
Finding the perfect send time means marketers can maximise campaign visibility, and ensure the most engaged subscribers receive information in a timely fashion. Each business’s best send time varies depending on what sector the company operates in. For example a lunch time offer should obviously be sent mid-morning so as to arrive just as people are starting to think about where they want to go to eat. Similarly, a promotion for a bar should be sent in the afternoon when people are thinking about where to go that night. It sounds obvious but timing is everything and many are still getting this wrong.
Once sector-specific requirements have been considered, how to reach the target demographic needs to be examined; marketers should think about which email address to send to. A business address is more likely to be checked during business hours but there has been a large increase in the number of people reading personal emails after 6pm and at the weekend.
Examining Return Path’s data, the best open rates for B2B emails are achieved on Sundays, which shows that business people are looking to get on top of their email correspondence before the new week starts. Interestingly, ISP spam filtering rates for B2B emails are lowest on Saturdays. This is compelling evidence for sending this type of email on Saturdays to benefit from lower filtering rates, while also ensuring that they are front of mind when their readers next access their inboxes.
Increasingly there is a good argument for sending email campaigns in the very early morning. This is because if the broadcast is completed before recipients start interacting with their inboxes (which includes registering spam complaints) they are less likely to be filtered or blocked. However, the trade-off is that if they are sent too early they could be far down the inbox by the time recipients access their emails so they don’t see or interact with that email. This is the trade off a marketer needs to consider; sending emails at a time which doesn’t generate high complaints, versus ensuring their email is high enough in the inbox to achieve positive engagement.
Engagement metrics such as read rates and emails marked as spam vary noticeably by sector. Read Rates for “Job advert” emails are highest on Thursdays and Fridays (when it’s likely recipients have had a bad week and are contemplating career changes), while “Shopping” emails gain most traction at the beginning of the week (because this is when recipients are most likely to be planning their upcoming shopping activities). Marketers should segment email addresses using sector specific criteria and adjust the time of send accordingly, depending on the type of address.
Having identified key objectives, mapped demographic profiles and identified type of address, another consideration to maximise visibility is the platform people view email on. Specifically, optimising content for mobile devices as the percentage of emails opened on mobile devices regularly exceeds 50% (Return Path Research, October 2012). Business people will use a mobile device to check work emails early in the morning, whereas they are likely to revert to a laptop/desktop device once they are in the office. Marketers need to take this behaviour into consideration when thinking about what time to hit send and ensure campaigns are timed well and optimised for mobile. This means knowing what device recipients are likely to be viewing their emails on, and testing the format and layout of campaigns before they are sent to ensure they’re compatible with mobile devices and ‘render’ correctly.
Marketers should also consider previous success when pinpointing the perfect send time. Email Service Providers now offer the capability to examine the success of previous campaigns and marketers should use this data to gain insight into subscriber behaviour. Marketers can see when subscribers have opened previous marketing emails and then base the time of send for future emails on this. However bear in mind that delivery lead-times, as well as plug-ins allow people to schedule and/or delay the sending and receipt of emails, mean that email marketers need to be aware that these insights may not be 100% reliable.
It’s clear that the best time to send means understanding subscribers. Therefore, email marketers need to understand the role of subscriber engagement, which is increasingly a key element of email deliverability – impacting not only achieving placement to the inbox, but also favourable positioning within it.
The impact of priority inboxes
Priority inboxes resemble Google searches, and if a brand isn’t on the first page, the chances of being seen are diminished. Because of this, timing is very important, if emails are pushed off the first page before being read, the effectiveness of the campaign decreases. All of the major inbox providers now provide this type of functionality, and they have also been complemented by the arrival of 3rd party solutions such as Other Inbox, Sanebox, Mailpilot, and ActiveInbox
Therefore, for emails to be in the right place at the right time, marketers need to focus on active subscribers who have previously demonstrated positive interactions with a brand, for example, by forwarding an email, only deleting emails after they have been read, and using the “Not Spam” button to correct inadvertent junk folder placement. As a result, that brand will have future emails positioned higher in the inbox, and stand a better chance of subscriber engagement.
Marketers need to identify and assess active subscribers and ensure the most engaged are prioritised to receive emails in a timely way. Campaigns sent to a high volume of email addresses are likely to take a few hours, therefore a brand needs to identify who the most active subscribers are and send to them first so they will benefit most from a time sensitive campaign. By using the right data, marketers can identify the active and inactive subscribers and target the most active first when sending to a large group of email addresses.
Deciding on the right time
Ultimately there isn’t a set point within a 24 hour period which is the perfect time to send email campaigns. However, there is a right time for an individual brand in a specific sector. To calculate the perfect send time, marketers should consider the key points outlined below:
– Understand the core objective of the campaign
– Understand the audience:
- Establishing which email address to send to
- Test content for mobile devices
- Send relevant content
– Ensure the most engaged subscribers receive content first, so that it stays on the front page if they have Priority Inboxes
– Examine the data of previous campaigns to find the optimum engagement results for each subscriber and base the send time on this
– Consider sending very early in the morning so that emails are in subscribers inboxes before they start interacting with their emails
Marketers need to prioritise their email deployment based on what their subscribers are telling them, and use the data gathered in order to intelligently pinpoint the right time. Examining the data will also allow marketers to segment subscriber lists according to engagement levels and interact with the most active subscribers first. By gathering and using data effectively, marketers will be able to develop a targeted timeline for sending emails, helping to maximise ROI through more successful campaigns.
