Marketers – What is the best time to send your emails?

Sometime back I was working on an analysis/ techniques on how can we increase the open and click through rate of email marketing…While we were analyzing a data of open and click through rate there were certain patterns emerging. We were able to identify that certain countries were more receptive toward plain text messages vs the HTML version. Equally, we were able to identify a pattern on what is the day/time to deliver messages for which country and so on. Now, we as marketer need to ensure that our messages are being received and read by our recipient….and hence to make it more effective it’s a worth while exercise to identify trends that may be emerging in your open/click through data with your target audience ….

While researching for more info on similar techniques, came across an organization that were testing the hypothesis of timing the emails for best results. I was intrigued by their hypothesis and possible results that it can achieve…something thought worth sharing….

A study by online retailer, eBags, used an innovative tactic to work out the ideal time to send emails to individual users to ensure optimal deliverability and engagement.

Choosing the best time to send out email is a key issue for email marketers, but the optimal time of the week is usually selected on a general one-size fits-all basis. However, research by eBags aimed to analyze the best individual times to send out email. The research worked on the hypothesis that if users were available to sign up to an email list at a certain time, then they would be far more receptive to receiving an email at the same time as when they signed up.

eBags individually calculated the best time to send the email by looking at the behavior of each user within the email list, recording when the exact time when they signed up to the list.

eBags found that sending the individually timed emails resulted in:

• Click-through rates increasing by 20%.
• Conversion rates increasing by 65%.
• Average value per order increasing by 45%
• Overall average revenue per recipient increased by 187%.

Whilst the email campaign was incredibly effective, eBags did not employ this technique in all of their campaigns.

Whilst the technology doesn't‘t currently exist (as far my knowledge) to fully automate the process (meaning that sending the emails is highly time-consuming and therefore impractical), nevertheless, individually choosing the best time to send emails in an example of an innovative email-marketing tactic with demonstrably effective results.

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