Take Timing Into Consideration With Your Email Marketing
Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Experian Marketing Services recently released its 2013 Q4 Email Benchmark Report that showed a continuing trend from previous reports on how timing your email marketing can have a real impact on response rates.

The report looked at two variables:  time of day and day of the week.  Regarding time of day, the report found that emails sent during off-peak hours, when email volume is typically at its lowest, results in better response rates.  This chart provides an in-depth look into that phenomenon:

If you look at an email inbox as another marketing medium where you have others competing for the recipient’s attention, then it makes perfect sense that you will get noticed if there is less competition for your message.  According to Experian, then, the best times to send would be between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m.  Emails sent between 8 p.m. and midnight enjoyed the highest open rate, unique click rate, transaction rate and revenue per email. 

Looking at days of the week, Experian found that emails sent on weekends performed best in terms of open and click rates:

The Experian report did include disclaimers about the data, noting that it is retrospective and not a controlled study – and that individual results may vary when it comes to timing data.  What this means is that these findings are not a substitute for doing your own email marketing testing to see when your unique audience responds best to your emails. 

 

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