If you want to generate more leads and nurture customer loyalty, email marketing is an important part of your ecommerce toolkit. But what good does it do your business to send an email that no one reads? And how do you know what the right time is to send an email.
This infographic from GetResponse, an email marketing company, gives us some benchmarks for scheduling email campaigns. It emphasizes that sending times influence reader engagement which is measured by open and click-through rates.
Best Email Open Times: The First Hour After Sending
GetResponse’s premise is based on their finding that many emails are only opened within the first hour of being sent. After that first hour, as more emails continue flowing into a recipient inbox, the chances of an old email being opened fall significantly.
Therefore, email marketers must factor in the time of day when sending an email. Almost 39 percent of emails are sent between 6 AM – 12 PM. However the open-rate of emails during this period hovers around seven percent. Between 12 PM – 6PM, 26 percent of emails are sent and the open-rate of emails during this period is close to 10 percent.
By understanding that the first hour of sending an email is the most important, you can schedule your emails for the best chance of an open or click-through.
Email Marketing & Time Zones
These statistics also highlight the importance of segmenting emails for different time zones. If you send all your emails in one large batch, readers in New York may see the email, but most likely your Hawaiian and Australian customers will miss it.
Customer Engagement Vs. List Size
In email marketing, engagement is a more important metric than list size. The early phase of creating effective email marketing campaigns involves choosing the right email service provider (ESP). Your next goal is to clean up your email list in order to increase engagement by improving reputation and deliverability.
Once you have chosen your ESP and scrubbed your list, test sending times to make sure that your audience sees the messages that arrive in their inbox.
Keystone
Your emails are most likely to be opened within the first hour after they are sent. Distinguish your email by sending it in the morning or early afternoon. And don’t forget to segment your list by time zones.
