What is Your Email’s Lifespan and What's the Best Day to Send

Email marketing is a must. It’s the only way to develop a relationship with your audience. It’s like visiting each one of your subscribers daily, once a week, or monthly. You visit however many times you and your subscribers feel is right.

This marketing strategy builds trust.

Now, although you may be sending your emails faithfully, are they being opened?

If not, that relationship becomes that of an acquaintance. You don’t really have the opportunity to build that trust. There’s no personal connection, all because you’re not getting to visit.

The importance of getting your email opened within 24 hours is critical.

According to a study by GetResponse.com (1):

23.8% of emails are opened within the first hour of delivery
After 24 hours, the chance of an email being opened is less than 1%

So, your email’s lifespan is short – it’s fleeting - barely one day.

Knowing this, it’s essential to know the best days and times to send your emails so they have the best chance of seeing the light of day. This should be the focus of your email marketing strategy.

What Hours Work Best

According to Campaign Monitor (2), 53% of emails were opened during work hours, 9AM to 5PM. The peak hours seem to be 9AM to 4PM, with a drop around 1PM (lunchtime).

Thinking about it, I can see that most employees would open their emails during work hours. Most people have too much to do after work to stop and get online after working all day.

Side note: some businesses are creating open floor plans for employees to discourage internet browsing and emailing during work hours.

One important and interesting note: Mobile devices seem to have the opposite relationship. Emails on the iPhone, Android, and other mobile devices are opened on off-work time – going to and from work, lunch hours, breaks, and so on.

Going back to the GetResponse analysis, 4-5PM saw the most email renderings. What I could gather is ‘renderings’ means ‘seen,’ whether glanced at or fully opened.

What Days Work Best

According to most statistics, as of last year, most emails were sent on Wednesday. Saturday saw the least emails sent.

However, in October 2014, GetResponse analyzed over 300 million customers’ emails and found “Tuesday won for best open rates, while Fridays got the highest click-through rate.”

The theory for Friday getting the highest CTR is possibly Friday emails also get read over the weekend.

Is your head spinning yet?

Test the Waters

Okay, it’s easy to see that email marketing needs to be tested. Aside from the fact that these statistics are from last year, every subscriber list is different. This means you need to find the days and times that work best for you.

Maybe you’re marketing to stay-at-home moms. The workday results won’t cut it with this audience. Or, maybe your list is retirees. Or, maybe, maybe, maybe.

As with everything else is marketing, strategies and what works is always changing and always need to be tested for your particular audience.

I’ve changed my email sends to Tuesday. Wednesdays were okay, but I want to see if changing the day will make a difference. After Tuesday, I’ll check out Saturday or Sunday.

Another note: From just about all the analysis going on, Mondays don’t work well because it’s the beginning of the work week and on Fridays people are thinking about the weekend.

Oh, well. That’s why testing is the only way to go.

References:

(1) http://blog.getresponse.com/whats-best-time-day-send-email.html
(2) https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/4207/best-time-to-send-email-campaigns-by-device

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