The importance of email send time

It’s common knowledge in the email marketing industry that email send time can have a huge effect on your open rates. We analysed the millions of emails sent through the EmailOctopus platform and, like many studies before us, found that email send day can have an impact, as well as time.

What to consider

One thing many don’t take into account though when optimising their send time, is the content, design and the context in which the email will be opened.

Many companies fight for the early morning inbox, sending out newsletter blasts at 8am in the hope that it’s the first thing subscribers open. When fighting for that inbox, it’s worth considering in which context it would be opened. If you’re sending an email at 8am, because that’s when you get most opens, then consider whereabouts your users are at this time. Are they on the train to work? Are they in front of the TV? Are they likely at work?

The above graph shows the devices opening an email, split by time. You can see here the incredible peak in the morning as subscribers open their email on their phone, so many of us reach our mobile in the morning before brushing our teeth.

You’ll also see the spike in tablet opens in the evening, as subscribers arrive home from school or work and move onto the sofa with their iPad.

When choosing your send time, it’s worth considering that the vast majority of your emails are opened within the first hour of being received. Are you optimising your design for the devices it will likely be opened on?

Context should also dictate the content you include in your email newsletter. You may want to test lighter content in the mornings, to encourage clicks and engagement within mobile devices and then retarget using automated emails to those users in the evening on their desktops.

A highly considered purchase such as a holiday is inspirational to wake up to, but a user will likely need a nudge in the evening to go ahead and book it.

Some tools like KickDynamic, allow you to further customise your email for context by serving different images to a user based upon specific conditions, namely open time. This creates a context aware, optimised and up to date email. Countdown timers, custom messages upon time of day and weather-related messages can all be used helping make your email more personal and engaging for a subscriber.

Optimising send time with EmailOctopus

We recognise the importance of being able to optimise your send time for campaigns, and have today added scheduling functionality to our platform. In the campaign view, just before clicking send – you will now see 2 options for your email. By default we will send emails immediately upon hitting send, but we now also offer a secondary option of setting a scheduled send time.

Using the scheduling functionality you now no longer need to wake up at 8am to send your mornings email, you can sit back, schedule and let us handle everything.