Delivering Email on Time

While email remains the king of online marketing, the success of a campaign can only be measured through subscriber engagement.

This means that marketers need to closely monitor and analyze their consumers' habits in order to give their campaigns the greatest chance of achieving success. Luckily for the time-strapped, a recent study from GetResponse is shedding some light on this subject.

The email marketing provider's study analyzed 21 million messages sent from US accounts in the 1st quarter of 2012 to determine email's top open, click-through and engagement times among consumers. One of the most important data points of the study revealed that sending newsletters during the top engagement times of 8 a.m. - 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. - 4 p.m. can increase the average open rates and click-through rates (CTR) of messages by 6 percent.

The study also found that messages receive the best results within the first hour after delivery, with 23.63 percent of emails being opened during that time frame. Conversely, 24 hours after delivery the average open rate is close to zero. This means that if you send your email at the wrong time, such as during the typical 5 p.m. commute home from work, you are dramatically decreasing the chances of your message actually being opened because your subscribers will most likely not even see the message for a few hours.

Other findings showed that almost 40 percent of all messages are sent between 6 a.m. and noon. This means that even though one of the peak engagement times falls within this period, marketers should be careful when sending during these times so that their messages don't become a part of inbox clutter and remain unopened. One way to avoid having your messages go unnoticed is by scheduling emails to arrive in the inbox no later than one hour before the top open times.

However, while timing is certainly significant, marketers must also remember that all of their subscribers might not live in the same time zone. This is why it is important to segment lists or use tools, such as GetResponse Time Travel, to directly target time zones across the globe. It is also important to note that the best way to determine the optimal open, click-through and engagement times for your specific consumers is to monitor your campaign's own analytics. In fact, this is the only way that your brand's campaign can achieve true perfect timing.