We have created our personalised email and identified the segment to which it will be sent, but now we are faced with a fundamental question: at what time and on which day should we send the email so that it will bring the desired results?
Email marketing remains one of the most powerful marketing channels with which any brand can enter and develop contact with its audience and above all generate conversions. Every aspect of the email plays a crucial role in the success of a campaign: from the subject line to the CTA and more. However, one element that is often overlooked is the sending time, which is very often the cause of a low open rate.
So is there a better time for sending emails?
There is no single answer to this question, in fact much depends on the list of users we have created and selected, on the type of email we want to send.
In this article, we’ll look at the often overlooked reasons why sending timing is important in email marketing strategies and what are the best practices for determining the right time to send emails, thus making them perform better.
Why is timing important for email marketing?
A careful choice of sending times can have numerous advantages and have a significant impact on the performance of the email marketing campaign.
Miglioramento dei tassi di apertura delle email
The open rate, or open rate, is a fundamental metric in email marketing. It measures the percentage of open messages compared to those sent and is calculated as follows: (open messages/emails) / (sent messages/emails) * 100. A great open rate is around 21%, which is a good benchmark for measuring campaigns. Several factors influence the open rate, and timing is one of them. We recommend that you run A/B tests to optimize content, subject lines, days, and send times.
Sending a personalized email at the right time ensures that it arrives in users’ inboxes when it is most likely to be seen.
Click to rate elevati
It is not enough just for the email to be opened, in fact, it is necessary for the content created within it to be browsed, to ensure that users perform the actions we want them to take: the timing of sending also affects the click-through rate of email campaigns.
Reaching a wider audience
By considering the best time to send email campaigns, we can reach a larger portion of the target audience. Different segments of the subscriber base may have different preferences and behaviors, so it’s important to adjust the timing of your emails based on each user’s behavior.
Thanks to advanced profiling and segmentation, it is possible to know the characteristics of each recipient and adapt the sending according to each of them, thus reaching a wider audience.
Other reasons why email send time is important (besides open rates)
As seen above, open rates are one of the main metrics on which sending time plays a crucial role, but they are not the only ones. In a context in which every day users are constantly grappling with an ever-increasing number of emails that reach their devices, today the sending time plays even more important role.
In fact, thanks to the analysis of opening hours, it is possible to analyze and know what the habits and behaviors of users are. In this sense, a crucial role is played by profiling and segmentation activities that allow you to know the recipient, their behavior and therefore establish the right time to send, thus abandoning classic mass emails.
The analysis of the opening time allows you to understand how and when to send your email to each user.
For example, a user might open multiple emails in the morning, while a user who belongs to another segment might open emails in the evening.
Thanks to the alignment of the sending with the behavior of the users, it is possible to improve and customize the email according to the different times of the day and the different type of audience
Today, users are constantly inundated with a lot of emails. Very often these are generalist emails that are not only not tailored and personalized to the characteristics of the recipient, but in the best of cases do not take into account the behavior and his interaction of the past.
Emails sent at the right time can help prevent this from happening, because they are more likely to intercept people at the time they are most willing to receive and open the email.
What action do I want my list of Users to take?
Sending an email and its construction depends a lot on the goal we want to achieve. There are emails developed to intrigue a user and lead him to visit a specific product page pushing him towards a subsequent purchase.
Of course, alongside emails developed with sales objectives, there are all those that are built to make the user join a loyalty or subscription program or simply reading.
All this translates into the need to schedule the email at different times and periods.
What time does my audience usually check their email?
The analysis of email opening is essential and depends a lot on the type of customer with whom you interact. Using advanced profiling and segmentation platforms, such as Blendee, can provide detailed insight into user behavior and help determine the best time to send emails.
For example, loyal shoppers may open and read emails at specific times, while other categories of users may behave differently. The in-depth knowledge of the audience, obtained through detailed profiling, allows you to send the right email at the right time.
Submission Best Practices: Still valid
For a long time, numerous studies have tried to identify some recurring elements that are the basis of the choice of the time to send emails. Of course, these practices find their application when they are supported by data.
Studies show that weekdays are generally better for sending emails, with Thursdays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays giving better results. The morning hours (9.00-12.00) are the moments of maximum involvement, followed by the afternoon hours (12.00-15.00). However, optimal timings may vary depending on the industry, user characteristics, and much more.
As mentioned, these are just best practices, not certainties.
To be sure of choosing the best sending time, we must necessarily use tools and technologies that allow us to analyze and track in depth the behavior and interactions of each individual user
For every company and brand today it becomes increasingly essential to equip themselves with platforms such as Blendee that allow advanced profiling and segmentation of each individual user, allowing you to know the entire customer journey in depth and have a 360 view of the user.
The data of each individual customer is the starting point for planning and sending effectively.
Personalization and segmentation: the real advantage for the choice of sending time
As we have seen above, there are many best practices used and which have taken on greater relevance over time in choosing the right sending time, in addition of course to the classic a/b test used to test any email marketing campaign.
All these aspects today, however, cannot be separated from a careful study and analysis of the data of the behavior of each individual user.
In fact, each customer is unique and has its own characteristics and, despite the adoption of these best practices, it is in fact very difficult to establish in an unambiguous and absolute way the best time to send an email for each individual customer. .
For these reasons, the use of platforms such as Blendee, which allow you to track all the interaction data of each user, normalize them at the level of single customer view and provide the most accurate view of each individual user to identify the best sending time becomes more essential than ever.
Through analytics, it is possible to create truly personalized email campaigns and correctly identify how and when to send the email.
