So you’ve nailed the copy and design of your eCommerce marketing emails. Yet somehow they aren’t seeing as many opens as you had hoped for. What’s missing? Subject lines. content relevance, and urgency are some that can affect your open rates. But the one factor that has a major impact on your open rates is email send time.
Something as simple as scheduling your emails at the perfect time can already impact your business for the better.
Not Too Early, Not Too Late—Find That Goldilocks Zone of Email Send-Times
Generally speaking, most email opens happen during the beginning of your recipients’ weekdays. This is probably for recipients having a quick look at their email accounts during their morning coffee.
You can say the same for around weeknights, when your recipients are most likely home from work.
That narrows down the timing to weekdays. And according to data from Hubspot, all weekdays are good for email open rates. And that the top 3 best days for maximizing open rates are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Mondays.
Now let’s try to pinpoint the time of day. While there is a general idea mentioned earlier why weekdays are the optimal days, we’ll need more data to get the precise time.
As it turns out, the best time to send email campaigns and other marketing materials to your recipients is during their typical work hours. Based on data from SuperOffice, the peak of email opens is at 3pm.
Mini Case Study on Delivery Time
Our team of email marketing experts decided to try this out with one of our clients. We conducted a series of three AB tests. In all tests, the emails were exactly the same, including the subject lines and the content. The only differences were the send times. In all three AB tests, the variations were 10AM sending time and 4:15 sending time.
Interestingly, the results were unanimous. We saw the highest open rates and even revenue at around the 4pm mark, making it pretty close to the data from above.
Maximum Open Rates Mean Optimizing all Aspects of Your Email Marketing Strategies
Here are 4 key considerations when maximizing your email open rates:
1. Time of Day
As we mentioned above, nothing beats good old-fashioned A/B testing. AB test and observe at which times of the day recipients open your emails the most based on their behavior. Just because 4:15 PM worked for our example above, it doesn’t automatically mean that it’s the best time for your subscribers too.
2. Conciseness
Are your emails busy-body-friendly? Or are they scannable enough for people in a hurry? Are your copies straight to the point and are your CTAs clear? These are questions you must ask yourself if you wish for even the busiest of your prospects to open your emails.
3. First Words
Have you given your subject lines enough thought? Are the first few words of your subject lines enough to catch your customers’ attention? Your emails arriving at your customer’s inbox is one thing. But remember, your subject lines should still grab your customer’s attention.
4. Mobile first
Did you know that email open rates on mobile devices are at 42% and still growing? Maximize on those numbers by making use of responsive email design.
While timing is everything, don’t lower your priorities with your email’s other aspects. Don’t forget about your email copy and design content. Only when these are equally optimized will you get the most out of your well-timed emails.
So what can you do to get started?
You can try Klaviyo’s Smart Send Time feature. This automates the process of analyzing the behaviors of your email recipients. It also helps you determine exactly when to send future messages to maximize your open rates.
Also, it adapts according to your customer’s changing behaviors for up-to-date optimization. Automation—it’s your best friend.
Our takeaway
With all this said, what’s the perfect time to send emails?
Answer: Whatever time works best for your specific target audience.
As anti-climactic this answer is, it’s the most realistic. Like we mentioned earlier, don’t expect your email lists to fit specific molds every time. There will always be a couple of prospects who won’t follow the standard times you set for your emails.
We need to be thinking in the same ‘time windows’. —Gary Elphick
What Gary means is that your customers shouldn’t be chasing your email send-times according to your convenience. It is YOU who must adjust according to the behaviors of your email lists. You must put yourself in the shoes of your customers and match their time windows of when they are most likely available for your emails.
But when in doubt—A/B test! Test for yourself at which times and days your emails see the most opens. Doing so will help you fine tune the finer details. Details like which emails and what do these emails have in terms of content and design that helped with maximizing open rates.
Every email list consists of a different set of people with different habits. So while you can base your email send-times on a good average time, it is important to still A/B test your send-times. Doing so helps you further fine-tune your timings for the most optimal send-times that give you the highest open rates.
Are you having trouble with the best send-time for YOUR email marketing strategies? Please don’t hesitate to schedule a FREE 30-minute strategy call with our team email marketing experts!
