Test: mornings may be best for email marketing

Recently marketers who had done all the right things for their email campaigns - updated the signup page, segmented the email list, tested for best days and followed emailing best practices - tested the timing of email messages and found some interesting results.

Since the organization received most online orders during business hours (9 AM - 5 PM), the marketers tested various times of the business day to see what kind of response was received. They sent messages at 9 AM (because users were just getting to work), at 12 PM (because of lunch-hour orders) and at 4 PM (because users were readying to leave for the day). They found that emails sent in the morning performed nearly 10% better than emails sent in the afternoons.

Focusing on click-throughs rather than email open rates, they found that messages sent to users at 9 AM performed 15% better than messages sent at 4 PM. The 9 AM messages performed nearly 10% better than messages sent at 12 PM and messages sent at 12 PM performed 6% better than messages sent at 4 PM.

Your company's results may perform differently but testing various dayparts could help determine a better time or day to send your next email marketing message.

Tags: email click-through rates, email marketing, email open rates