Middle of the Night Email Marketing

I have learned through practical, hands on experience that the timing of an email is one of many factors that determine the open rate.

Do not send an email in the middle of the night, is a rule I usually follow when I am sending to a business email address, 10am or 2pm are better times.

Here are some other insights:

Cool Open-Rate Stats

Even if your email campaigns meet goals and deliver great ROI, you probably wonder how you compare to industry standards. If so, you’re going to love the spreadsheet in a recent blog post from Mailchimp. The company analyzed 271 million emails delivered by its system on behalf of small business clients, then published industry-specific results in a host of categories: open rates, click rates, soft bounces, hard bounces, abuse complaints and unsubscribes.

• On the low end, "Beauty/Health," "Entertainment" and "Other" clients had open rates of around 15 percent.
• Conversely, "Architecture," "Church" and "Video Production" were among those topping 30 percent.

A post at the Campaign Monitor blog, meanwhile, gives rough estimates for the typical open rates achieved by various industries.

• Insurance and technology campaigns, for instance, often achieve rates in the 20 percent range.
• Those for education and real estate jump into the 30s.
• And categories about which people are especially passionate—such as non-profit, religion and art—are more likely to realize open rates of 40 percent.

"Very few lists of reasonable size are getting much above 50 percent open rates," notes Campaign Monitor. "Your list may have some specific factors that give you higher rates; if so, well done."

The Po!nt: Check out these benchmarks. Says Mailchimp, "[N]ow you have an 'apples to apples' comparison with others."

Source: Mailchimp. Read the full post here.
Source: Campaign Monitor. Read the full post here.

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