Getting through the clutter in your subscribers' inboxes can be a major challenge for marketers. To assist with this, we have looked at the time messages are received by the monitor.
Perhaps unsurprisingly 67% of marketing messages were received on all days by the monitor between 9am and 6pm. (Figure 1). What we did find a little puzzling was the fact that there seemed to be a series of peaks every other hour throughout the day.
So we decided to separate weekend send times from weekdays (Figures 1a and 1b) and what we found was much more interesting. The charts indicate that send times are more likely to be driven by the working hours and for the convenience of email marketers and not their clients!
Setting up, testing and deploying an email usually takes around 2 hours; so unless it is a triggered message, an email that arrives in your inbox at 9am will almost certainly have been deployed the previous day. Which means:
- Very few email marketers are deliberately targeting the start of the working day
- The first peak of the working day is at 11am, approximately 2 hours after many people start work so is unlikely to be deliberately targeted
- 1pm or lunchtime looks like the only time that is being deliberately targeted
- Most emails are targeted by day and not hour, so the only real deadline is the need to get home, which is perhaps why so many emails are sent at the end of the day
Most emails sent at the weekend are set up and deployed during the previous week. This means:
- The majority of send times for emails are likely to have been planned and 9am is by far and away the preferred send time.
- Weekend lunch times are not considered as important as weekdays
Across the 45 weeks that the AWCM Index has been running, the majority of messages (91%) were received in the monitor on week days. Thursday and Friday were the most popular send days during the working week, accounting for 21% and 25% of mailings respectively, ahead of Wednesday (18%), Tuesday (14%) and Monday (13%) (Figure 2).
The share of messages received on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays increased in Q2 2009 over Q1 2009, with Thursdays also increasing share in Q1 2009 vs Q4 2008. Monday lost share in each of the last two quarters, down from c15% to c11%, while Tuesdays dropped from c17% to c14% in the latest quarter over Q1 (Figure 3).
The AWCM Index reveals a 4% increase in the total volume of emails received in May 2009 compared to April (up from 302 to 314). This is the highest level recorded so far in 2009 (Figure 4).
Following consecutive drops in the number of emails in weeks 21 and 22, week 23 saw a slight increase in the number of emails to 74, though not quite returning to the level recorded in week 21 (Figure 5).
Over the next 12 months, we will be looking to identify the extent to which these changes are attributable to seasonality, and the current economic climate.
The number of companies sending emails in May remained level with April at 75 following 3 consecutive decreases in the first three months of 2009. However, the number sending emails remained lower than recorded in January and February 2009 (Figure 6).
With the number of companies sending emails in May over April remaining level, but a 14% increase in the number of emails received, the average number of emails sent per active company increased to 4.17, the highest level recorded so far in 2009 (Figure 7).
Methodology
The AWCM Index was started in July 2008 with a fixed number of subscriptions. The index is made up of subscriptions to over 100 free email newsletters or offer programs. The companies represented in the survey cover a broad range of consumer goods and services, including travel, retail, supermarket-comparison sites, DIY / furniture, fashion, health, jewellery, mobile phones, movies, music, photography and electrical goods. Please email us for a full list of companies.
Analysis has been undertaken by Alchemy Worx and the independent Research agency BML
