Marketers who can reach their email subscribers when they’re actively in their inboxes will gain a competitive advantage. Quite simply, having your message at the top of the inbox makes it much more likely to be seen and acted on.
However, finding that “magic moment” has been a major challenge for email marketers.
It’s impractical, given your list demographics, time variables and mindshare, which I discuss in my recent Email Insider column. The key is being able to use recipient time-of-day open and click data.
Send Time Optimization Calculates Ideal Email Delivery Time
Silverpop recently unveiled Send Time Optimization (STO), which automatically calculates the optimal time to send to each recipient, based on a recipient’s past mailing behavior. Your message is then distributed at the ideal day and time without requiring multiple segments or scheduled mailings.
Send Time Optimization (STO) analyzes when individual recipients interact with your messages over a rolling period of time and calculates the ideal email delivery time for each recipient on your list, no matter the time zone.
Clients See Measurable Lift
A number of Silverpop clients who have been using Send Time Optimization have reported phenomenal results. Across a sample of just a few clients, we’ve seen these results:
- 20 percent to 46 percent increase in open rates
- 30 percent to 50 percent increase in click rates
- 52 percent to 75 percent increase in total revenue
- 40 percent increase in net revenue (Encyclopedia Britannica)
- 30 percent increase in total number of orders per campaign
- 35 percent to 47 percent increase in value per order
These numbers are exciting, and not just because of improved performance. Like trigger and drip campaigns, Send Time Optimization leverages the power of marketing automation. In this era of tightening budgets, reduced resources and overflowing inboxes, email marketers need all the advantages they can muster.
[...] Alla e-postverktyg har inte den här funktionaliteten. Silverpop är ett e-postverktyg som erbjuder just den här möjligheten att skicka breven ett och ett beroende på vilken tid mottagaren tidigare öppnat breven. En av deras kunder som provade detta fick oerhörd effekt. Det kan ni läsa om här… [...]
[...] strategies and tactics like automation and triggered campaigns; personalization best practices; and Send Time Optimization will be more important than [...]
I’d like to see more focus on how they landed on these findings and what the actual hypothesis that was proven. Depending upon the industry vertical and the type of recipient being evaluated, we’ve found some very interesting contradictions.
Adam,
Thanks for your comments. First, our clients that use Send Time Optimization see a wide range of results. For some the lift in various metrics is very significant, some get a small lift – but still an increase – and some have seen no lift.
While we have yet to see a pattern of what verticals or message types that STO works best for, it clearly works really well for some companies and less so for others. There are also obviously numerous variables that might go into this – from demographics, to message cadence, content, brand recognition, offers, etc.
As for hypothesis – it is really quite simple. If you can increase the chance of having your message be near the top of someone’s inbox when they are more likely to be interacting with their emails, you may increase their likelihood to engage.