Smarter Emails Drive More Sales.
Marketers Use Technology
to Drive Individualized
Messaging
Table of Contents
Summary
Aggregate Findings
Gender Findings: Email Open and Click Behavior
Income Findings: Email Open and Click Behavior
Conclusion
Methodology
Summary
Today’s digital marketing requires personalizing the messaging and experience to meet the increasing expectations of each consumer. Many companies believe email personalization can be done with basic segmentation, for example, adjusting an email based on one variable such as including customer name or having two versions by gender.
However, we found that this is not sufficient. Most consumers have very limited windows of time throughout the day that they are receptive to
taking action on email, and they almost never act on emails outside of
these time windows. Even more importantly, each individual has their own unique window of time during the day to drive clicks. This “magic hour” can often be inferred by looking at an individual customer’s key
demographics, such as gender, age, or income. Companies must leverage
the power of the data to ensure they hit the consumer at the best time for him or her.
Making the step to personalizing emails can be easily done by leveraging available market tools and combining them with the basic information marketers already have internally or through third party services.
To prove customers should be targeted individually and not just segmented by demographic, the SimpleRelevance team of data scientists analyzed data across all clients. They discovered:
• Customers open their email during several hours throughout the day, with some
individuals opening email up to 23 out of 24 hours per day.
• Men tend to open email an average of 8 time-periods throughout the day, while women average 7.
• While customers open email several times throughout the day, 62 percent only click through to the website during one single
hour per day.
• Men click more frequently in the early
morning – 4am until 9am, while women click more frequently in the afternoon to evening – 10am until 9pm.
• For all hours in which men and women open their email, 57 percent of men and 66 percent of women prefer one single hour
per day in which they actually click through,
22 percent of men and 19 percent of women have two hour time-periods per day to click through an email.
• People earning $150,000 or more are more likely to click in the early morning from 5am until 8am, while people earning $75,000 or less are more active from 9am until 8pm. • In addition to gender and income, we
discovered that time of day can be further optimized by incorporating purchase history, age and household composition as well.
Personalizing email marketing by each demographic to offer individualized messaging is easy using data append tools. By incorporating data that each company already owns such as consumer age, gender, household composition, social engagement, income, purchasing history and more, marketers can quickly and easily increase sales.
Aggregate Findings
Only relying on the simplest segmentation, such as gender, leaves marketers missing a large number of potential clicks and purchases.
The below graph illustrates that for every hour in the day, there are individuals who will click
through an opened email to a marketer’s website. Marketers looking to reach the largest number
of customers in one hour time period are likely to send at noon, reaching only a fraction of their customers. Implementing a personalized email solution allows each customer to interact with email
at his or her preferred time of day. According to eMarketer, more than one third of people open email on a tablet or smartphone. This trend may explain why email is often opened, but not clicked. In our study, however, 62 percent of customers only had one single hour per
day in which they preferred to click through
an email message, digest its content and potentially make a purchase. This time varies from person to person.
The criteria for meeting customer
expectations has become more sophisticated and technology has caught up. By using data to assess which hour of the day a customer is likely to open their email, marketers can ensure their message is at the top of the inbox at that particular time.
For the highest probability of having their emails opened and clicked, marketers must take the next step to discover which hour in a given day each individual’s propensity to click is highest. 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Number of People
Number of Unique Hours Emails are Clicked
How Frequently Do People Open Emails?
Gender Findings: Email Open and Click Behavior
Men are much more likely to open throughout the day, while women are significantly more likely to have limited windows of time.
Our study shows that men are likely to open email up to 21 hour time-periods per day, with the average number of time-periods being eight. Women opened email during as many as 23 hour time-periods per day, with the average number of unique time-periods being seven. While both genders open email regularly throughout the day, relevant content and individualized timing drive engagement and entice customers to click through. In fact, the majority of each gender chooses to click through an email within only one hour time-period per day.
More than half (57 percent) of men and 66 percent of women had one single hour per day in which they actually click through an email to a marketer’s website.
Another 22 percent of men were likely to click an email during two hour-periods, 10 percent had three and 11 percent had four or more unique hour-periods to click through. Similarly, 19 percent of
0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12% 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
Percentage of Each Gender
Number of Different Hours
How Frequently Does Each Gender Open?
Male Female
women had two, 8 percent have three, and 7 percent have four or more unique hours in which they prefer to click through to a marketer’s website to potentially make a purchase. While there is one major time-period in which customers will click through an email, marketers must acknowledge this does not mean that the
hour will be the same for everyone. If an email is received outside of a customer’s preferred time-period, the email will be pushed to the bottom of the customer’s inbox and the click-through potential for the email decreases – regardless of gender.
The preferred time of day for men and women to click through an email varies greatly. Men
prefer morning, while women prefer afternoon to evening. Gender is a basic demographic
segmentation tool for marketers. But as depicted above, if only one email campaign is sent per day, it will miss more than half of their target customers.
0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12% 14% 12 AM 1 AM 2 AM 3 AM 4 AM 5 AM 6 AM 7 AM 8 AM 9 AM 10 AM 11 AM 12 PM 1 PM 2 PM 3 PM 4 PM 5 PM 6 PM 7 PM 8 PM 9 PM 10 PM 11 PM
Percentage for Each Gender
Time of Day
What Time Do Men and Women Click?
Men Women
Income Findings: Email Open and Click Behavior
To showcase the importance of individualized email, our data scientists also compared the email click times for annual income levels below $75,000 and above $150,000. We found that people earning $150,000 or more are relatively active in the early morning from 5am until 8am, while people earning $75,000 or less are active from 9am until 8pm. While these
segments have vastly different clicking behavior, it is also apparent that people within the same segment have individualized clicking behavior. If marketers attempt to find a single time of day to send email to all their customers, they will exclude a significant segment of the population that they want to reach.
0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12% 14% 16% 12 AM 1 AM 2 AM 3 AM 4 AM 5 AM 6 AM 7 AM 8 AM 9 AM 10 AM 11 AM 12 PM 1 PM 2 PM 3 PM 4 PM 5 PM 6 PM 7 PM 8 PM 9 PM 10 PM 11 PM Percent of People
Hour of the Day
How Does Income Impact Click Times?
<$75,000 >$150,000
Conclusion
Customer profiles continue growing more robust, however marketers still find it difficult to apply data to offer individually
customized messages and increase engagement. The fact is,
making informed decisions about how to market to prospects and clients encompasses the single greatest opportunity for almost any company to increase revenue.
In our previous ebook, The Ten Most Important Lessons in Email Marketing for eCommerce Companies, we outlined simple, inexpensive ways to use email marketing to drive sales. Starting with the basics of initiating an email program and ensuring emails arrive in the right inbox, then including key design elements such as professional templates and mobile optimization, and finally instructing marketers on how to incorporate more sophisticated data. This could include gender, household composition, income, product recommendations and especially time of day.
Once the message has been delivered in the appropriate hour, it’s imperative that the subject line is customized to each individual
customer, as well as content and product recommendations.
Marketers and their ecommerce partners already own a majority of this data. Even if they lack the internal resources to tackle analysis and application of it on their own, marketers will see great benefit from working with a partner who specializes in email marketing customization. Working with an expert who can quickly and efficiently apply data resources, will generate nearly immediate sales lifts of 30 percent or more.
Methodology
SimpleRelevance data scientists used a Python script to pull complete demographic and email opening behavior from our complete client email database. The data was cleansed and analyzed using SimpleRelevance proprietary technology. Further information can be provided upon request.
About SimpleRelevance
SimpleRelevance is a leading provider of personalized marketing communication and combines customers’ unique geographic, social and demographic data with interests and past purchase behavior to automatically send marketing with personalized product recommendations. SimpleRelevance offers marketing solutions to small and medium sized businesses as well as enterprise solutions for larger firms and agencies. To learn more or sign up visit
