The best time to send emails
Email marketing specialist Inxmail analyzed the open, click and bounce rates of more than 1,000 customers for the benchmark.Most successful sectors and top performersThe benchmark shows: In 2016, the average open rate was 31.2%, which is 0.6% higher than in the previous year. The Arts & Culture sector is well above this, leading the industry comparison with an open rate of 57.1%. Leisure & tourism took second place with 48%, followed by the energy industry in third place (39%).
Trigger mailings continue to perform exceptionally well. On an annual average, these event-related mailings have a significantly higher open rate of 41.2% than "regular newsletters" (31.2%). In relation to the B2B target group, the value is even almost twice as high. Trigger mailings perform even better in terms of the click rate.No clear trendIn contrast to the increased open rate, the average click rate fell slightly by 0.3% in 2016 to 5%. The bounce rate remained constant at 0.6%. On the one hand, the results speak for well-chosen subject lines and for the fact that the senders have built up a reputation through relevant content. On the other hand, the slightly negative trend in the click rate indicates that the senders have somewhat slackened in terms of the relevance and design of the mailing content and the placement of call-to-actions.
The best shipping dayThe opening rate decreases over the course of the week until Thursday. From Friday onwards, the figures appear to increase slightly and then significantly on Saturday. Sunday is lower again and corresponds to the Monday value, but the picture is different when comparing B2C and B2B. The average open rate for the B2B target group is fairly constant at the start of the week and fluctuates significantly at the weekend. The peaks are reached on Friday and Sunday, while in B2C the peaks are on Monday and Saturday.The best shipping timeThe course of general open rates by mailing day and time shows the highest values in the morning between 8 and 9 a.m. and for the late afternoon hours into the early evening. Mailings in B2B that are sent early in the morning until 9 a.m. during the week have particularly high average open rates. The values then decrease steadily over the course of the day, with a different picture for the B2C target group. Although the morning hours also show an increase in the open rate here, after a slight decline at midday, the key figures rise again significantly towards the evening and even overtake the morning values. One explanation for this is that private emails are read later in the evening than business emails.
Share of openings in general by shipping date and time 2016.10 tips for a higher open rate1. sender awareness, subject line and relevance of previous mailings are responsible for the open rate.2. the brand must be clearly recognizable in the sender address.3. many email clients display a pre-header in addition to the sender and subject. This text should be used sensibly.4 Use short subject lines. Mobile devices usually only display the first 30 characters of the subject line.5 Put the important things at the beginning. This ensures that the core message reaches the reader even if the subject line is truncated.6. Symbols in the subject line are eye-catchers and increase the reader's attention.7. Split tests help to test and compare different variants of subject lines.8. Test different sending times to reach readers at the right time.9. Personalized subject lines can also have a positive effect on reader attention.10. Send relevant and useful content to the reader. This also motivates readers to open future mailings.
