3 New Email Rules

Sending emails and making money is the greatest job in the world. But I have 3 new rules about this dream lifestyle that you need to know.

You see, I’ve been tracking some neat little statistics for you.

Keep in mind I can only guarantee you these open rate patterns from emails sent at midnight, EST, to a fitness workout-based email list.

That said, I imagine you’ll find similar results across most 9-5 style industries and end-user demographics. (If you mailed only to owners of bars and restaurants, you’d probably see a shift towards more late night opens.)

Knowing this data is just one piece of the puzzle. You should also track actions. However, in most cases, actions will align with opens.

Here’s what your open rates might look like if you mail to a worldwide audience (60% American, 10% Europe, 10% Canada, 10% Australia/NZ, 10% misc.)

Send time: Midnight, EST

• You’ll notice a lot of immediate opens. These are most likely from California and Australia, as well as a few early risers in Europe.

Here’s the same email but the statistics were tracked over 36 hours:

• You’ll also notice a difference between TOTAL opens and UNIQUE opens. For some reason, some folks open the same email over a dozen times, thus increasing total email open rate.

Send time: 7am EST, and tracked for the first few hours

• Notice that it’s a higher rate of immediate opens compared to the midnight email. That just tells us that more people are in front of their computers.
• That does not mean this makes more money…as overall, the total email open rates for this are not much different than a midnight sending.

Same email, tracked almost 24 hours later

• Lesson: Most people open their emails as soon as they can.

Send Time: 6am on a Sunday on a summer weekend:

• This one is interesting…I think this shows people opening their inbox later in the morning compared to weekdays when they have to be at work.

Send time: 9am, EST, during the week

• Similar to the 7am response.

Send time, 9am, EST, with 24-hour statistics

• NOTE: This was sent to a smaller list than some of the above…therefore smaller number of total opens.

Send Time: 1:30pm EST

• Not sure what to make of the spike, but it looks like this is the worst time to mail.
• By the way, the majority of the world’s population is SLEEPING at 2pm, EST.

Send Time: 5pm, EST

• A great time to mail. This is when a lot of people send last chance offers.
• I really need to test a 7pm mailing, that’s the only thing I forgot to do.

•  Same email as above but the stats are just spread out for a couple more hours.

• Again, the same email (5pm EST), but with 14 hours of data.
•  Not sure if there would have been a spike at 9am EST when most Americans arrive to their work email inbox.

There you go. Interesting data.

The 3 NEW Rules of Sending Email are:

An email sent at midnight, EST, has the same total open rate as an email sent at 7am, EST…but what would the sales data report? My hunch is that it is better to email at midnight and catch those Californians at home where they can order.

• 1:30pm, EST, is a terrible time to send an email.
•  5pm, EST, appears to have the highest velocity of email open rate. It continues to be a good time for sending “Last Chance Deadline” emails, however, open rates and sales responses should be tested against a 7pm email.

Let me know what you find in your experiments,
Craig Ballantyne

“Figure out what you want. Focus on it. Find people who have achieved what you want and find out how they think and act, and then follow their lead.” – Bill Harris