As marketers, we’re all supposed to know the answer to this question: “What’s the best time to send email campaigns?”
The answer? If we turn to Google, that particular search turns up dozens of articles from companies, agencies, and email marketers claiming to have the secret to success. “Mid-day, mid-week” was the mantra not too long ago; now we seem to be trending toward weekends and evenings.
All those results are fine, as far as they go. But in a deeper sense, unless we’re talking about time-bound flash sales, they’re all wrong. The best time to send email campaigns (including recurring newsletters) is different for every individual reader. If you’re sending an email blast all at once, you’ll never hit on the ‘best’ time.
No one knows this better than Israel-based beauty and skincare brand AHAVA. The company is known for products created with mineral-rich mud from the Dead Sea, a natural beauty agent coveted globally for centuries. So when AHAVA made Dead Sea mud accessible to consumers without a trip to Israel, the company experienced rapid growth on a global scale.
AHAVA + Sailthru
To keep pace with their growing North American online sales, and to deliver more personalized digital experiences to their customer base, AHAVA partnered with Marigold Engage by Sailthru in 2013. On Sailthru’s Customer Retention CloudSM, AHAVA uses Email Manager for email marketing. AHAVA also uses a suite of our APIs to track buying behaviors and revenue between the web and email.
Like other retailers, AHAVA wanted to maximize response rates to its emails, and, ultimately, purchase conversion, purchase frequency and repeat purchase rates all in the name of increasing customer lifetime value and decreasing churn. AHAVA also needed to account for the fact that its customers are located in multiple time zones, and that it wanted to leverage each individual customer’s preferences for receiving email. The solution: Personalized Send time, a feature of Sailthru’s Email Manager.
The Power of Personalized Send Time
Personalized Send Time is one of the most powerful and completely turnkey features of Email Manager. It automatically analyzes historical email open data for every individual customer in a campaign, and the sends campaign messages to each customer when they are most likely to open.
So instead of blasting an email and hoping for the best, AHAVA was able to send the same campaign to each customer at the time it was most likely to be opened. Marigold Engage by Sailthru clients can choose a window for finding that best email send time as short as one hour or as long as 24.
The best part? Personalized send time requires no additional work on the part of a marketer. It’s a simple toggle selected while building your email campaign.
After turning on Marigold Engage by Sailthru’s Personalized Send Time, AHAVA gained:
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5% increase open rates
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13% increase in total clicks
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20% increase in average order value
Why Are Personalized Email Sends So Important?
Every company can benefit from personalized send times. And every company should be thinking of the distinct levers they can pull in order to create more meaningful relationships with their audience. Email is one of the most important channels to create engagement, and for retailers, it’s often the most profitable. Think about how you personally engage with email — when do you normally open your personal inbox? What about brand emails, specifically? When do you shop online? And then think about how consumers’ inboxes are flooded at whatever time is deemed the “right time” for email marketers – it’s why we receive so many in the early AM and, now, evening. While it may be a general “right time” to send, but if your competitors are all sending at that time, how much value does that really deliver?
Individuals are just that: individuals! Your audience is full of people with different habits, needs, and wants, and each interacts with your brand differently. Even if an email send time of 9AM tends to be produce the best results for your brand, imagine how many customers would potentially convert if they got your message when they actually wanted it?
Every time you send an email blast to your full list in one shot, you’re losing valuable revenue and engagement. It’s time to advance your approach with something that’s just, well, easy.
–Kristine Lowery, Content Marketing Manager