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Best time to send marketing email

Pages and pages have been written about the best time to send email. Marketers spend significant amounts of energy discussing and researching the best time of the day and the best day of the week to send email. I have long thought that these discussions do not put enough attention on individual end users and how the recipients interact with email.
Researchers recently developed a model for email user behaviour that splits email users into two classes “e-mailaholics” that send, and presumably read, email all the time and “day labourers” that send, and presumably read, email during standard business hours. There is very little transition between groups, 75% of users stayed in the same usage group over the 2 years of the study.
What does this mean for senders? Senders need to know know how their recipients use email and which user group recipients are. By analyzing clicks and opens, senders can classify recipients and use that data to send mail that is more relevant and better targeted.
h/t arXiv blog at Technology Review

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Best time to send email: redux

Last week I wrote about a study classifying different types of email users. My point is that senders should be very aware of how their users interact with email, in order to provide the best user experience and the most revenue for the sender. If, for instance, the bulk of recipients are daytime (9 – 5 M-F) users, then the best time to email is different than if the bulk of recipients are all the time users of email.
At least 2 different people commented on when the “best” time to send email was, completely missing the entire point of my post. When you send email should be related to when your users are active in their email client. Senders know this, because they can track times when people open and click on links in the email. The data is all there, it just needs to be mined.
Plus, if every sender sent mail at the exact same time, that being the best time to send mail, then it will immediately become the absolute worst time to send email.
Pay attention to your recipients, and not to the internet experts. Listen to what your customers and recipients are telling you. Do what’s best for them, not what’s best for Joe’s Bait and Tackle Shop.

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Protecting customer data

There have been a number of reports recently about customer lists leaking out through ESPs. In one case, the ESP attributed the leak to an outside hack. In other cases, the ESPs and companies involved have kept the information very quiet and not told anyone that data was leaked. People do notice, though, when they use single use addresses or tagged addresses and know to whom each address was submitted. Data security is not something that can be glossed over and ignored.
Most of the cases I am aware of have actually been inside jobs. Data has been stolen either by employees or by subcontractors that had access to it and then sold to spammers. There are steps that companies can take to prevent leaks and identify the source when or if they do happen.

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