Hubspot recently released a report on the ‘Science of Email Marketing’, which has some surprising results. The report, which relied on focus groups, surveys and data from MailChimp’s database of over 9 billion records, disproved a few myths about email, and provided some interesting takeaways.
Send emails on the weekends
Dan Zarrella, the report’s creator, explained that for many, email is seen as homework, or a necessary task that is required of you. Since it is required, people are more likely to skim through or even overlook messages that appear in their inboxes as they are doing said homework during the work week. The data that he provided illustrated that while click through rates are lower during the week, weekend clickthrough rates were much higher than anticipated. Interestingly enough, unsubscribe rates had a similar correlation, with higher rates during the week and significantly lower rates on weekends. This indicates that people have more time when they’re not working to actually open and read emails. So instead of sending on Tuesday or Wednesday – days which had higher unsubscribe rates and lower click through rates – consider Saturday or Sunday.
More links = more clicks
The more links that an email had, the greater the click rate, and the lower the chance of the unsubscribe rate. While Zarrella joked that the latter might be partly due to the fact that the abundance of links made finding the unsubscribe button difficult, he noted that by giving people many link options, it resulted in a higher overall click rate. Don’t be afraid to include more than one linked call-to-action. More choices are better in this case.
More frequency = more clicks
Apparently more is also better in the case of how many emails you send. Zarrella showed data that indicated that the more frequent the emails, the higher the click rate. The more often your viewers see your email address in their inbox, it seems the more familiar you become to them, and the more likely they’ll want to see what you’re offering. That said, there’s an important addendum to this idea, namely that of providing something unique and special to your readers. Think of is as the ‘what’s in it for me?’ theory.
In a nutshell, consider sending more emails on weekends with exclusive content, preferably sending from a name that your customers recognize. Easy enough, right?
Presentation slides are below, but there’s lots more information in the original presentation, which can be viewed in its entirety at Hubspot.
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Thanks for sharing this! We’re so going to try this for our blasts and see what happens. We’ll let you know.