Often our customers ask, what is the best time to send my real estate email flyer? For years we have replied, "Tuesday through Thursday during regular business hours but mid-morning is best," Why mid-morning you ask? Well, it has been common knowledge in the email marketing industry that people usually open their email in the mornings. However, as prospects become more reliant on their mobile phone, email opens often occur during all hours, on all devices. Let’s see what email marketing trends are happening to change the open rate habits of your recipients.
Recently, Experian, the massive global information services group conducted an email marketing benchmark study across all industries and found that recipients of marketing emails are actually active late at night. What the study found was that between 8 pm to 11:59 pm the unique open rate averaged 21.7 percent and from 12 am to 4 am it was 17.6 percent. Furthermore this group of recipients was more likely to click through, with click through rates of 4.2 percent and 3.2 percent, respectively.
Graphic credit: AdWeek Infographic based on Experian study
It also appears that these night owls had the highest click-through rates for all times of the day. The study also showed that over 50 percent of emails sent are now opened on a mobile device.
Additionally, a 2016 Deloitte consumer survey that focused on mobile users found that 40 percent of these users check their phones within five minutes of waking up in the morning hours. Secondly, that study revealed that over 30 percent of recipients check their devices within five minutes of going to bed. Moreover, believe it or not, about 50 percent check their mobile devices in the middle of the night. Armed with this information, it appears that individuals are constantly active on their mobile devices, especially outside of the time spent at an office desktop. This means that testing send times outside the usual morning hours is essential.
Fundamentally the question remains, what is the best day of the week to send marketing emails. It turns out Mondays had the highest return on investment; however, email marketing sent on Friday had higher click-through rates.
Surprisingly Saturday and Sunday had least amount of emails sent, but had the highest open and click-through rates. It appears from the data that even though the weekend did not seem to be the most popular time to send, the recipients that did open the emails were much more likely to engage with the emails they received and subsequently they were more likely to click or take an action.
Based on this data, it would be a good idea to experiment with sending your real estate email flyers at unconventional times. For instance, you could run a test and send a flyer at 11 pm during the weekend to see if it garners better results.
Remember Timing Isn’t Everything
Timing is only one thing to consider before you launch that next email marketing campaign. Several other factors determine if an email gets open or not. Before you put all your emails in one basket consider these additional email marketing tips that we have discussed in a previous blog post that can help with your open and click-through rates.
Is your subject line concise and to the point? Remember, your subject line is the first opportunity you have to get someone to open your email flyer. Make sure you are using the best practices to create a compelling subject line. In eCampaignPro, we have a dynamic subject line checker that will identify some of the most common problems with your subject line like length of the subject and any danger words or phrases that should be avoided.
So what is the best time to send email flyers? As you can see, there really isn’t one right answer. So start testing different sending times, and see what works with your particular marketing message.