How To Improve Your Email Metrics

Since email marketing was born couple of years ago, there still a rough question for the online business community:

"What Is The Best Day To Email To Your List?"

A general answer would be everyday. But this is too broad and if you believe it, perhaps you leave a lot of money "on the table".

Today will gonna focus on two important email metrics: open and clickthrough rates. Let's take a look at some facts now.

In September, 2006, Tom Kulzer, the CEO and Founder of AWeber Communications wrote an interesting article called "Newsletter Statistics forBest Open, Click-Thru and Delivery Rates.".

Just in case you don't know, Tom develop one of the most important email and newsletter delivery service. Here's what Tom wrote back in September:

"Sunday generates the highest average open rate of 41.1%, followed by Saturday at 36.7% for newsletter sent date.

Average Open Rate by Sent Date: (higher is better)

Sunday 41.1%

Saturday 36.7%

Wednesday 34.0%

Friday 32.8%

Tuesday 29.6%

Thursday 24.6%

Monday 23.2%

Percent of newsletters sent weekly:

Monday 17.1%

Tuesday 17.0%

Thursday 16.2%

Wednesday 15.8%

Friday 14.5%

Saturday 10.3%

Sunday 9.0%

An 8:00 AM EST send time generates the highest open rate of 50.6%. Interestingly sending at 9:00 AM EST has a significantly lower open rate of 33.7% with the worst time to send being 3-4 AM at only 19% open rate."

In their latest study for Q3, eROI found the next results:

"Average Open Rate:

Sunday 30.8%

Monday 25.6%

Tuesday 23.9%

Wednesday 22.8%

Thursday 23.1%

Friday 27.0%

Saturday 23.7%

Average Clickthrough Rate:

Sunday 7.2%

Monday 3.9%

Tuesday 3.9%

Wednesday 3.5%

Thursday 3.7%

Friday 5.3%

Saturday 3.9%"

According to these statistics, Sunday is the best day to email with open rates of 30.8% and clicks of 7.2%. But, when they broke it down by list size, the results are different.

To review the eROI study you can download the PDF file - "Q3'05 eROI Email Statistics".

And finally, MarketingSherpa.com came out with their annual predictions called "Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2006".

Their findings show that:

"... Marketers who segment their lists to send the right offer or newsletter to the names who are most likely to be interested in it, get results substantially (or evenastronomically) higher than those who don't.

Segmentation can have dramatic results impact for small lists with fewer than 5,000 names. In short, no matter how small your list is, segmentation is probably worth the extra work."

You can download and study MarketingSherpa's PDF file - "4 Key Email Marketing Alerts for 2006".

These statistical numbers will give you an answer to the main question. What if we want more accurate results?

It's simple.

First of all, take your list and perform a "segmentation". So instead of having a large list with poor results, you can have multiple "niche" lists.

You can have a list of customers, a list of affiliates, a list of newsletter subscribers, a list of prospects. Or simply split the list using a demographic criteria or whatever you want, based on the nature of your online business.

Keep in mind that sending very specific targeted information to the correct list will drive up your open and clickthrough rates.

But if you do not want to rely on statistical data, you should start testing email marketing on a daily basis.

Take one of your "niche" lists and split it into seven. Assign the same numbers of email addresses to each day of the week and start sending the same message.

Track everyday the open and clickthrough rates. Repeat the same process for a whole month. Make an average of your email metrics and I'm sure you'll know what is the best day to email to your "niche" list.

The success with email marketing is a long and tedious task. And the key resides into your ability to not be afraid to test. Keep testing and working and you'll see your open and clickthrough rates soar.

What about your email profits? Well, that's another story...