How to Use Speed-of-Response E-mail Data

It’s good to know how quickly recipients respond to your e-mails. It’s even better to know how you can use that information.

According to a new study from Experian Marketing Services’ CheetahMail, 78% of all e-mail opens and clicks occur within one day of the e-mail’s receipt. What’s more, 47% of all e-mail-driven transactions occur within that first day. The study looked at 44,011 mailings from 404 clients.

Performance varied somewhat by industry sector, particularly when it came to transactions. While 58% of e-mail-driven transactions within the business products and services sectors occurred within the first day of the e-mail’s receipt, that figure dropped to 13% for the travel sector. Similarly, while only 11% of the travel marketers’ e-mail-driven revenue was generated on the first day, business products and services marketers derived 52% of their revenue that first day, and catalogers generated 51%.

Recipients responded to some types of e-mails more quickly than to others. Abandoned-cart triggered e-mails received the most-immediate response, with 84% of opens occurring on the first day, along with 52% of transactions and 42% of revenue. E-mails with free shipping highlighted in the subject line received 81% of their opens within the first day; 53% of transactions and revenue were generated that first day as well. For e-mails with a limited-time offer in the subject line, 79% of opens, 59% of transactions, and 55% of revenue were generated on day one. Conversely, welcome e-mails and e-mails that mentioned a coupon in the subject line generated only 76% of their opens on day one.

Customers were likely slower to respond to coupon e-mails because coupons often give an extended deadline for use, notes Shelley Kessler, e-mail marketing analyst with CheetahMail, and “many people procrastinate.”

As for the relatively quick response to e-mails from companies offering business products and services, Kessler says it’s probably because business e-mails tend to be more targeted than messages from consumer products brands and merchants. “Some of the response time is a reflection of the business,” she says.

Of course, it’s important to analyze the response times to your own e-mails rather than rely solely on general benchmarks. It’s also important to use the data in several ways:

· to help determine the timing of your marketing e-mails in the context of multichannel campaigns. If you’re promoting an in-store sale, for example, you probably don’t want to send the e-mails too far in advance. On the other hand, if your business is part of the travel industry, you might want to test sending e-mails farther in advance of particular promotions or events. “It’s another piece of the puzzle,” Kessler says.

· “when trying to work on attribution of what part of your marketing gets what part of your transaction budget,” Kessler says. In simplest terms, if you experience a surge of in-store traffic five days after customers received your marketing e-mail and your print catalog, and you know that 75% of your e-mail response occurs the day recipients receive your e-mails, chances are that most of that traffic was not directly generated by the e-mail.

· to determine when you have enough response from an e-mail test to determine whether to roll out the test.

· to help with forecasting. Just as catalogers and direct mailers have long used response curves to help them ensure the optimum contact center staffing levels in the days following a mailing, you can use e-mail response data to help you maintain appropriate staffing, bandwidth, and merchandise levels.