Contrary to what some marketers assume, people generally don’t open commercial e-mail at work during their lunch hours, according to a new study by U.K.-based e-mail service provider Pure360.
In a study of 660,000 messages sent by 34 companies, Pure360 reports that just 9% of e-mails were opened between noon and 2 p.m. and 62% of those messages were news or magazine alerts.
However, according to Pure360, almost half, or 48%, of marketing e-mails in the study were opened outside office hours.
People are also apparently receptive to marketing e-mails during the first hour of their work days.
According to Pure360, 16.5% of e-mails in the study were opened between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m.
Restaurant and live-events e-mails faired particularly well during this hour with 27% of the former and 19% of the latter being opened between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m., according to Pure360.
Also, 42.6% of financial e-mails were opened after lunch, indicating that workers are more receptive to so-called bigger-picture or life-changing messages in the afternoon, according to Pure360.