Most consumers have a preferred time of day to shop online, but retailers aren’t aligning their email campaigns with those preferences, according to an October 2012 report from Yesmail. For example, while a plurality of consumers surveyed (39%) say that evenings between 6PM and 10PM are their preferred online shopping time, just 5% of the email campaigns by top brands tracked over a 3-month period were deployed in that preferred slot. The researchers suggest that the 6PM to 10PM preference owes much to commuters shopping on mobile devices, which is good news for marketers. Knotice charted mobile retail email opens at 24.4% for the first half of 2012, as detailed in a July report.
Still, reports Yesmail, the bulk (41%) of retail email campaigns were deployed between 2AM-6AM, with another 31% from 6AM-10AM. These two time periods were preferred by just 5% of the consumers surveyed, collectively. This suggests that retail email marketers are largely out of step with consumers, who may be “nudged” while shopping with an offer or incentive to purchase. These are significant missed opportunities, particularly as more than 4 in 10 mobile device owners (who can presumably be better reached in the evening hours) said they have made either an online or an in-store purchase as a direct result of an email promotion they viewed on their device. Read the rest at MarketingCharts.
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