Email Open Rates By Hour Scheduled, 2014 [CHART]

MailerMailer has released its latest annual “Email Marketing Metrics Report” analyzing data from almost 1.2 billion opt-in newsletters. Although there continues to be some debate as to usefulness of timing studies (and these efforts should always be based on an individual list’s performance), it’s interesting to look at general trends based off a large sample.

As the chart demonstrates, open rates tended to be highest for emails scheduled in the evening hours, and lower for those scheduled in the early morning (3-5AM) and during traditional work hours. There does appear to be a high average for emails scheduled from 1-2AM, and a very low response rate for those scheduled at 5PM, potentially due to the latter being a heavy commute time.

It’s interesting to see, in reviewing subscribers’ email open behavior by time of the day, that there appears to be almost an inverse relationship with the above data. While emails scheduled in the evening hours tended to lead to the best email open rates, emails were actually opened at a much higher rate during the workday than during those evening hours. Recipients were (understandably) least likely to open emails from 1-3AM, with likelihood of opening rising steadily from those hours before peaking at 10-11AM. Open rates then gradually descended until their low in the early morning hours. Read the rest at MarketingCharts.