If It's Tuesday, They Must Be Sending: Study Finds It's Heaviest Email Marketing Day Of The Week - But Is Anyone Opening Them

Tuesday is the most popular day for companies to send emails to users, but it is Wednesday that most recipients actually open them. Those are among the seemingly logical conclusions of the Delivery Trends Report, the first in what is expected to be a quarterly series of email marketing reports from EmailLabs.

Weekday traffic aside, the report also reveals a potentially alarming development that may have gone unseen by many email marketers. While recipients are tending not to "unsubscribe" from their email lists, many are likely to simply delete unwanted emails. As a result, EmailLabs finds many email marketers are taking steps to eliminate names of subscribers who do not open a specified number of emails in a row, or are asking those subscribers to re-opt in.

During the third quarter of 2003, EmailLabs found he average unsubscribe rate for HTML and text messages was 0.17 percent, a decline from 0.19 percent during the third quarter of 2003 and 0.29 percent during the first quarter of 2003. Interestingly, test messages were unsubscribed at a slightly higher rate than HTML messages.

In terms of email marketing traffic levels, the report shows that Tuesday remained the most popular day of the week for sending email messages for the second consecutive quarter. The study finds that Tuesday accounted for 25.4 percent of all email transmissions, followed by Wednesday (23.3 percent) and Thursday (18.3 percent). Not surprisingly, weekends were lightest with Sunday accounting for 1.4 percent and Saturday for just 0.9 percent.

"The most obvious implication is that during the middle of the week your email messages are battling with a greater amount of legitimate email than on other days," explained Loren McDonald, vice president of marketing at EmailLabs. "Flexibility remains essential. Depending upon your content, the relationship you have with your recipients, who they are, the frequency of your emails and other factors, days other than the middle of the week may in fact generate better results."

The decline in overall unsubscribe rates is not surprising, said McDonald, noting it likely is a result of an increasing lack of trust in the unsubscribe process among recipients.

And in an even more insidious development, he said it is possible that users simply are growing inured to unsolicited email messages, and that the explosion of spam has made consumers accustomed to deleting dozens, if not hundreds, of emails per day.

"Email marketers should always watch their unsubscribe rate closely, but if it is in fact declining for your company, don't assume that you have a higher retention rate," he recommended. "Make sure your unsubscribe process is simple and functioning, and instills a sense of trust. Second, consider weeding out in-active subscribers from your list. For example, ask subscribers that haven't taken any action over a specific time period to re opt-in."

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