Commentary

Target Email With Individualized Demographics

According to the SimpleRelevance analysis of data across all clients, most consumers have very limited windows of time throughout the day that they are receptive to taking action on email, and they almost never act on emails outside of these time windows. More importantly, each individual has his/her own unique window of time during the day to drive clicks, inferred by looking at an individual customer’s key demographics, such as gender, age, or income.

Today’s digital marketing requires personalizing the messaging and experience to meet the increasing expectations of each consumer. Making the step to personalizing emails can be done by leveraging available market tools and combining them with the basic information marketers already have internally or through third party services.

To prove customers should be targeted individually and not just segmented by demographic, the study discovered that:

  • Customers open their email during several hours throughout the day, with some individuals opening email up to 23 out of 24 hours per day
  • Men tend to open email an average of 8 time-periods throughout the day, while women average 7
  • While customers open email several times throughout the day, 62% only click through to the website during one single hour per day.
  • Men click more frequently in the early morning, 4am until 9am, while women click more frequently in the afternoon to evening, 10am until 9pm.
  • For all hours in which men and women open their email, 57% of men and 66% of women prefer one single hour per day in which they actually click through. 22% of men and 19% of women have two hour time-periods per day to click through an email.
  • People earning $150,000 or more are more likely to click in the early morning from 5am until 8am, while people earning $75,000 or less are more active from 9am until 8pm.

Only relying on the simplest segmentation, such as gender, leaves marketers missing a large number of potential clicks and purchases, says the report. In addition to gender and income, the report says that time of day can be further optimized by incorporating purchase history, age and household composition as well.

Marketers looking to reach the largest number of customers in a one hour time period are likely to send at noon, reaching only a fraction of their customers. The study showed that 62% of customers had one single hour per day in which they preferred to click through an email message, digest its content and potentially make a purchase. This time varies from person to person.

Click Frequency (All Respondents)

Click Frequency

% Clicking Within

One hour

62%

Two hours

21

Three hours

9

Four or more hours

9

Source: Simple Relevance, August  2013

By using data to assess which hour of the day a customer is likely to open his/her email, marketers can ensure their message is at the top of the inbox at that particular time, says the report.

The study shows that men are likely to open email up to 21 hour time-periods per day, with the average number of time-periods being eight. Women opened email during as many as 23 hour time-periods per day, with the average number of unique time-periods being seven. While both genders open email regularly throughout the day, relevant content and individualized timing drive engagement and entice customers to click through. The majority of each gender chooses to click through an email within only one hour time-period per day.

While there is one major time-period in which customers will click through an email, marketers must acknowledge this does not mean that the hour will be the same for everyone. If an email is received outside of a customer’s preferred time period, the email will be pushed to the bottom of the customer’s inbox and the click-through potential for the email decreases – regardless of gender. 

Click Frequency by Gender

Frequency

Female Click

Male Click

Ony one time period

66%

57%

Two time periods

19

22

Three time periods

8

10

Four time periods

4

6

Five or more time periods

3

5

Source: Simple Relevance, August  2013

The report concludes by noting that customer profiles continue growing more robust, however marketers still find it difficult to apply data to offer individually customized messages and increase engagement. But, making informed decisions about how to market to prospects and clients encompasses the single greatest opportunity for almost any company to increase revenue.

 For the PDF file of this report please visit Simple Relevance here.

 

 

2 comments about "Target Email With Individualized Demographics".
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  1. Al DiGuido from Optimus Publishing, August 28, 2013 at 7:24 a.m.

    Love this final comment regarding the report " The report concludes by noting that customer profiles continue growing more robust, however marketers still find it difficult to apply data to offer individually customized messages and increase engagement. But, making informed decisions about how to market to prospects and clients encompasses the single greatest opportunity for almost any company to increase revenue." If you are a marketer and want to take your entire strategy on segmentation,personalization & dynamic content assembly to the next level of relevancy, engagement and success..check out a company called Live Intent....these guys have got a toolset and solution that allows them to do the leveraging of all that data and drives better message assembly and relevancy...I wish I had this tool set when I was running several of the ESP's that I have in my career. There is no need to do this work yourself...Live Intent has a great solution

  2. Jack Loechner from Mediapost Communications, August 28, 2013 at 2:31 p.m.

    thanks, Al, jack

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