• by Jess Nelson , September 28, 2017

Email marketing has grown in effectiveness this year, according to new retail industry data from Adobe Digital Insights.

The study suggest that after two years of declining numbers, email now drives at least a quarter of visits to retail websites.

Michael Klein, director of industry strategy for the Adobe Marketing Cloud - Retail, says retailers are beginning to do a better job with personalization, and starting to deliver more relevant experiences to customers.

“As email marketers are getting better with their communications, folks are sticking a little bit more,” says Klein. “Some brands are making sure their customers have relevant experiences, but others aren’t even looking at transactional data, let alone behavioral.”

Most email opens are in the morning, according to Adobe’s data, but a higher percentage of conversions start in the early evening and continue to the early morning. Customers are opening their emails in the morning, and then returning at night to make a purchase.

Email marketers could leverage this as an opportunity to send follow-up emails at night to consumers who opened their emails and looked at products.

Late-night social and display visits also converted better. Klein advises marketers to not restrict their ad schedule to the daytime.