• by Ray Schultz , April 8, 2020

Verizon Media, parent of AOL and Yahoo, has debuted a tool that it says will help email senders engage consumers at the moment they are most likely to respond

The new solution, View Time Optimization (VTO), allows Verizon’s email providers to “deliver an email when users are actively engaging with their inbox,” writes Marcel Becker, director of product for Verizon, in a blog post published on Wednesday.

VTO “ensures emails appear close to the top of the inbox and thus it’s improving the sender’s open rates, click-through rates, and overall ROI of their email marketing campaign,” Becker says.

Senders have traditionally relied on tracking customers' behavior to understand when they open their email to inform existing features like “Send Time Optimization,” Becker notes.

VTO “takes the guesswork out of ‘Send Time Optimization,’” he adds.

As for the issue of tracking, Becker states: “We believe that tracking our customers is wrong. But we also believe in the idea that they should be able to discover what is the most relevant to them.”

Email deliverability provider Mailgun Technologies has been a VTO user at launch. “Email has the highest ROI of any communication channel for businesses,” states Will Conway, chief executive officer of Mailgun Technologies. 

Conway adds that VTO from Verizon Media significantly increases return "because the hardest part is guaranteed," giving customers "the benefits of better opens and clicks right out of the gate.”