The Science of Sending Emails [INFOGRAPHIC]

Think the best time to send out that email is first thing in the morning? Get people’s attention early, before their work day begins, right? Well, think again.

According to an infographic by GetResponse, nearly 24 percent of all emails are opened within the first hour of being delivered and since most messages are sent in the morning, it’s most likely that an email sent in the afternoon will be opened.

The top opening hours are 8-9 a.m. and 3-4 p.m. Sending emails between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. isn’t wise, since people are driving home, eating dinner, and attending to family between those times. If a company is international, it needs to be aware of time differences and schedule emails accordingly.

Linda Formichelli argues that figuring out when to send an email is just about knowing the audience. “Smart marketers are constantly testing sending emails on different days and times, and not shrinking from sending evening and weekend email messages,” she says.

Once the best timing is determined, the content must be on point as well in order for email marketing campaigns to be successful.

Mark Kilens of HubSpot says there are five types of emails: Educational, informational, promotional, lead nurturing, and newsletters.

Educational emails are composed of “a new piece of content, a popular blog article, a series of blog articles from the last quarter, or any type of educational-based content,” and informational ones require that the recipient takes action.

Promotional emails let the audiences know about new products or deals, and lead nurturing emails “should be short emails that are content-rich and try to get leads to take action on your website.” Newsletters are summaries of recent events.

Image courtesy of rambergmedia.com/flickr