​Content marketing experts looking to tap into email's reach must send media late at night to produce higher revenue streams.

​At SES NY, Responsys’ VP of Strategic Services Richard Fleck spoke about how social and mobile technology benefit email marketing strategies. The consumer insights marketers can glean from social listening and mobile audience targeting help fuel email personalization to build long-lasting connections with new and existing customers. Fleck highlighted three ways to improve outreach programs: display targeting, churn mitigation and social integration. While these tactics bolster email outreach overall, timing also plays a key role in effective lead generation programs.

Send emails at odd times – no, really, send content at night

A recent Q4 2012 analysis from Experian CheetahMail discovered that North Americans interact with email content sent at odd hours. The study discovered that content sent late at night​ ​outperformed media distributed to prospects during the day. Perhaps consumers open emails later than normal because they’re often distracted by work-related activities. In fact, messages sent between 8 p.m. and 12 a.m. generate higher open and clickthrough rates, more transactions, larger orders and produce higher revenue streams per email than content sent at any other time of day.

What times and days produce the highest ROI?

Email content sent between 8 p.m. and 12 a.m. generated an average return of 48 cents per message, which is more than triple the overall average of 14 cents. The second-best time slot for email marketing – 12 a.m. to 4 a.m. – produced 22 cents per email. While time of day played a factor in email ROI, so did time of week. Experian noted that weekend deliveries are also more successful than weekday engagement. Opens and clickthrough rates were highest on Saturdays and Sundays, with the former also reaching consumers when they’re in the best mood to shop. Experian found that Saturday’s transaction rate was 0.16 percent compared to the overall average of 0.11 percent.

Fleck noted at SES NY that email has seen a reemergence thanks in part to other digital technologies like mobile and social. While social listening might provide fodder for future marketing campaigns, insights also provide brands with clearer ideas on when to reach out to customers. Email marketing will only become more important as mobile technology embeds itself into daily life, and companies must understand the key scheduling solutions for their campaigns if they want to generate the higher return on their investments.

Ted Karczewski is an Executive Communications Associate at Brafton. He works to develop his own voice and apply his passions to the evolving world of SEO and content marketing, but he doesn't shy away from writing for fun. After graduating from Suffolk University, Ted used his Communications degree to test out Sports Journalism before Marketing at Brafton.