Time and Day Impacts E-Mail Delivery Success; Highest e-mail deliverability achieved on Mondays, and between 6 a.m.

[August 09, 2004]

Time and Day Impacts E-Mail Delivery Success; Highest e-mail deliverability achieved on Mondays, and between 6 a.m. - 10 a.m. ET

NEW YORK --(Business Wire)-- Aug. 9, 2004 -- Permission-based marketing e-mails sent on Mondays have a higher deliverability success rate than any other day of the week, according to a new Deliverability Index released by Return Path, an e-mail performance company. (For full study results, visit www.returnpath.biz/timeindex.) The best overall time to send mailings is between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. ET. Deliverability rates for permission-based e-mail campaigns varied by more than 10 percent depending on when mailings occur.

"Since deliverability (getting your mail to the inbox) is the cornerstone of all other response and performance metrics, it's imperative that marketers drill down into their core deliverability measures when determining optimal time, day, frequency and other campaign plans," says George Bilbrey, VP and GM of Return Path's Delivery Assurance Solutions. "We found clear correlations between when campaigns are sent and what percentage gets delivered by ISPs. Many factors explain this, including spam volumes and blocking based on spam filter weighting.

"Bottom line: follow best practices and always consider your audience and customer relationships to optimize your campaign performance," Bilbrey says.

Time of day mailings were sent showed a more dramatic impact than day choice, with a variance of more than 5 percent. Mailings sent between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. ET showed delivery rate improvements of more than 2 percent over normal, while between 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. ET delivery rates dropped by more than 3 percent. The variance by day of week was nearly 3 percent, with Monday emerging as the best overall day of the week to send e-mail.

The worst time to sent e-mail, according to the Index, is on Saturdays and Sundays between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. ET, when delivery rates fall 10 percent.

The Index analyzed deliverability rates for day of week, time of day, and time/day combinations to determine whether higher e-mail performance could be achieved considering these factors. More than 16,000 campaigns and 3.4 million messages were analyzed using Return Path's delivery monitoring platform. Campaigns were indexed and normalized across companies, resulting in an Index showing specific improvement potential for each company.

"While this alone should not determine when marketers send e-mail, it should be a consideration when testing," Bilbrey says. "When delivery rates can swing within a 15 percent range based on time alone, it should be a crucial component of any campaign decision. Losses of even a couple percentage points can dramatically affect response."

About Return Path, Inc.

Return Path is an e-mail performance management company dedicated to improving the reach, delivery performance and overall success of permission-based e-mail programs. More than 1,500 companies use Return Path's services to generate superior results from their e-mail programs, taking advantage of Return Path's pioneering innovation in deliverability, ECOA, list hygiene, double-opt-in list acquisition and best practices strategy. Solutions include list maintenance, deliverability, data acquisition, online sampling, marketing technology and e-mail strategy. Return Path Delivery Assurance Solutions are the industry's original and premier e-mail deliverability tools and services, and remain the only full-circle solution for solving e-mail deliverability issues. The company's investors include Sutter Hill Ventures, Mobius Venture Capital, Flatiron Partners, and JP Morgan Partners. For more information, please visit www.returnpath.net, e-mail info@returnpath.net, or call toll-free 866-362-4577.

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