Implementing suppression list management and effective best practices for readability are important aspects of email marketing, yet the time emails are sent can play a big role in open rates as well. A business will want to ensure that it is investing in email compliance tools and the right strategies to reach the right markets, but knowing when the target audience will actually be around to read the email is also important.

According to Business 2 Community, any business considering implementing email marketing or looking for ways to improve its initiatives should ensure it is sending correspondence at the optimum time to maximize open and click rates. Consider the average work day. Most professionals work throughout the day, check their email periodically via mobile devices or a work computer. However, at 5 p.m. most workers are driving or commuting home, reducing open rates to about 23 percent at this time. Then, over the course of the next 3 hours, consumers are eating dinner, spending time with their children or relaxing. It isn’t until 8 p.m. that they begin checking email again.

Keeping that time frame in mind, a business then has to consider the amount of emails the average consumer opens within a time frame of receiving each one. According to the news source, 23 percent of emails are opened within the first hour of receipt. However, that rate goes down to 9 percent in the second hour, 6 percent in the third and a mere 4 percent four hours after it is received. So if an email is sent between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m., the likelihood that it will be opened two to four hours later at 8 p.m. is slim.

For a business to maximize the success of its email marketing services, the time an email is sent, the time zone the recipient lives in, and how long it will take the consumer to check their email after that will all factor in. Optimizing the time frame and using the right tools for email opt-out management will ensure that a business is maximizing the success rate of its marketing solution, and improve open rates over time.