Making well-informed decisions about marketing to prospects and customers is one of the greatest opportunities for retailers to increase revenue. While merchants are improving their demographic segmentation techniques, many may not be fulfilling consumers’ expectations for one-on-one, personalized communications.
Retailers can affect higher interaction rates when they treat each customer as a unique opportunity, not part of a basic demographic, according to a study, titled: Marketers Use Technology to Drive Individualized Messaging, from SimpleRelevance. The report showcases the importance of targeting email recipients at the individual level: The data showed that if marketers target individuals instead of segments, they will reach more customers and increase the likelihood of email engagement.
Though consumers open their emails nearly all day long, individuals have their own unique clicking behaviors, including “time of day they are most receptive to taking action on marketing emails,” the study indicated. In addition, consumers “almost never act on emails outside of these time windows.”
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The research revealed the “magic time” for driving clicks, based on factors such as such as gender, age and income. Key findings include:
- 62% of consumers only click through marketing emails during one hour of a day ;
- Men open emails an average of eight specific time periods throughout a day, while women average seven;
- Women click more frequently in the afternoon to evening, while men click more frequently in the early morning;
- For all hours in which men and women open emails, 22% of men and 19% of women have two one-hour time periods per day that they click through their emails; and
- People earning $150,000 or more are more likely to click in the early morning, while people earning $75,000 or less are more active during business hours, up through mid-evening.
“Personalizing email marketing by each demographic to offer individualized messaging is easy using data append tools,” SimpleRelevance stated in the report. “By incorporating data that each company already owns, such as consumer age, gender, household composition, social engagement, income, purchasing history and more, marketers can quickly and easily increase sales.”
Click here to view the full SimpleRelevance report.
