Is Time-of-Day Sending Overhyped?

I can't recall the last time I waited in my inbox at 10:01 on a Tuesday clicking the "Send/Receive" button repeatedly eagerly anticipating the next edition of my favourite corporate newsletter. I'm not particularly bothered by what times emails arrive, as a recipient. I strongly doubt that I'm alone in that.

So why is the email industry enamoured by time-of-day sending optimization? I suspect it comes down to a combination of three factors:

1) Marketers are dying to find ways to improve their effectiveness at connecting with their audiences

2) As email service providers, we can easily build time-of-day sending control into our systems, and it seems like a compelling and simple answer to marketer's needs

3) Tactical metrics like open rates may even show a swing across emails sent at different times of the day, "proving" the effectiveness of this technique


However, this is avoiding the problem. The only true, long term way to better engage with an audience is to repeatedly deliver content that is interesting and relevant to their interests at the particular stage of a buying process they are in. This is not easy. As marketers, we need to work to understand the stage in the buying process each buyer is at and deliver content that is relevant to them. Unfortunately, it is much more difficult to understand buyer interests and needs than it is to simply time an email campaign.

So why does some of the data appear to show a real difference in effectiveness of email campaigns depending on when they were sent?

Much of that comes down to how email is handled in various situation and how that affects the measurement of data. Remember that measurements such as open rates are far from 100% accurate as they rely on the rendering of an image in the email to indicate that it has been opened.

If, for example, an email is sent to me before or during my commute to work, I'm likely to open it on my Blackberry. Images are not rendered and it does not show up as an "open". The effectiveness of the email has not changed, just our way of measuring it.

Time-of-day sending can be very relevant in certain situations, like with media types outside of email, such as voice or SMS, or if an email is being sent on behalf of a sales person, and would seem strange to appear at 2am. However avoiding the challenge of delivering relevant, compelling content in order to focus on time-of-day sending is spending effort in the wrong area.

I look forward to your comments. Are there situations where you have found time-of-day sending highly relevant?