Examples from testing the best time of day for email broadcast in different sectors
Sending emails at the right time to reach your subscribers when they are actively using their email will affect overall campaign response. Given the ongoing interest in this topic I've updated this post based on some of latest research from Pure360 where they looked at emails from 40,000 different campaign the last year from 150 of their clients (900 million email delivered). As you would expect the best time varies by sector, but they do recommend a best time for consumer emails:
'In fact, the best time to send an email is now during the ‘Post Work Peak’, as people are finishing up at work and heading home. Over a quarter (26%) of marketing emails that are sent in the most successful hour, 5pm to 6pm, are opened, which is 9% above average. '
Optimal time to send your email by…
Mobile traffic up to 15 per cent of global internet traffic in May 2013 – up from 10 per cent in May 2012, and six per cent in May 2011.
Value/Importance: [rating=5]
Recommended link: KPCB Internet Trends
You may well have seen the reports from Mary Meeker, a partner at KPCB who typically releases annual surveys at the turn of the year. In May she updated her 2013 findings, so we thought we would alert you to this latest report.
KPCB Internet Trends 2013 from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
We see these as some of key highlights from her report:
Growth in shared and created digital content, from documents to pictures, tweets and…
New Nielsen research reviews investment and ROI from social media
Nielsen have shared some recent interesting findings from their research on Paid Social Media Advertising 2013. 500 Digital Marketing and Media Professionals were contacted by phone and email, and asked for their views and practices on social media advertising. The report concludes:
'Marketers are increasingly viewing and using paid social media advertising as an integrated tool. Social media is no longer being viewed as its own discrete medium but instead used alongside other tactics to achieve an overall, usually branding related, objective.......,
but there is a gap between how marketers would like to use the medium and the current reality. This gap is the most pronounced when it comes to measuring ROI...'
Key insights I think are worth highlighting include:
3/4 of respondents use Paid Advertising and 64% were seeking to increase spend this year.Budget spend is shifting from off-line to on-line.ROI is…
Merchants Double Google Shopping Traffic between Q4 2012 and Q1 2013
May 2013 Update - continued growth in Google Shopping Traffic in the US
Each quarter, CPC Strategy rates the top comparison shopping engines including Google Shopping, based on seller metrics such as traffic and revenue.
Contrary to the traditional seasonal trend of increased volume on Google Shopping during Q4, followed by a decrease in volume for Q1, Google Shopping traffic has not slowed into Q1 2013. Instead...
Google Product Listing Ads flipped the typical seasonal trend on its head for Q1 2013, with an increase in traffic which nearly doubled from Q4 to Q1.
Merchants double up on Google Shopping Traffic Between Q4 2012 And Q1 2013
This continues a trend from Q3 to Q4 where we saw an 87% increase in traffic which was to be expected given the progression of the new program in conjunction…
Email marketers still see much room for improvement, but not all optimization needs may be critical
As Benjamin Franklin no doubt mentioned, "...nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes (and email ROI)."
Of the 1300+ marketers surveyed for the latest Econsultancy/Adestra Email Marketing Industry Census, 66% said email marketing delivered "excellent" or "good" ROI. Only organic SEO was reported as a better in terms of ROI.
This result continues a history of email ROI success that has outlasted every sparkly new online marketing toy.
The census results also echo the UK DMA’s recent National Email Client Report, where 89% said email marketing is "important" or "very important" to their organization. The same report found the average return on each pound spent on email was £21.48:
How much is the approximate return you get back for every pound spent on email marketing?
…
Nearly 1/3 of UK page views are now from Mobile and Tablets
Value: [rating=5]
Recommended link: Free comScore Digital Future in Focus Series
March 25th update:
A new update covering Europe plus individual reports on France, Germany with Spain to published shortly. Separate reports are also available on Canada and Brazil via the link above.
Research provided by comScore is one of key worldwide sources useful for marketers to help us find out about the changes in use of digital media by consumers. Unlike some of the other paid data service providers, comScore gives a good range and depth of free information, which is why we feature it in our online statistics top 10 sources search engine where we recommend checking their Press Releases page which has useful data about individual countries. comScore have a solid methodology based on consumer panels in each country and tagging of media owned and destination sites. You…
A new report reviewing how we use data to take business decisions
One of my passions within digital marketing has always been around improving online activities using the data available on online customer interactions. It's why we're called Smart Insights and a lot of our posts and guides show how to make the most of this data by asking the right questions to improve performance and take the right investment decisions.
But this focus on data-driven improvement is a mindset and not one that everyone in marketing holds; it's not necessarily why they went into marketing as a career or they feel they must rely more on intuition and gut feel.
This infographic based on research from Nesta from their useful report, Rise of the Datavores, shows that Datacores are surprisingly rare. I wondered how this compared to Smart Insights readers, so please let us know in this poll.
How…
Trends in Ecommerce and E-retail based on year-on-year comparisons
The world of ecommerce seemed to go through a more major mainstream media awakening in 2012 with most focus being on the bearing of fruit of mobile commerce which finally proved, then exceeded longstanding hopes.
In 2013 we can expect to see a rush of retailers attempting to get ‘mobile’ to try and capitalize on the mobile revenue stream. SME and enterprise level retailers will most likely opt for mobile optimisation of existing sites through third party solutions such as Mobify, with only the larger retailers or retailers with a very specific tactical reason opting to go native with apps. See the recording or slide deck of the Smart Insights webcast by mobile specialist Rob Thurner on mobile priorities for 2013.
This recent data from network Affiliate Window across their range of UK retail clients shows the growing importance of handset…
A reminder to factor in variation in conversion from mobile when modelling sales from mobile site visitors
Reviewing the latest statistics on increased use of mobile is useful for making the case for mobile marketing. Earlier in the week I shared 4 key sources on mobile platform usage.
What's of most interest to site owners though, is what happening in their sector, and on their site in particular. In this post, I'll share two examples. The first is most relevant if you work in travel. It's an infographic from Skyscanner. The headlines are:
30% of Skyscanner visits now from mobile (50% in some markets), but...
Mobile users are 39% less likely to book
It shows that, of course, you have to look at both volume and quality of traffic when creating the business case for investment in mobile.
The second company example,…
These stats prove it!
This video (only a few minutes long) is worth a watch, some great insight into Facebook usage.
You can see the clip on Facebook here.
Here are 10 things that I learnt
1. Two thirds of Brits use Facebook
2. It's popular with 1 in 5 of online minutes being spent on the site
3. We average 130 friends, with 30% of all users being over 50
4. 71% of users connect daily - with 67% of 18-34 year olds connecting several times per day
5. 62% of users watch TV whilst on Facebook
6. More 18-34 users can be reached through Facebook than through TV
7. 19 million people use the mobile app, that's 62%
8. 37% ask for brand recommendation via Facebook
9. Where most active midday but tablet usage is higher in the evening
10. 60% of users are…
