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Inbound Marketing Insights

Increase Email Marketing Engagement Using Send Time Optimization

Posted by Rich Meyer | 4 Minutes to Read


Did you know that 112.5 billion business emails are sent/received daily? It's becoming increasingly harder to not only make it into someone's inbox but get them to engage in emails.

While you may hear people saying that email marketing is a thing of the past, that isn't entirely true. Email marketing, as it was done several years ago, is becoming obsolete. Still, email marketing that is focused on contributing to a more personalized communication with a person is what can dramatically influence your email efforts. In this article, we'll share with you how the Seventh Sense and HubSpot integration allows you to use send-time optimization to discover the best time to connect with each of your subscribers.

The following is one of our client stories about how they leveraged Seventh Sense and HubSpot to help deliver emails at their subscribers' ideal times, which increased their email engagement rates, new contacts from email marketing, and re-engaged dormant contacts.

About Natera Inc.:

NateraInc.pngNatera® is a leading genetic testing company that develops and commercializes non-invasive methods for analyzing DNA. Learn more about Natera.

What Was Natera Looking to Optimize?

Global Marketing: Natera was seeking a unique solution to connect with their growing global audience. The traditional "batch" email is not very effective in this case because it doesn't take into account data that you have on an individual when they typically engage with email. For example, while sending one batch email at 12 PM to a subscriber in the U.S. might seem like an optimal time, that same email could be sent to a subscriber in Asia during the middle of the night.

Personalized Communications: But even segmenting by time zone is not enough anymore. Marketing has changed. It is no longer about the "one to many" communications but has moved to connecting on a "one to one" basis with your growing list of subscribers. Think about when you typically engage with an email and when your colleague engages with an email. You may be an early riser that reads emails at 5 AM, while your colleague may engage with emails at 11 PM. Sending that same email to these two individuals at a time that we know they will be most engaged helps to ensure they not only open the email but click and engage.

Remain Top-of-Mind: While they already had an engaged audience, Natera was looking for an email solution that allowed them to remain top-of-mind. Continuing to innovate with email marketing, a relatively traditional marketing method, is very important to Natera as the company grows and has more personalized and advanced marketing campaigns. For this reason, Natera, in collaboration with Prism Global Marketing Solutions, decided to utilize the Seventh Sense and HubSpot integration to help with these areas of opportunity.

seventh-sense-hubspot.jpgHow Does Seventh Sense Work?

The system analyzes historical email engagement data, builds a profile on each subscriber, and then automatically empowers marketers to send campaigns at personally optimized times. The algorithms are heavily weighted toward sending at a time when subscribers are most likely to click on a call-to-action within an email. 

For each mailing, Seventh Sense uses the following three methods of email delivery:

1. Send Time Personalization: Seventh Sense personalizes the send time for contacts with historical data. The system analyzes that data for contacts with a history of receiving, opening, and engaging in email. It picks the optimal delivery time for each individual within a user-defined time window. 

2. Send Time Randomization:  For new contacts or contacts who have never engaged, the system selects a random time to send to each contact between 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM EST. The goal is to discover the ideal send time for contacts who have never engaged in the past, the time they've specifically set aside to go through their inboxes.

3. Control:  Seventh Sense uses the top engagement time for an account to send emails to the control group. This is like a traditional batch campaign performed at one specific time but has the advantage of using the account's peak engagement time versus relying on the marketer to select a time randomly.

Utilizing the power of analytics through Seventh Sense and HubSpot, Natera has achieved the following email marketing results over the past six months.

The following image shows the open and click rates compared to the control group (details highlighted below image)

Seventh_Sense_Analytics.png

Total Natera Emails Sent Through Seventh Sense vs. Total Control Group

  • Open Rate Increase of 5.1%
  • Click Rate Increase of 18.1%

What does this mean? A higher percentage of individuals opened and clicked the emails sent through Seventh Sense than the control group (batch emails).

Send Time Personalization vs. Control Group

  • Open Rate Increase of 2.5%
  • Click Rate Increase of 23.9%

What does this mean? A higher percentage of people opened and clicked the emails sent using the Send Time Personalization method compared to the control group (batch emails). You can see with the click rate that this dramatically influenced the engagement of individuals once they opened the email. Not only were they opening the email, but they were taking a specified action within the email.

Send Time Randomization vs. Control Group

  • Open Rate Increase of 110.6%
  • Click Rate Increase of 89.0%

What does this mean? A significantly higher percentage of people opened and clicked the emails sent using the Send Time Randomization method compared to the control group.

Increased Visits & New Contacts from Email Marketing:

By increasing the open rate and click rate, Natera could increase the website's click-through rate and overall site engagement. In addition, they increased their number of net new contacts from email marketing efforts by 85% in the initial six months with Seventh Sense. The following chart shows the visits and visit-to-contact rate from email marketing over the first six months.

SeventhSenseNatera.pngRe-engaging Dormant Contacts: 

In addition to increasing subscriber engagement, Natera has also re-engaged with contacts who had once been active but went dormant. By personalizing email send times, Natera has re-engaged approximately 15% of its total contacts. Before re-engaging, these contacts had not been active in email communication since 2015.

Financial Impact

With Natera's 18% avg. engagement increase per email campaign, they're now experiencing results that would have taken 14 months to produce in 12 months with this simple change. So, how much do you invest per month in email marketing, and would you like to accelerate your buyer's journey?

As you can see, utilizing send time personalization helps you reach your audience when they are in their inbox. By using the data, you can stop guessing and start tailoring your communications. By sending at a time when someone wants to engage, you will be able to begin to see your email open rate and click rates increase by changing your communication style to reflect your email contact's communication style.

If you haven't tried the Seventh Sense and HubSpot integration, we invite you to schedule a complimentary email marketing assessment.

Schedule Your Email Marketing Assessment

Learn More About Natera Inc.:

NateraInc.pngNatera® is a leading genetic testing company that develops and commercializes non-invasive methods for analyzing DNA. The company's mission is to transform the diagnosis and management of genetic diseases. Natera offers a host of proprietary genetic testing services primarily to OB/GYN physicians and fertility centers. Tests include the Spectrum® pre-implantation genetic test for embryo selection during IVF; the Anora® miscarriage test to understand the genetic causes of a pregnancy loss; the Horizon™ carrier screen to detect inherited mutations; and the Panorama® non-invasive prenatal test (NIPT) to screen for common chromosomal anomalies in a fetus as early as nine weeks of gestation. Natera is also applying its unique technologies to develop non-invasive screening and diagnostic tools for earlier detection and improved treatment of cancer.

Topics: Prism Global Marketing Solutions, HubSpot Integrations