The Three Most Surprising Things I Learned from the State of Email Live, Episode Two

This week, Validity hosted another State of Email Live webinar to give attendees a look at trends in email today. Validity Director of Privacy Matthew Vernhout led the discussion with Greg Kimball, senior director of product management, and Laura Christensen, director of professional services, providing in-depth insight into the data and activity they’re seeing. After diving into the charts and listening to their expertise, I left the webinar with these three surprising takeaways.

COVID-19-related emails sent during the weekday have a 2% better inbox placement rate than those sent on the weekend.

This goes hand-in-hand with the knowledge that only one in 25 emails sent contain the keyword, as opposed to one in every 15 emails sent four weeks ago. Together, this information leads one to believe emails are more appropriately using the coronavirus as a talking point and are likely being more mindful of when they try to reach their customers with this message. Rather than bombarding recipients with stressful topics on the weekend, when they are likely trying to disconnect from a new home-as-work environment, they’re limiting those messages to when people are more “on.” Or, mailboxes are trying to do that filtering for them (and us!).

Emails with “COVID-19″ in them are 15% less likely to be marked as spam.

This was a big “Woah” moment to me. While I’m not sure if this is because those emails are now less common than they were a month ago or this is because senders are more mindful of the frequency and relevancy of coronavirus emails, I was shocked to see them get less complaints than generic mail. Email marketers shouldn’t consider this a green light to start sending irrelevant COVID-19 mail, but it’s encouraging to see if treated correctly, the message should be well-received by recipients.

Inbox placement rate is 5% better in the afternoon.

Sending on off-times is way preferable than sending at the times you think you should be sending at—and I’m surprised. How many of us are avoiding sending emails in the afternoon? Way more than I realized, apparently! Not only should email marketing managers be considering the content of the email they’ll be competing with once they reach the inbox, they also need to be aware of the pure sending volume when they’re deploying their campaigns. If you’re sending at the top of the hour or are convinced you need to be the first email someone gets at 8:31 A.M. when they log on for the day, it’s time to face the music/data and start looking at other options. This doesn’t just go for top-of-the-hour, either. Avoid the 15- and 45-minute marks to miss the rush of emails flying in at those times.

I’m glad I tuned in, but for those of you who couldn’t make it, you can access the data and insights accompanying these three “Wait, what?” moments from this State of Email Live, Episode Two, below. You might be surprised by the other nuggets of knowledge they shared. We’ll have another State of Email Live on April 29, so block off your calendars and keep your eyes peeled for the registration page coming soon.