I’ve written about the ROI of email and I’ve written about a specific campaign that has always been one of my favorites. Now it’s time for one last exploration through the world of email.

Speed.

As marketers, sometimes we need a quick hit of visitors and revenue. Other times, we’re okay if folks don’t see our message for a day or two…or seven. So when it comes to the theme of the week – email – where does this channel shine?

Two Charts

Let’s first look at some data I pulled a few years about about the “short tail” of email opens. In other words, I wanted to see what percentage of email opens happened in the first hour after an email was sent.

The answer? About 27%.

Let’s do some quick math. If you send an email to 100,000 people and 30,000 (30%) eventually open that email, almost 10,000 of them will do so during the first 60 minutes after it’s sent.

This is why, when you talk to email marketers, you hear countless stories like the one I heard from a resort marketer last week:

“I’ve been relying on email for years, but I still am blown away how I can send an email at 10:00am and see tens of thousands of dollars in revenue by the time I grab lunch.”

Long Tail

But I said I would share two charts, right? Here’s the second that looks at how many emails come in the days after. Do the math on your latest tweets and you’ll realize that email can get more opens/clicks a week after it’s sent than your social posts may get…ever.

As amazing as email is at getting people from where they are now to where you want/need them to be super quickly, it’s also great at patiently waiting for people to find them without worrying about an algorithm burying that bit of content after 24 hours, never to be seen again.

Don’t Sleep on Email

Listen, absolutely crank out amazing content on Instagram and don’t turn off those retargeting display ads.

But please, please don’t sleep on email. If you need to turn your budget into clear, repeatable, measurable revenue, it can’t be beat. The ROI is better, the relevance is off the charts, and the speed at which it can deliver both is mind-blowing.

Give it some love and it will return the favor many times over.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.