Recently the team here in Brisbane were lucky enough to spend some time with Rhys Thomas from the Agency Management team at Google.
Rhys spoke about a lot of different things, but what we found the most interesting was data on device usage and time of day browsing.
What the data shows is between 8 and 10pm is the time where we see the highest rate of search traffic go through Google. Not only that, but we can see that tablets are the device of choice by a long way. Phones come in at second and desktop then lags behind.
Data collected last year backs up this graph, with 10pm on Mondays and Tuesdays being the prime time for tablet usage. Email remains the most used sharing tool with 54.8% of tablet users sharing content via email. Finally, thanks to Litmus we also know that iPads and iPhones (which both have great support for HTML emails) make up 37% of the email open market share.
So all of this information leads us to a pretty logical question: What makes an email good in bed?
1. Excitement
The bedroom isn’t famous for conservativeness. The last thing you want is for your subscriber to look somewhere else for something exciting instead of you. Use GIFs, engaging photography, bold text and of course, excellent offers. If your customers are opening your emails in bed, give them an offer that’s going to leave them wanting more.
2. Personalisation
Show your subscribers you care. They want to know you’re paying attention and only giving them the things they want. No one wants to be addressed as ‘friend’ or ‘customer’ in bed. And no one, NO ONE, wants you to call them someone else’s name.
3. Responsiveness
Keep the customer journey in mind when creating your emails. Remember your subscriber might first read your email on their desktop while at work, but then earmark it for a late-night visit on their tablet or phone. Make sure your email adjusts to fit every possible screen size perfectly.
4. Seamlessness
It’s important to ensure that wherever you’re directing your subscribers to is going to look as sexy as your email did. If your website isn’t responsive and is difficult to navigate on a tablet or phone, all your hard work will be for nothing. Having a seamless experience will make your bedroom experience last longer.
5. Teasing
You should always set goals for your email campaigns, and these should go beyond the email itself. Don’t give your subscribers everything in the email, but rather tease them with a small amount of information, a great image, or a still from a video. A good email knows how to get its reader begging for more.
As always, don’t forget to test, test, test.
Maybe you get a lot of abandoned carts earlier in the day? Set up your cart abandonment automation emails to run at 8:45 and see what happens. Updated your company blog? Take a sample of your list and try sending the update a bit later and compare the results. Run a few split tests and see what’s working for you. Your subscribers are all individuals, so let them tell you about themselves with the way they interact with your email.
Do you spent a lot of time browsing at night? What would you look for in a late-night email? Let us know down in the comments section below.