Q: Does day of the week impact ski resort email open & click rates?

Ski industry day of the week…
There’s a lot of data out there that tries to answer this question. Unforuntately, none of the samples are industry specific. For this week’s “Stash” we’re going to dig deep into our database to answer this question specifically for resorts.

The Theory
Now, this may depend on your personal history, but many email marketers have been trained that Thuesday-Thursday are the golden days for emails. Messages don’t get lost in the long list of emails waiting in your inbox after a weekend but you avoid the lazy weekend attitude and get your weekend offers out in time for guests to act on them.

I used the same sample as last week that included over 75,000,000 emails from 23 ski resorts across the United States.

Sends by Day
First, let’s take a quick look at which day the most emails are being sent. Perhaps gearing up for the weekend, perhaps because of the Tuesday-Thursday training, midweek sending clearly spikes. In fact, nearly a third of all ski resort emails are sent on Thursday.

Open Rate & Click Rate
Almost like the “Sends per Day” chart was flipped upside down, open rates peak on Sunday and are at their lowest for ski resorts on Thursday. Clicks, on the other hand, did behave similar to our theory. They peaked on Wednesday before dropping sharply into the weekend.

Clicks / Send %
Let’s look again at the clicks per send percentage. This number gives us a quick snapshot of overall performance by showing how many clicks you’ll get for each email you send. Instead of of midweek, the most effective day for resorts appears to be Monday.

Now, that said, Monday may not be the most effective day for weekend offers so that’s definitely something to keep in mind.

Takeaways
The first, glaring lesson is that Thursdays are crowded. Even if similar spikes don’t exist in other industries, skiers see a lot of messages come into their inbox each Thursday. For emails that aren’t extremely time sensitive, try sending on a Monday and see what happens. For weekend-focused messaging, even just shifting your messaging from a Thursday to a Wednesday could yield a 9% increase in performance and, if nothing else, avoid the Thursday rush.

What are your theories for the results? What questions do you have after seeing this data?

Next Week: Season Pass Renewal Rates Based on Pass Uses
As spring pass sales begin to ramp up, we’ve got some really interesting results that answer the question of “If a pass holder uses their pass X times, what’s the likelihood they will renew?” If you don’t want to miss it, use the form below to sign up: