Let’s stop perpetuating the idea that email is stale. It’s not. So why do we keep pushing email marketers to use the same, outdated strategies they’ve been using for years? The savviest (and most successful) email marketers are constantly innovating and finding new ways to provide value to not just their subscribers, but to their company overall.
If you still believe Send Time Optimization (STO) is the best engagement driver for marketers, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to use technology like View Time Optimization (VTO) to make email a gamechanger for businesses. Why? It’s simple.
Send Time Optimization cannot guarantee your email is delivered when the user is active.
Period. Send Time Optimization is, simply, a best guess. It is not technology designed to ensure your email is being delivered to your recipient when they are active. Instead, STO uses data to determine a behavior pattern, and informs email marketers which time is most likely to be an active period for a user. Can an email service provider (ESP) automatically schedule an email deployment using this best guess? Sure. But still, with STO there is no guarantee the recipient is active at the time of send and no guarantee you’ll be anywhere near the top of their inbox.
View Time Optimization puts email at top positions when users are active, with certainty.
Put frankly, there’s no guesswork required with VTO. Using an exclusive partnership between Validity and Verizon Media, you can use VTO to deliver mail to users who are perusing their inbox with purpose, right when they’re engaged, making it up to two times more likely to be opened than messages in the third inbox spot and below.
“View Time Optimization truly only delivers the mail when the user is actually active,” stresses Marcel Becker, director product management at Verizon Media. This means you can be assured your email is breaking through the noise of an unusually crowded inbox. No guessing required.
For the senders we typically work with, this could mean up to 45% more views per campaign than average.
“It’s true STO attempts to do what VTO does, but without actual user activity triggering delivery, it can’t come close,” said Becker.
You can use VTO with any email service provider (ESP).
Why limit your options by the ESP you use? View Time Optimization does not require a specific sending platform, creating the ability to supplement your current program with new technology and possibilities. There’s no need to switch or be limited by the sending options your ESP provides to you.
Plus, VTO is a seamless addition to Validity’s Everest email intelligence and optimization platform. With Everest’s detailed competitive intelligence, design tools to optimize for different clients and devices, reputation monitoring, and so much more, Everest lets you rely on your ESP to do what it’s intended to do: send your emails, not restrict which technologies you can use to optimize your success.
But you don’t have to take our word for it. “Email has the highest ROI of any communication channel for businesses,” states Will Conway, chief executive officer of Mailgun Technologies. According to Conway, VTO from Verizon Media significantly increases return “because the hardest part is guaranteed,” giving customers “the benefits of better opens and clicks right out of the gate.”
Ready to try for yourself?