While the spike of opens in the first hour will be high, the clicks will not.
The breakdown by device will show that a large proportion of opens in that first spike are iPhones but you will get very few clicks.
That first spike of mobile opens is the inbox triage when recipients have a quick flick through their inbox while they move about, have a spare moment or when their phone beeps and they check to see if it’s important.
At that point they are assigning an importance and urgency to the email, there are two most likely actions to follow: Mark as unread to deal with later or back to the inbox because there is nothing relevant, the email could be left as read, archived or deleted.
In fact tapping through is fairly rare at this stage. This is due to a combination of time and if the site to click through to is mobile friendly. If a recipient knows the landing page is not mobile friendly they are extremely unlikely to tap through ever, let alone then and there, they may get to it on the desktop later though.
The unread emails will either be dealt with when they are in front of their computer or when they have time and most likely a decent wifi connection.
What can we learn from this? Mainly not to get so exited about open times, there are so many more environment variables now, the time of the delivery is not the be all and end all. Just make sure the email is there in time for the best time to open. Think of Groupon o’clock – I (used) to get Groupon emails at about 4am so it was there when I got up, not so much now and I buy less because I have less time to consider it.
People who won’t tap through then and there might get back to it later, however, if you sent it later so it is there at the optimum click time, will you miss them all together because they simply didn’t get to their inbox that night and then got on with their lives?
They are seeing your emails, your SenderName, your subject line, your inbox snippet preview and many are opening the email; there is a lot of marketing going on there.
make the landing page light weight and mobile friendly and make sure the recipient knows about it.
Get more info in the email copy so people who want to read can.
Send more: follow up on non-openers, follow up on non-clickers, people opened on more than one device, people who opened again later but did not click; give them more chances to get to your site.