Best Time to Send an Email on Thursday?

Sending emails at the right time on the right day is important. Many studies have found that Thursday is one of the best days of the week for average engagement on marketing emails. That may have you wondering about the best time to send emails on Thursday to take advantage of those high engagement rates. 

This article will dive into everything you should consider about the best time to email on Thursday. We’ll cover whether the optimal time of day changes for different types of email content and if other days besides Thursday work well for marketing email content. Keep reading to get all the details. 

What Time Is Best to Email on Thursday?

Overall, the best time to email on Thursday will be during the middle of the day from 9 am-3 pm. This time range works well because it is during the peak hours of the average person’s work day on Thursday. 

Your email will likely reach many people when they’re actively engaged in checking inboxes. Whether they’re checking for work emails, personal emails, or notifications, there’s a higher chance your content can get noticed in that process. So sending a well-timed email with an eye-catching subject line will be more likely to have success. 

Your Audience Is What Matters Most to Determine the Best Time to Email on Thursday 

The best time to email on Thursday can vary. The most important thing to remember is the best time to send emails depends on your audience. While 9 am-3 pm works great for someone on a 9-5 schedule, that isn’t the case for everyone. 

For instance, if you were emailing personal trainers who are most active checking emails and communicating with their clients before or after traditional work hours, emailing before 9 am or after 5 pm may be a better time to catch their attention. 

There’s really no one size fits all solution when it comes to planning an email marketing strategy. You need accurate data on how your audience engages. 

AudiencePoint’s email insight software can help with that. AudiencePoint offers a tool called Send Time Optimization that collects data from subscriber engagement and provides accurate recommendations to optimize your send times accordingly. It prevents a lot of the guesswork or effort trying to test different send times, which is difficult or even impossible for some businesses.

What Time of Day Are Most Emails Read?

You may also wonder about what time of day most emails are read. It’s an important question since email open rate is one of the top email marketing metrics to track. 

As with the best time range to email on Thursday, most emails are read during that stretch of time from 9 am-3 pm. It’s usually a good time range to email for high engagement on most days of the week. Most people have the highest energy during that time, so they’ll be more likely to check email inboxes and open content. 

Apple MPP Has Impacted the Ability to Track When Emails Are Read

Although the open rate is an important metric, Apple’s new mail privacy protection (MPP) has affected how it’s tracked. Apple MPP causes emails sent to the mail app on Apple devices to be opened on proxy servers before landing in inboxes. That means it can inflate open rate metrics when tracked through traditional strategies. 

However, AudiencePoint has a solution. Our insight software can identify Apple MPP opens and isolate them from reporting. That way, you can get accurate metrics on when subscribers open and read your content. It’ll help ensure the insights our Send Time Optimization tool provides are accurate and as successful as possible. 

Best Time to Send an Email to Get a Response

Some marketing email content requires a response. That can include cold emails, promotional content where you’re trying to get a conversion or even surveys sent to subscribers. Whatever the reason you’re looking for a response, timing content correctly will increase your email response rates. 

Emailing a bit earlier in the day can help if you want a response. It gives subscribers a chance to see the content and decide if they want to take action on your offer. That means emailing between 9 am-12 pm could be more effective for this type of content.  

When Should You Not Send Marketing Emails?

According to studies on the best times of day to send emails, the times of day that should be avoided are:

• Early in the day (before 9 am): It takes many people a bit to wake up and get going before they’re ready to engage with marketing email content. So sending an email too early can cause someone to see your content and gloss over an offer they would’ve otherwise jumped on. 

• After regular work hours (later than 5 pm): After a long work day, many people are feeling lower on energy and are less likely to engage with new email content. That means sending an email after 5 pm can have lower engagement rates. Particularly, engagement starts to drop at 3 pm and significantly drops after 5 pm. 
• During the night (between 10 pm-7 am): These are the most common hours when people are asleep during the work week. Obviously, if subscribers are asleep, they aren’t engaging with email content. So sticking to daytime to send email content is your best bet unless you have a specific audience that works the third shift or is very active at night. 

While these are generally good guidelines for sending email content, once again, your audience is what matters most. There are likely different outliers and segmented groups of your email list that will engage more at different times of the day. So using tools through AudiencePoint to optimize send times and get detailed insights about subscribers will help immensely. 

Best Day to Send an Email

As mentioned in the beginning, Thursday is one of the best days of the week to send email content based on average engagement rates. The other two days that studies show work well are Tuesday and Wednesday. These days during the middle of the week work well because they are separate from the weekend and when consumers have the most energy to engage. 

Email engagement rates tend to drop significantly during the weekend, making Saturday and Sunday the worst days to send new content. Friday and Monday also don’t work the best since Mondays can be hectic just getting started in a new week, and many people can get caught up in looking forward to the weekend on Fridays. 

Best Time to Send Email Newsletter

We’ve covered the best times to send promotional content, but you may be wondering when to send something like an informational newsletter. Generally, that optimal time range from 9 am-3 pm will still hold strong for sending an email newsletter to get high engagement. 

With newsletters, they can be particularly effective when sent around lunchtime. Many people enjoy reading newsletters on their lunch break. It’s a good time to reach subscribers when they’re scrolling through their phones and looking for updates. If you have high-quality, engaging content, it may even become something subscribers look forward to reading at that time. 

Is Saturday a Good Time to Send an Email Newsletter?

As mentioned earlier, the weekends can be one of the worst times to send new email content. That means you may see a drop in engagement if you send your newsletter on Saturday. 

However, this can vary and be audience-specific. For example, you have college football Saturdays and NFL games on Sundays during the football season. So if your content is sports-related, it could perform well on Saturday. Something like a preview of the weekend’s match-ups sent on Saturday morning would have a better chance of catching subscribers’ attention. 

Examples like that are why planning your strategy around your audience is important. You don’t want to miss out on unique times that will work well to reach subscribers. 

Is It Rude to Send Emails on Friday Night?

It can be rude to send emails on Friday night if it’s something work-related that you’re sending to your manager or co-workers. Most people don’t like getting emails outside of regular work hours. 

However, it’s a bit different for marketing emails. It isn’t rude to send a marketing email on Friday night. Your subscribers likely won’t think much about what time you email them. Optimizing send times is all about timing content for when subscribers are most likely to check inboxes and engage. 

That said, you might want to avoid emailing on Friday night. It’s when many people like to go out after work and won’t be thinking about checking their inboxes. So Friday night is a time when engagement rates are usually pretty low. 

Ultimately, it all comes down to your audience. Some audiences may be highly engaged on Friday nights. Tracking data from subscribers and getting accurate insights will be your best bet. AudiencePoint can help with that. 

How AudiencePoint Can Help with Your Email Marketing

AudiencePoint offers email insight software that tracks how and when subscribers engage to provide actionable insights to improve your email marketing strategy. 

As mentioned in this article, AudiencePoint offers a tool called Send Time Optimization. This tool helps you identify the best possible times to send emails to your specific subscribers. There isn’t a lot of testing you have to do or hassle on your part. You just get accurate recommendations you can easily implement into your strategy. 

Along with Send Time Optimization, AudiencePoint has tools called Real Time Optimization and ListFit. These tools will help you:

• Accurately segment your email list. 
• Identify and isolate Apple MPP opens from reporting. 
• Find ways to boost engagement rates to prevent things like email bounces that happen with low engagement. 
• Identify and re-engage inactive subscribers. 

With all these insights, AudiencePoint will be an excellent tool at your disposal to boost the success of your existing email strategy. To learn more about how AudiencePoint helps with email marketing, contact us today.