Best Time to Send Emails

Send times are a common topic of concern for business owners and marketers trying to optimize their email marketing strategy. There’s a lot that can go into optimizing email marketing send times that make this a confusing process. Thankfully, there are tools and resources available that can help make it easier. 

This article will go over everything you need to know about the best days and times to send emails, why sending emails at the right time is important, and resources that can help you get the best results from your email campaigns.

What Day of the Week Is Best to Send an Email?

Studies on the best day to send marketing emails tend to vary. The most common day that studies conclude is the best day of the week for engagement on marketing emails is Tuesday. 

However, any day from Monday through Friday can be a good day to send email content. Weekdays typically have very little variance in engagement rate. So really, the best day to send emails is debatable. 

Saturday and Sunday tend to be the worst performing days, since many people are busy with weekend activities and don’t check their email accounts. 

Ultimately, if you want to find the best day of the week to send your marketing emails, you’ll need to do market research, track email engagement metrics, and see how your subscribers interact with your content at different times. 

That’s where AudiencePoint’s Send Time Optimization (STO) tool can help. This tool uses information from our huge second party data pool to see exactly when and how your subscribers are interacting with their inboxes. Why is this a game changer? Most STO tools only look at data gathered from how your subscribers interact with your emails at various times, not how they interact with their inboxes in general. The best part is that our STO tool integrates easily with all of the major email service providers, so it is simple to set up and use with already existing campaigns.

What Studies Say About the Best Day to Send Marketing Emails

Many studies have been conducted on the topic of the best day to send marketing emails. There is some variance in each study, because the data was collected from different data sets. 

Campaign Monitor conducted a recent study that found Mondays have the highest open rate at 22%, and Tuesdays have the highest click-through rate (2.4%) and click-to-open rate (10.8%). 

Moosend also conducted a recent study where they found Thursdays to have the highest open rate, with Tuesday being the second best day. 

HubSpot also conducted a study in 2015 that found that Tuesdays have the most email opens. However, this study only looked at the number of opens and not the open rate itself, so this can depend on the number of emails actually sent on each day of the week.

What Do Studies Like These Show About the Best Day to Send Emails?

Ultimately, what you should take away from these studies is the results depend on the exact data studied and collected. Tuesday seems to be the day of the week that is a top performer in each study, but the weekdays from Monday through Friday have little variation in their numbers. 

For instance, the data collected from Campaign Monitor shows that each day of the week gets a similar open rate. Every day of the week in the study had between a 20-22% open rate. Even on the weekends, open rates still didn’t drop below 20%. 

This small amount of variance is because this data was collected across all different types of industries and consumer bases. This means the numbers end up being an average of averages and not providing conclusive evidence. For instance, the average open rate across industries is 21.33%, so it’s no wonder the data collected would have open rates fall near this number on each day of the week. 

So really, as mentioned earlier, the best day to send emails depends on your audience. Data about your audience can only be found by tracking your subscribers’ specific patterns of interacting with their inboxes. 

What Is The Best Time To Send Marketing Emails In 2023?

Along with the best day of the week, you’re likely also wondering about the best time of day to send marketing emails. Studies have found the best time of day for most email content to be between 9am-3pm. However, once again, this number will vary depending on your specific audience. 

This specific range for the best times to send marketing emails is based on the average person who works a 9-5 or similar schedule during the week. However, someone who works a different schedule may engage with email content at different times of the day. 

For example, if a company sells products to bakery owners, most bakers tend to wake up before 4am and get done in the early afternoon. That means this audience may have different times of the day where they are more likely to check their emails. The same can be said for audiences that work third shift, stay-at-home moms, or entrepreneurs that have hectic schedules. 

This means that the audience is most important in determining the best send time for emails. By analyzing the data of how your subscribers interact with their inboxes, you’ll get the exact time that is best for your brand. 

AudiencePoint can help you easily optimize send times without a lot of guesswork involved. Our Send Time Optimization tool gives you data from our large second-party data pool that helps you understand when your subscribers are most likely to be engaging with their inboxes. This gives you actionable insights on the best times and days of the week to send email content. 

What Is a Professional Time to Send an Email?

A professional time to send an email will depend on the type of email you are sending. For instance, if you are emailing your co-workers, boss, or employees something work-related, you should aim to send it during normal work hours. 

However, for marketing email content, you can get a bit more unconventional with your send times if needed. While many audiences are most engaged during normal work hours, some may be most engaged at midnight. This means a professional time to send marketing email content is whenever your audience is most likely to check their inbox. 

What Is the Best Time to Send an Email to a Busy Person?

If your audience consists of busy people like entrepreneurs, doctors, or lawyers, the best time to send marketing email content will be during common breaks in their day. This would be times where they take a lunch break, when they first wake up, or during their commute. 

You should also note that busy people value their time highly. Keeping your email content short and to the point can often be the best bet for this type of person. Aim to provide brief value that allows them to make a quick decision, so you can get better click-through and conversion rates on your content. 

What Is the Best Time to Send an Important Email?

If you have an important email where you want someone to take action on something during their day, sending it earlier in the day will be the best bet. Often, around 9am can be a good time to send important email content. This time allows someone to read your email and be able to take the necessary action within the span of the day. 

What Is the Best Time to Send an Email Campaign?

Email campaigns take a significant amount of time to create, so you’ll want to get the timing and cadence of your emails down, so they are most effective. Typically, the best time to send the emails from your campaign will still be between 9am-3pm like normal email content.

Should You Vary the Timing of the Emails for Your Campaign?

You may also be wondering if you should send your campaign emails at the same time each day or vary the timing. Usually, your best bet will be to keep sending them at the same time each day. 

We are creatures of habit, so your audience will often subconsciously or even consciously pick up on what time you send emails and be more likely to check their inboxes at those times if they are really enjoying your content. 

However, if you find that certain portions of your audience are more engaged with emails at different times than others, you can also segment your list and send campaign emails to different groups at specific times that are best for their needs. While this method takes more planning, it will help you get more engagement from your campaign. 

AudiencePoint can help you effectively segment your email list by analyzing how your different subscribers interact with their inboxes, using our second-party data pool. This helps you effectively segment your email list without having to perform extensive test campaigns.

Does the Time of Day Impact Email Open Rate?

The time of day does impact email open rate, so you should be sending emails when your subscribers are most likely to engage with email content. When someone checks their email inbox, they are most likely to open the emails at the top.

Due to the significant number of emails that people receive each day, there’s a lot of clutter in their inbox. If they have to scroll to see your email, there’s a good chance they find other content that grabs their attention or they get sick of looking at emails before they ever get to yours. 

The advantage of optimizing your send times is one of the many things that makes AudiencePoint’s Send Time Optimization software so valuable for brands. AudiencePoint makes it easy to figure out the right send time for your audience. 

What Time of Day are People Most Likely to Open Emails?

Studies have found that email opens start to increase around 8 or 9am and typically will decrease after 6pm. This means that sending your emails during normal 9-5 business hours is often a great bet, especially between 9am-3pm. 

What Other Engagement Metrics Can Be Impacted By Send Times?

Along with open rate, many other engagement metrics can be impacted by email send time. The most common ones are:

• Click-through rate
• Conversion rate
• Click-to-open rate

By optimizing your email send times, you will see boosted engagement in each of these categories. If you would like the best way to improve email send times and boost email engagement, AudiencePoint is the answer. 

Find The Best Time To Send Emails With AudiencePoint

AudiencePoint is a valuable asset to your email marketing strategy. AudiencePoint’s email insight software helps take the hassle and guesswork out of email marketing by providing actionable ways to improve your email campaigns from data collected.

AudiencePoint does this with three easy to implement tools: Real Time Optimization, Send Time Optimization, and ListFit. 

Real Time Optimization

If you want to know what your subscribers are up to in real time, our real-time optimization tool can help. This tool alerts you when your subscribers are actively in their inboxes, so you can send your email at the perfect time to catch them.

Send Time Optimization

Send time optimization is crucial for companies that want to get the most out of their email campaigns and achieve high open rate. AudiencePoint’s Send Time Optimization tool is the best way to optimize your email send times. 

Our STO tool uses a large pool of second-party data to let you know exactly when individual subscribers are most likely to be interacting with their inboxes. Most STOs rely on data gathered from your own email campaigns, so this outside data can save a lot of time that you’d usually spend testing different send times. This leads to higher opens from day one of your campaign.

You can get data on best send times for specific groups of subscribers or even specific types of content to help you create more detailed email strategies that boost engagement rates. Our tool can even segment optimal send times down to the individual address level.

The best part is that this time-saving tool easily integrates with any major email service provider, so you can easily use it with your existing campaigns.

ListFit

If you’ve ever wanted to get a better understanding of how individual subscribers are engaging with your content, ListFit is the tool for you. ListFit tracks subscriber activity, what types of content specific subscribers engage with most, and in what ways they are likely to engage with your content. 

This tool will give you the insights needed to effectively segment your email list, identify and re-engage inactive subscribers, and create more engaging content based on specific subscriber needs that are identified. This leads to higher open rates, click through rates, and conversions.

This detailed information is given to you in an organized way that is easy to understand. You don’t have to know a ton about email marketing to implement the insights that AudiencePoint gives you. Like our Send Time Optimization Tool, ListFit also easily integrates with all major email service providers. 

Contact Us Today

If you would like to know more about AudiencePoint or how to get started, contact us today. We’re happy to answer any questions you may have and explain how our products can help simplify email marketing campaigns and increase open and click through rates.