Is It Better to Send an Email on Thursday or Friday?

Email marketers are beginning to realize that sending content on the right day of the week is important. You want to make sure you reach subscribers when they’re most likely to engage and convert. 

With that in mind, many wonder if it’s better to email on Thursday or Friday. This article will cover that question in detail. By the end, you’ll have the resources to know which day is better and the best strategies for planning the timing of your content. Keep reading to get all the information. 

Is It Better to Send an Email on Thursday or Friday?

Many studies have been done on average email engagement rates on different days of the week. They’ve found that the middle of the week works best for sending new content. That would be from Tuesday through Thursday. Knowing that you can see right away that Thursday is the better option here. 

Emailing on Thursday works well because it’s right in the middle of the average person’s work week. Most people have higher energy levels here and are very active in checking inboxes for both work and personal emails. 

Engagement rates tend to drop off on Fridays because it’s right before the weekend. Anyone who works a Monday-to-Friday schedule will be getting ready for their days off and not checking their inboxes as frequently. It’s also common to have lower energy on Fridays after a long week of work. So most people aren’t as primed to engage with new email content. 

What Is the Best Time of Day to Send an Important Email?

Now let’s say you have a really important email you want to send to subscribers. This could be anything from a big promotion you’re running or a new product launch. In both cases, you’d want to ensure as many of your subscribers as possible see and engage with that content to get the best results. 

The best time to send important emails is usually during the middle of the day. A good timeframe is from 9 am-3 pm. These times work well because they’re the peak hours of the average person’s work day. Most people will be very active and have high energy levels. 

That said, the optimal time range can vary. Different days of the week and lifestyle factors can affect the best time to send content. Going back to the debate between emailing on Thursday or Friday, the optimal time to send content on each of these days can differ a bit. 

What Is the Best Time to Send Emails on Thursday?

Since Thursdays get high average engagement rates, you can send emails anywhere within that optimal time range. Once again, that would be from 9 am-3 pm. While pinpointing the exact best time will depend on your audience, most average consumers will be active during those midday times. 

When Should You Send an Email on Friday?

If you were to send emails on Friday, the timing would be a bit different. Particularly, the optimal timeframe to send emails is narrower. 

Since many people can start to lose energy toward the end of the work day on Fridays, it causes many to check out a bit and look at inboxes less often. That means if you were to send content on Friday, doing so earlier in the day would be better. 

A good range would be from 9 am-12 pm. It’s usually right after noon lunch breaks that email engagement rates dip quite a bit on Fridays. 

How Your Audience Engages Is What Matters Most

While all the data on average engagement rates at different days and times of the week is great, it can only provide general ranges to help you determine what works best. It’s really not enough to get the best results. What you need is accurate metrics on how your audience engages. 

Your email subscribers are unique. It’s why determining your target market is essential in any marketing strategy because people from different demographics and lifestyles engage with content in varying ways. 

The same can be said for email marketing. You wouldn’t want to target your content for stock brokers in the same way you would for customer service reps. They’re two different audiences with varying needs who are likely actively checking content at very different times of the day. 

If you’re wondering how to accurately plan content for your specific subscribers, AudiencePoint can help. 

How AudiencePoint Helps Improve Your Email Marketing Strategy

AudiencePoint offers email insight software that tracks email subscriber activity and provides you with actionable insights on how to improve your content strategy. 

AudiencePoint offers three easy-to-implement tools that improve different areas of your email marketing efforts. Those tools are: Send Time Optimization, ListFit, and Real Time Optimization. 

Send Time Optimization will help with everything discussed in this article. Send time Optimization uses AudiencePoint’s second-party data pool of subscriber activity to provide the exact time your subscribers are most active in their inbox.  The data and recommendations are easy to implement in your email strategy and will help you improve engagement rates significantly. 

ListFit helps identify subscriber activity. This tool is useful for segmenting your emails based on different types of subscriber behavior and identifying any inactive subscribers who can be re-engaged. Our second party data pool allows ListFit to highlight your subscribers who are still active in their inbox even if you haven’t heard from them in a while, and helps you target them for reactivation.. 

Overall, all these tools will be very beneficial to your email strategy. To learn more about how AudiencePoint helps, contact us today.