What Are The Best Times To Send Email?

An increasing number of email marketers are realizing the importance of sending emails at the right time. If you’re wondering what the best times to send emails are or how to implement send time optimization in your email strategy, this article has the answers. Keep reading to get all the details. 

What Time Of Day Is Best To Send Emails?

Research has found that the best time of day to send marketing emails is from 9am-3pm. This time range in the middle of the day works best because most people have higher energy and are actively checking inboxes. 

Is It Unprofessional To Send Emails After Business Hours?

The data on send times says engagement rates drop after 3pm. This might make you wonder if sending marketing content after business hours is a bad idea. While it can be seen as unprofessional to send work emails after business hours to your boss, co-workers, or employees, it is fine to send marketing emails in this time frame. 

Most of your email subscribers won’t think much of what time you send them new content. Even if you send emails at midnight, it still won’t be seen as unprofessional by the average consumer. 

The real reason email engagement tends to drop after 3pm is that it is toward the end of the workday for most people. Once someone is tired from their workday, they just want to go home and relax. They won’t be as primed to engage with new marketing content. 

Is It Better To Send An Email In The Morning Or The Afternoon?

Research shows the optimal time to send marketing emails ranges from morning to afternoon. Some may wonder which would be the best time to send emails between the two. While either can be effective, sending emails earlier in the day is often better. 

Email promotions that need a response may require some time for consumers to make a decision. If you email in the morning, there’s a better chance they’ll see it and be able to decide if they want to take action on your offer before the end of the day. In theory, that would lead to higher conversion rates. 

With all that said, the best time to send emails really depends on your audience and how they engage with content. Some consumers may engage a lot right away in the morning. Others may like to read emails in the afternoon when they’re on their lunch break. Considering your specific audience and how they engage will be the most important factor in deciding on the best time frame for sending your emails. 

Is Saturday A Good Time To Send An Email?

According to the research on email send times, engagement rates usually drop quite a bit on the weekend. That means Saturday and Sunday aren’t usually the best time to be sending an important marketing email. 

Many people engage less on the weekend because they’re focused on other things. Running errands, spending time with family and friends, and simply relaxing can all keep people from paying much attention to their inboxes or feeling ready to take action on a new marketing promotion. 

However, it all depends on your audience. Some groups of consumers may be the most engaged on the weekends. Having accurate data on how your customers engage with email content will help you decide if sending emails on the weekend is a good idea. 

How Do You Get Data On Subscriber Engagement?

If you want to find the best time to send emails to your audience, you need accurate data. You could try to check analytics and test sending emails at different times and on different days of the week. That said, this is a very time-consuming process, and it often leaves you with biased data. 

The better option is to use an insight software that can do the analysis for you. If you want to make finding the best send times easy, AudiencePoint can help. 

How AudiencePoint Can Help With Your Email Marketing Campaigns

AudiencePoint offers email insight software that tracks data from subscriber engagement and gives you actionable ways to improve email campaigns. One of the tools that AudiencePoint offers is called Send Time Optimization. 

The Send Time Optimization tool uses information from our industry leading second-party data pool to give you information on when your subscribers are most likely to be checking their inboxes. This makes it easy to find the best times to send new content tailored to each of your subscribers without the need to perform any test campaigns. 

The best part is this tool integrates with all major email service providers (ESPs), so you can jump right into optimizing the send-times for your pre-existing campaigns. 

Contact AudiencePoint today to learn more about how we can take your email marketing strategy to the next level.