What Is the Best Time to Send an Email?

Email marketers are beginning to realize that optimizing the time you send content helps get better and more consistent engagement rates. 

Reaching anyone when they’re the most primed to engage is likely to achieve better results. Plus, the way email inboxes work, the most recent content appears at the top. So if you email right before someone checks for new emails, there’s a much better chance they see your content. 

Knowing all of this, you’re probably wondering about the best time to send new email marketing content. We’ll discuss that topic in this article and cover it from all possible angles. By the end, you’ll have a better idea of how to time your emails effectively. Keep reading to learn more. 

What Is the Best Time to Send an Email?

Many studies have been done on average email engagement rates at different times of the day. What they’ve consistently found is the time when consumers are most engaged is during the middle of the day. A good time for high average engagement is from 9 am-3 pm. 

This time range is effective since those are the peak hours of the average person’s work day. Many people will be checking inboxes frequently for all different types of emails. That means sending new content at that time gives you a much better chance of it being noticed. 

That said, the best time to send emails can vary. Different groups of consumers will have varying lifestyles and needs. So you have to consider more here than just the average best times. Before we get more into that, let’s try to further pinpoint a good average time of the day to send emails. 

Is It Unprofessional to Send Emails After 5 pm?

In some instances, it can be unprofessional to email after 5 pm. This will be a problem mainly if it’s a work-related email. You really don’t want to be emailing your boss or co-workers after regular working hours. It’s important to have a good work-life balance, so aside from an emergency, respecting the boundaries of traditional working hours as much as possible is important. 

On the other hand, this is a bit different for marketing email content. General consumers receiving promotional content won’t find it unprofessional if you email them after regular work hours. They likely won’t think much of what time you email them. That means sending emails whenever your audience is most likely to engage is most important. 

Should You Send Marketing Emails After 5 pm?

While it isn’t unprofessional to send marketing emails after 5 pm, most research has found that’s the time of day when engagement rates drop off significantly. So refraining from sending new content during this time is usually the best bet. 

It’s simply a time of day when many people are just getting done with work and have lower energy levels to want to engage with new content or take action on a promotional offer. Other times, like the morning or afternoon, usually work better. 

Is It Better to Send an Email in the Morning or Afternoon?

Since the morning and afternoon work well, you’re probably wondering if one is better than the other. In terms of data on engagement rates, the morning between 9 am-12 pm tends to work a bit better. 

Many people have the highest energy at the beginning of their day. It’s also when inboxes are looked at most often. So if you can target this time range, it would be your best option to get a response on your promotion. 

That said, the afternoon still works well. You’ll still have good average engagement up until 3 pm on most days of the week. 

Is Sending Emails on Friday Afternoon a Good Idea?

One of the days when emailing in the afternoon may not be a good idea is Friday. On Fridays, many people are looking forward to the weekend. It causes a drop in engagement as it gets further in the day since people can start to check out and leave emails they receive sitting in their inboxes. 

If consumers leave marketing emails sit, there’s a much lower chance that content gets engagement later on since they’ll probably get buried by other companies who email after that point. So emailing earlier in the day on Friday is your better option if you want to send some content out before the weekend. 

Your Audience Matters Most When Determining the Best Time to Send an Email

As mentioned earlier, your audience is the most significant factor in determining when you should send new content. While 9 am-3 pm works well for many consumers, this isn’t always the case for everyone. 

For instance, someone who works retail may work the second shift, third shift, or very early morning hours. This would affect the best time to email them if they are often the most active outside of that average optimal time range. 

Ultimately, you need data on when your subscribers engage. If you’re looking for help with that, AudiencePoint will be an excellent resource. 

How AudiencePoint Helps with Email Marketing

AudiencePoint offers email insight software that helps analyze subscriber activity and provides insights that help improve your email marketing strategy. 

The optimal time to send marketing content depends on your audience, and we have a tool that can help with that called Send Time Optimization (STO). STO uses our industry leading second-party data pool and recommend the best times to send new content to each subscriber. 

This method makes improving the time you send content much easier. You don’t have to do a ton of tests to see when subscribers engage most, which would be time-consuming and impossible to figure out in many cases. You simply get accurate insights that you can implement right away.  

In addition, AudiencePoint offers tools called Real Time Optimization and ListFit. Real Time Optimization gives you actionable insights you can use to improve your email strategy the moment you send new content. ListFit tracks subscriber activity to help identify inactive subscribers and segment your email list. 

All these tools and features will help immensely in your efforts to improve the success of your email campaigns. What’s more, they easily integrate into any email service provider you might already be using. To learn more about how AudiencePoint helps with email marketing, contact us today.