When it comes to email marketing, there is a lot of debate about the best time to send email marketing is. Some people say you should send them in the morning, while others believe that evening is the best time.
So, what’s the truth?
The answer may surprise you!
Finding the best time to send a commercial email is critical to the success of your email marketing strategy.
In this blog post, we will discuss when the best time to send marketing emails is and why.
Email marketing campaigns
TL;DR Summary
- The best time to send emails and expect higher engagements is between 9 AM to 5 PM.
- The worst day to send an email campaign is on Saturday.
- The best day is on a Thursday or Tuesday.
- To measure the performance of your emails, look at the metrics of open rate, click-through rates, and click-to-open rate.
- To increase your email open rate, try email marketing automation, A/B testing, and leveraging your audience data.
Why does the time zone matter for an email?
Think about it; if you don’t send the emails at the right time, there will be fewer opens. Fewer opens means fewer clicks and sales. If there are no sales in your e-com business or coaching services, you will make losses. So, time zones matter a great deal in your business growth.
Your job as an email marketer is to find ways to increase email opens and clicks to your landing page. That means you need to understand the correct time zone that fetches more results.
A news agency will probably get more reads in the morning. A coffee store will fetch more sales doing morning or evening promotions.
If you serve global customers, understand their time zones, and send emails when they are more likely to read them. Some email marketing tools have these advanced features in the sense that they allow you to target subscribers based on time zones.
You may not have the best time for a start, but after collecting audience data for a while, you will have enough insights to determine the best day to send emails.
Best days of the week to send an email
The best days of the week to send emails are between Tuesday and Thursday. Tuesday is when someone has already built momentum for the week and can check in on their email inbox. By Friday, they are already tired and preparing for the weekend.
Again this will vary based on the niches. You can’t send a weekend-related event email on Tuesday. You send it on Friday to ensure someone remembers and plans for it.
What’s the best time to send email marketing campaign?
The best time to send emails and expect higher engagements is between 9 AM to 5 PM. You can’t send an email at night and expect engagements. Similarly, people like to jump into work-related stuff in the morning before working on personal emails.
But again, your audience data will determine this. If you collect data that shows your subscribers engage with your emails more at certain times, go with that. Let the data guide you into making fact-based decisions every time.
Tell me the worst day to send a campaign
The worst day to send an email campaign is on Saturday. As is the case, people – including those who don’t go to their 9 to 5 job – like to unwind and spend time with the family. They try not to engage in any work-related stuff until Monday.
Which is the best day to send an email campaign?
The best day is on a Thursday or Tuesday. Wednesday is great, too. All these days are in the middle of the week. These are days when your subscribers are active and can open, click on your email links, book calls, register for events, and make sales.
How can I measure the performance of my emails?
What are the best metrics to determine the success of your email marketing campaigns? I understand the timing matters, but what shows the email campaign is successful?
Well, here are some metrics that show how your email campaigns are performing:
Open rate
This is the percentage of people who open your emails on their devices. If you send 1000 emails and get 100 opens, then your open rate is 10%.
Marketers have varied open rates based on their relationship with the subscribers, the size of their email list, and how well they have optimized their subject lines. Personalized subject lines are more compelling and enhance a higher open rate.
Click-through rates
This is the number of email subscribers who click on the links in your emails. It can be a link, a download, a call-to-action button, or filling a form.
The number will tend to be smaller compared to the open rate, but it will be higher than the purchases. Most people who will click through to your landing page are hot buyers and have interacted with your brand severally.
Click-to-open rate
This is the percentage of people who have opened your email divided by the clicks you go on your links. As is the case, the percentage will be lower since the process is in the middle of the sales funnel with too few emails.
Using this metric, you can easily understand the information that your subscribers like and optimize for better conversions. It can be the introduction, the email body, or the call to action.
How can I increase my email open rate?
Once you understand the best time and days to send an email, the next thing is to improve your email marketing campaign. Your email open rate should improve as you collect data from your audience. With an increase in open rates, so do the clicks and sales.
Your audience’s data will give you the way forward. After a few interactions with your subscribers, you should have a pattern and predesigned email template.
Here is how you can improve the open rates and hence the success of your email marketing campaigns.
Email marketing automation
A marketing automation platform will help you eliminate some of the common human errors that emanate from having to create an email every time you want to send one to your subscribers. Automation saves you time and marketing resources.
It’s easy to increase open rates by sending personalized and compelling emails. Blending AI and automation help you analyze the audience’s data and decide the best optimized time to send emails. It will help you increase open email rates.
Many automation tools can make the work easier for you. You only need to set it right and hit the ‘start’ button. You should also go for premium tools with advanced features. Free tools might not help you fully maximize the value of automation.
Undertake A/B testing
Apart from email marketing automation, undertaking A/B testing is another great way to increase your email open rates. Most automation tools now have the A/B testing feature. Some tools call it split testing or so.
However, it’s all about testing different email versions to find the one with the highest conversions. You can test the email copy, subject line, and call-to-action buttons. When creating your copy, tools such as GetResponse allow you to add two versions of subject lines and test them.
Consumers react differently to different phrases and sentences. A/B testing will help you strike a balance and go with the winning piece. But to get to that point where you have enough data about your audience, you will need to have a sizeable email list.
Leverage your audience data
Always plan and create emails based on your audience data. You may not have it for a start, but once your begin running emails, your audience data will be essential in making any decision.
The audience data is the email opens, the time they opened and read your emails the most, the links they clicked, and the purchases you made.
Most email marketing platforms will provide all these in your dashboard. To increase open rates, leverage these metrics and improve on what needs improvement. Some tools even have real-time reporting of your email marketing performance.
If you have a few open rates, it could mean that your subject line is not compelling enough. A few clicks on your links could also mean the email copy is not compelling enough—every piece of data points towards what you should improve in your marketing.
Improve your subject lines
The essential element in your email is the subject line. If it’s not compelling enough, getting as many email opens and hence low clicks on your links will be challenging.
And if your customers are not clicking on the links to make a purchase or sign up for your offers, then your email campaigns are underperforming.
A good subject line needs to be;
You will need to tweak the subject line a little to get to this point. There are a few AI tools that can help you come up with a compelling subject line, but they will always require a human touch.
A subject line is the first thing subscribers read and decide whether to open an email. Take your time coming up with one.
What conventional wisdom tell you about email timing
Without the customer data, it would be hard to make any fact-based decision. That means if you are to set the ball rolling in the earlier stages, think about your ideal subscriber.
What does he like the most?
What are his spending patterns?
What’s his income bracket?
After getting that data and jotting it down, the next thing is to come up with a persona to depict your target audience. You can even give it a name. It would become easier that way. You may not make many opens and sales, but it’s good for a start.
This is what you should expect on most days of the week.
The weekend
Most people tend to avoid work-related emails on weekends. It’s their time to relax and unwind. That means you may not get more engagements. However, marketers have reported getting higher results on Sunday evenings as people prepare for work.
Monday
Most email marketers agree that sending emails on Monday wouldn’t be okay. Unless it is a personal email, promotional emails are better off on other days of the week.
Monday is when someone is just from the weekend and adjusting to the ‘work mode’; hence may not be in the mood for emails.
Mid-week
It is the best day to send an email campaign since the people in mind have already settled into the week and can open and read the emails.
There isn’t as much work in the middle of the week as it is on Monday. Send the emails between Tuesday and Thursday and get increased engagement.
Friday
Don’t send emails on Friday evenings because you may not get more engagements. Unless it’s an event-related email, send the rest before lunch.
Here are some things that affect the timing of your email
Rather than considering only one variable in email marketing, it would help to have a forest-for-the-trees approach. There are more variables other than time and day.
Let’s look at what else to consider:
The type of content
Which type of content are you sending to your subscribers? What niche are you in? If you are a news agency, then send email blasts in the morning and evening when your target audience wants to catch up on the latest events.
Work-related emails should be sent during working hours. When someone has signed off, they may not engage well with something that requires a lot of thinking. You can also send them in the morning when they are just starting their day’s routine.
Another example is a food-related email list. You can’t send the coupons at night because no one will notice and utilize them. Send the discounted offers just before lunchtime and give a limit of up to 300 people or so. That will infuse a sense of urgency.
Email marketing campaigns goals
What are your marketing goals? Do you want your subscribers to purchase your products, or are you merely informing them? The goals will matter when it comes to when you send the emails to receive a high response rate.
If it’s about purchasing from your e-com store, send the emails on Friday towards the end of the month. People like to shop on Fridays after work. You can even choose to create a campaign to specifically target end-month shoppers.
If your goal is to inform and educate, send the email during working hours. People like to begin reading emails before getting into full swing at their job. That’s the same thing if you have a product or service and want to undertake a brand outreach campaign.
The target audience
What’s the interest of your audience? How often do they like to shop online? What devices are they using? You will need that kind of data if you are to maximize the success of your email marketing campaigns.
If they are on desktops, they will probably be at their desks between 9 AM to 5 PM. That means any emails after then might not have as much engagements. Mobile users tend to read emails in the morning and later in the evening.
The subscriber’s time zone
Do you have localized customers? Then you don’t have to worry about the time zones. But if you run an online business, such as a coach or consultant, you might serve a global audience. That means there will be a time difference.
A good thing if you are a coach is to have a Calendly or any other booking link. That will allow subscribers to choose their preferred time. If you have a business, undertake email segmentation and send emails based on the right time zones.
FAQs on the best day and time to send emails
Here are answers for some of the questions I often get asked regarding the topic.
Conclusion
With these tips in mind, you should be able to improve your email engagement rates and get more people to open and interact with your emails.
Automating your email marketing can save you time while increasing opens and clicks, so it’s worth investigating whether an autoresponder like GetResponse could work for you. Plus, their platform is free up to 500 contacts – why not give it a try today?
