What is The Best Time to Send Emails (and the worst?)

What is the best time to send emails? For your business to enjoy the full benefits of email marketing, you must execute your campaigns with precision. One of the most important aspects of email marketing is determining the best time to send your email messages.

The ideal email timing depends on the target audience, location, and preferences. There are certain windows and days during which most people prefer to receive communication. To ensure maximum engagement and campaign success, it’s essential to consider these time windows.

Here we discuss the best and worst times to send emails. We also share tips to boost conversion rates.

Why Does Email Timing Matter?

Just like instant messaging, email requires proper timing. Here's why:

Better Open and Click-through Rates

Your target audience will receive your emails no matter when you send them. However, timing determines whether or not they actually open the messages. Often, people are overwhelmed by the volume of emails they receive. Or, they only read messages at a specific point during the day. When this happens, recipients tend to read only the most recent emails.

That's why it is important to send emails when your target audience is most likely to read them. Proper timing increases open rates and boosts engagement. Timing is especially critical when sending cold emails, as these emails have lower open rates in general.

Stronger Standing Against Competitors

Sending emails at the correct time can help you stand out from the competition. When your emails arrive in a timely manner, they will be more likely to be opened and read. This gives you an edge over competitors who may not have taken the time to optimize their email timing.

What is The Best Time to Send Emails?

To answer this accurately, we must consider your audience, industry, and goals. But, if you’re looking for more definitive insights, let’s look at a recent HubSpot survey. The company asked over 300 US marketers when their emails received the highest levels of engagement.

34.9% of the marketers reported the time frame to be between 9 AM and 12 PM, while 27.6% reported it was between 12 PM and 3 PM. Based on this logic, your emails are more likely to be opened if you send them between 9 AM and 3 PM.

Of course, open times largely vary between B2B and B2C clients. These two groups have very distinct behaviors when opening personal and work emails. In the HubSpot survey, 47.9% of B2B marketers said engagement was highest between 9 AM and 12 PM. Only 30.9% of B2C marketers reported high engagement between 9 AM and 12 PM.

In reality, the best time to send an email largely depends on your target audience. Your audience consists of unique individuals with habits and daily routines that vary by the target market. For instance, toy and real estate audiences will have different habits regarding when they check their emails. In the case of the former, your audience (moms) will likely be available in the morning before they begin their day or in the evenings as they wind down.

Understanding your target audience's behaviors helps you know when you're most likely to catch their attention and nudge them to take the desired action. Your organization's industry and campaign goals also affect the ideal time for sending emails.

Which is The Best Day of The Week to Send Emails?

Not all days are created equal when it comes to sending emails. Researching your target audience will help you determine which days of the week they will most likely engage with your emails.

We analyzed the findings from five recent studies that sought to answer this question. According to the five studies, Tuesdays through Thursdays have been found to be the best days of the week as they have the highest open and click-through rates. Wednesdays are a close second.

If you're sending holiday or Black Friday emails, consider sending them a week or two before to remind your audience and get them excited for the big day. Then, send the second email early in the morning on the day of the event to create a sense of urgency.

Don’t rely solely on these findings when choosing which day of the week to send emails. Since your business is unique, Tuesdays might not work as well for it as they do for other companies. Define your buyer persona, research their behavior, and send your emails based on when your audience will most likely open them.

What is The Worst Time to Send Emails?

Saturdays and Sundays are the worst days to send emails if you’re trying to increase open rates. Open rates are significantly lower on these two days compared to other days of the week. During weekends, people are busy running errands, socializing, or taking a break from work-related thoughts. This means that your emails will likely get lost in their inboxes.

How Do Time Zones Impact Your Email Delivery?

Since sending your email at the wrong time significantly affects open and click-through rates, you should also consider the time zone of your recipient's location. For instance, if your target audience is in Australia and you're sending emails from New York at 10 AM, it will be midnight in Australia.

While the recipients might open your emails when they wake up, the longer it sits in the inbox, the higher the competition from other businesses who have optimized the timing of their emails.

Tips to Master The Art of Optimizing Emails For Different Time Zones

• Know your subscribers: Where are your subscribers located? How many subscribers do you have in different locations? Understanding the geographic distribution of your subscribers is essential for email success.
• Optimize send times: If you have audiences in different geographical locations, you can segment and optimize your list for different time zones. Alternatively, select a send time based on the most important time zone.
• Email automation: If you have audiences in different time zones, scheduling emails in advance can help you avoid sending them at an inconvenient time. With email automation tools, you can schedule the delivery of emails to different time zones at once.

Six Considerations When Choosing a Time to Send Emails

Are you about to choose a time to send emails? Here are some important considerations to keep in mind.

1. Audience Demographics

Your target audience's demographics and behaviors matter when choosing the best time to send emails for the following reasons:

• Audience behavior: Different audiences have different open and click behaviors. For instance, entry-level professionals and managers might check their emails throughout the day as their schedule is flexible. However, they might not read emails after hours. On the other hand, C-suite members tend to be busy with meetings all day and might read emails early in the morning or late at night.
• Marketing goals: Your marketing goals also come into play when choosing a time to send emails. For instance, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, send your email at the times of the day with the highest open rates.

2. Device That Email is Accessed on

People interact with emails differently on their smartphones and desktops. Research shows that companies and individuals exchange about 347.3 billion emails daily. 61.9% of these emails get opened on smartphones. This means that if your email is optimized for mobile devices, you can increase the open rate.

3. Types of Products You Offer

Another factor to consider when choosing the best time to send emails is the type of products or services you offer. Not all products have the same demand throughout the day. Some types of products, like entertainment-based products, tend to sell more during weekends. Therefore, sending emails with promotions or discounts on these products during weekends may create a sense of urgency and result in higher conversion rates.

4. Seasonal Changes and Fluctuations

Seasonal changes also have a huge impact on the best time to send emails. Planning your email campaign before a season's onset can be beneficial. For instance, email open and click-through rates are quite high during the winter as people look forward to Black Friday sales.

5. Email Frequency

Sending too many emails a week can annoy customers and lead to unsubscriptions. Therefore, finding the right balance between email frequency and effectiveness is essential.

Audience research will help you determine how many emails your target user base will tolerate without getting overwhelmed. Generally, sending two emails a week should be enough to keep customers engaged and interested.

6. User Experience

User-friendly emails have better open and click-through rates. This means you should optimize emails for devices like desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

How to Test the Best Time and Day For Your Target Audience

How do you know what the best time is to send emails to your target audience? Here are some tips that you can use to test and find the optimal time and day for your email campaigns.

A/B Test

A/B testing refers to comparing two versions of an email and analyzing which one performs better. You can use A/B testing to determine the optimal times by sending a version of your email at different hours of the day to see when subscribers open and click on links more frequently.

Compare Your Data

How have previous campaigns performed during different times? Analyze your historical emails to see when the open and click-through rates were the highest. This will give you an idea of when customers will most likely engage with your emails.

Understand The Email Recipients

Knowing your target audience is essential to sending emails at the right time. Different types of subscribers have different needs and schedules, so what works for one may not work for another.

Consider factors such as their location, time zone, age group, and job type to determine when they are most likely to engage with your emails.

Be Consistent With Sending

Consistency is key when it comes to email marketing. Sending emails at the same time each week or month builds trust with subscribers and ensures that they will be expecting your content.

Tips to Boost Low Conversion Rates

If you need help with low conversion rates, here are some tips to help you realize better results.

Examine Your Content

Timing might not be the only thing that's affecting your conversion rates. Review the content and copy of the email to see if it resonates with your audience. Make sure that your content:

• Is personalized
• Is well-written and easy to understand
• Addresses customer needs or interests
• Includes engaging visuals
• Offers incentives or rewards

Play With Email Subject Lines

Your email's subject line is the first thing subscribers see, so make sure it stands out and grabs attention. Keep the subject line short and to the point, and be creative with your wording. Consider using emojis or power words to grab attention. Don't forget to create a sense of urgency or ask questions to get customers clicking.

Realign Your Marketing Goals

Are your marketing goals aligned with the results that you're aiming for? Make sure that you're setting reasonable goals and expectations. Use customer analytics to help you focus on the right areas and refine your campaigns as needed.

Factor in Different Time-Zones

Segment your audience based on their time zones. This will help ensure that you send the right messages at the time when they're most likely to see them. Use scheduling tools to send emails at the best time for different regions.

Leverage Email Marketing Automation

Automating your emails helps simplify the process and allows you to send relevant content at just the right time. Aside from proper timing, email marketing automation will help you to:

• Enhance targeting and personalization
• Save time and resources
• Improve customer experience with dynamic content
• Get real-time data at every step of your campaign so you can adjust it as needed

Use Advanced Reporting and Analytics Tools

Reporting and analytic tools are a great way to measure the success of your email campaigns. Use them to assess open and click-through rates, customer engagement, and how well different timing strategies work for you. This will ensure that you're constantly optimizing for better results.

Conclusion

The best and worst time to send emails depends on many factors, such as the audience, the content, and the goals. Getting all these factors right requires a lot of experimentation and optimization.

With the help of the Helpmonks email management platform, you can immediately realize better open, click-through, and conversion rates. Our software is suited for different industries and has an intelligent collaborative email management approach, making tracking progress easy.

Get started today for free.