What’s the Best Time to Send an Email Newsletter?
You’re reading this because…
- You’re about to run an email marketing campaign and looking for tips
- You’ve had hard luck with your earlier campaigns.
- You’ve been searching high and low for the right answer to what’s the best time to send emails, but got none.
They say time is an illusion, but timing an art. The latter can break a business by simply being wrong. It’s not even about luck; smart work goes into identifying the appropriate timing and making the most of it.
As it is with life, in business, too, timing is everything! It has a direct impact on the inflow of traffic, lead generation and conversions. So, how do you work on it for email marketing campaigns?
While enough has been discussed and written, the data received so far remains rather contradictory. To put an end to this confusion, here’s an analysis of multiple survey data to determine when to send commercial emails.
Which Days in a Month?
The beginning of the month is the best time. Especially, the first two weeks are crucial for higher open and click rates. Apparently, the best days are 5th, 7th, and 12th with combined open and click rates of 19.15%, 18.54%, and 19.03% respectively.
Possible Reasons
This distribution could be associated with paydays. The beginning of the month is when the wallet is full and customers have the zeal to spend money. Although this isn’t an argument strong enough, it is believable.
Verdict
Send Emails In The First Two Weeks Of A Month
Which Days in a Week?
SMBs can stick to sending emails monthly while big brands must do it more often. This is why they opt for weekly campaigns. For the latter, it is important to fix dates in advance, not out of intuition, but via well-strategized plans.
According to author Megan Marrs, Mondays are the worst days to send email blasts. Weekends are no better. Midweek emails, however, tend to fare well. Below is a survey report by MailChimp. The favorite days are Thursdays, followed by Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Possible Reasons
Mondays are atrocious for many who haven’t had enough of the weekend. As such, a flood of emails is a bad idea. Weekends are when people like to unwind. Chances are slim they’d be interested in talking business. To that end, mid-week seems like a safe option.
Verdict
Send Weekly Emails Every Thursday/Tuesday/Wednesday
Daytime or Nighttime?
Although this is the era of screens and the age of ‘life on the go,’ rest is essential. After-hour emails are seen as overzealous attempts at marketing and could even lead to people unsubscribing. According to Marss, this is, by all means, the wrong approach.
Possible Reasons
Daytime somewhat ensures your target audience is awake. Of course, you should keep in mind the time difference between the point of origin of the email and the rest of the word. If it’s 1 am at your place and 1 pm elsewhere, nighttime emails could be advantageous.
Verdict
Never Send Emails At Night
What Time of the Day?
Creating impactful emails for bigger sales is important. But, more important is the need to send your emails at the right time. Now that you know the suitable days, how do you fix the right hour? We’ll tell you how.
Work breaks are the best hours to reach out to clients, stakeholders, and subscribers. 8 am is the best time for high open rates, 5 pm for high click-through rates, and 4 pm for high order rates. 10 am and 1 pm are two other slots in which email marketing campaigns perform well.
Possible Reasons
Work breaks are when people usually get busy on their mobile devices or computers doing things apart from work. This is also the time when your audience is willing to listen to you.
Thus, 1 pm, 4 pm and 5 pm make the most favorable slots. Also, morning freshness matters. When your emails reach optimistic, energetic people at sunup, conversions are more likely to happen.
Verdict
Reach Out To People When They Are Most Relaxed
Here’s a bonus! Follow this simple rule
Mid-Month, Mid-Week, Midday
The ‘Best Time’ is Subject to Change When…
There’s rush
Because this is general advice, you’d find every business following it. Try taking the road less traveled. Who knows, it might work for you!
It’s a device-dependent dilemma
‘Mid-month, mid-week, midday’ is a generalized idea that’s centered on the concept of people being largely desktop dependent. The truth is otherwise. There are more smartphone users now, who might be active 24/7.
How to Stay Extraordinary Amid the Ordinary?
If you don’t do things differently, you’d remain run-of-the-mill. Here are 3 tips for improving your campaign metrics and performance:
Study your target audience
Invest time in studying the demographics and subscriber behavior. For instance, tech-mails work when sent during the daytime. But, if yours is the entertainment niche, Fridays could be wonderful.
Perform A/B tests
Trial and error is the best way to know what befits your business.
Keep your emails short and sweet
Start with a subject line that stands out. Brevity is your hero. Also, make sure the layout is mobile-friendly and limit the number of emails you send.
Wrap-Up
If you want your email to stand out in the crowd, you’d need to find out the optimal timing of sending it. However, you cannot spend all of your business days researching campaigns, subscriber behavior, and customer metrics to figure this out.
In business as in life, there’d always be so much to do and so little time! So, follow these tips and let your email be found, opened, and read.
Let’s repeat this: TIMING IS THE KEY!