Do you want to have a deep connection with your email subscribers?
You need to know when they’re most likely to open your emails.
When you send your email campaigns at the wrong time, it means your subscribers won’t see it. And because they don’t see it, they won’t open it.
The average office worker receives 121 emails per day. And the average consumer receives 111 emails per day.
From the time you sent your email, subscribers may have received up to 50 email messages on top of your email.
Most email users check recent messages that are on top of old messages. The perfect time to send emails is when subscribers check new messages.
Your email should be, at least, one of their 5 – 10 most recent unread messages.
So, when is the perfect time to send emails?
The truth is that the question isn’t that simple to answer. Some email marketing platforms and others have done numerous studies to find the answer to this question.
They all came up with different answers. Some studies were in agreement. Some contradicted others.
Each study used a different parameter.
You’ll have to experiment to know the best time people read your emails.
Why should you experiment?
Every email list is different from another because they have different subscribers with different habits.
The best time for one marketer may not be the best time for another.
Knowing the findings of these studies will help you send effective and interesting emails at the beginning. Then you can start experimenting to find what works best for you.
The Best Day to Send Email According to Studies
What’s the best day to send emails?
Here’s what a study by MailChimp found about the best days to send emails:
In the above chart, you’ll notice that email opens and engagements are high on weekdays. Thursday was the highest.
Weekends – Saturdays and Sundays were the worst days to send emails.
If you want your email campaigns to be successful, send on weekdays.
A study from GetResponse showed that Tuesday is the most popular day to send emails. Tuesday also has the highest opens and click-through rate.
Weekends were the least popular days to send emails. They also had low open rates.
This study by GetResponse further reinforces the fact that emails campaigns are more successful during weekdays than weekends.
Another study from HubSpot also found a similar outcome.
They study found that Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday had the most open rates and Tuesday was the best day to send emails.
Data from WordStream show that Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday have the most email opens.
These studies show that the best days to send emails are weekdays.
The best weekdays to send emails are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Tuesday and Wednesday are my favorite days to send emails. You don’t want to be too close to weekends.
Monday and Fridays aren’t bad. The issue with them is that they’re close to weekends.
Putting myself in subscribers’ shoes, I want to begin the week with a productive work day. So, I don’t want to spend too much time in my inbox.
I also don’t want to send emails on Fridays or late Thursdays because subscribers may be looking forward to the weekend already.
Various studies show that most people don’t check their emails during weekends.
The Best Time to Send Emails According to Studies
Now that you know the best day to send emails, what’s the best time to send email?
It’s important you know the best time too.
There are periods subscribers are more likely to see, open, and read your emails than others. These times are also when they are most likely to act.
Let’s get back to the MailChimp study I first mentioned above. In that study, MailChimp found that the best time to send emails is 10:00 AM in recipients’ time zones.
Looking at the above screenshot from the study, I consider between 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM as a good period and between 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM as the best period.
HubSpot’s study agrees with this.
My favorite period to send emails is any time between 8:30 AM – 3:00PM subscribers’ local time zone.
I prefer sending my emails in the morning because that is when people tend to check their emails.
How Do You Know the Best Time to Send Emails to Your List?
The above studies were conducted on lists of subscribers across various industries in different countries.
You can leverage it to get things right if you’re just getting started.
Start by sending your emails on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Send emails in the morning. Anytime between 8:30 AM and 11:00 AM is good.
However, you need to conduct your own tests to know the best days and time your subscribers open and read your emails.
You may have a different audience with different habits. So, sending during these times may not be right for your own audience.
For example, let’s say most of your subscribers are bartenders, knowing your audience’ email time is a tricky task. There’s no way to know unless you test.
If you’re a digital marketing agency. You serve small-to-medium sized businesses, you may find the above studies more helpful than if your subscribers are bartenders.
Most email marketing service providers let you A/B test your email campaigns.
Before you start A/B testing, it’s worth noting that the average open rates for most industries currently stands at 22%.
Begin by testing the best days. Send during different times as you test. Within a few weeks or a month of A/B testing, some days will stand out to you.
These should be the days you have the most email opens.
Test both weekdays and weekends.
While the above-mentioned studies revealed that weekdays are the best days to send emails, weekends could turn out to be the best days for your business.
Some of your competitors have been sending email messages before you started. Perhaps, they’ve learned a lot of things you can pick up from them.
Subscribe to your competitors’ emails and study the days they tend to send most of their emails.
If a particular day of the week is good for them, they’ll send emails on that day.
If it works for them, it may work for you too since you’re both targeting the same audience and prospects who have similar habits.
Study your audience on social media
Today, about 2.62 billion people in the world use social media.
Most of your subscribers are also on social media.
I wouldn’t advise you to copy someone’s email and try to find them on social media. However, you can recognize your audience on social media.
How do you define a potential client?
For example, someone who talks about topics like startups, digital marketing or analytics, is GrowthFunnel’s potential user.
GrowthFunnel has thousands of followers on social media, but let’s assume that we’re just starting out and want to find our audience on social media,
We’ll simply visit our competitors’ social media accounts and find their followers. Among those followers are our audience.
We and our competitors serve the same group of people or businesses.
By checking the followers of our competitors’ social media profiles, we’ll be able to find some of our potential customers.
What we’ll then do is visit their profiles and see if they are sharing posts related to topics connected to our business. If they are, it means they are indeed a potential client.
For many social media networks out there, there’s no way to know if our potential customer is online or not. But we can see the times they share post and comment on updates.
If a potential customer shares social media updates during a particular time, Their emails could be opened too in the same period.
If their social media account is active, their email could be opened too. It means they are active online. They are more likely to check email notifications during this time.
Sometimes, you may have to stalk your audience on social media to know the best time and date they open emails.
For example, a quick scan on Rand Fishkin’s Twitter profile shows he’s mostly active in the morning. He rarely publishes anything on Twitter in the afternoon and evening.
That’s a small sign that if you want Rand Fishkin to read your email and respond, morning may be the best time to send them.
Also, by studying further, I could find the best day he’s active on social media.
Conclusion
Stop sending emails mindlessly and hoping someone act by buying your product or signing up for a free trial.
Send email campaigns when subscribers are most likely going to have a positive impact on your bottom line.
The reason why so many email marketing campaigns fail isn’t that they aren’t well written or planned. Often, it’s because subscribers didn’t even open them.
Now, you have the answer. Now, you should begin sending emails that get opened, read and convert prospects into buyers.
Let’s ask these questions again:
When is the best day to send emails?
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are the best days. Tuesdays offer the best chance to get most of your emails opened.
What is the best time to send emails?
Send emails anytime from 8:30 AM to 3:00 AM. Between 10:00 AM – 12:00 AM is the best period to send emails.
Note that you need a popup technology like GrowthFunnel to collect lots of emails on your site.
With GrowthFunnel, you’ll start collecting emails with ease.
