As marketers, you probably already know that timing is important in a lot of things that we do. Like with email, for instance. If you’re sending an email with a specific call to action (CTA), sending it too early to your prospects may put them off from moving further into the funnel. On the other hand, sending it too late could make your email irrelevant.

To that end, when is the best time to send an email?

I will still say it’s best to look at your audience behaviour to determine the best timing. This is why it’s so important that you get to know who you’re talking to. Understanding your audience is key to getting the timing right when it comes to marketing. However, there are some industry best practices and benchmarks that have been known to deliver the best results. This serves as a great jump off point for your email marketing efforts.

According to popular email automation app Co-schedule, the best days to send an email are Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Wednesday—respectively.

This is supported by Smart Insights, who notes that, “Tuesday to Thursday traditionally are seen as getting the best response in B2B. This is what I’ve often seen in B2B marketing, it perhaps reflects Monday/Friday being meeting days. Tuesday is usually peak day for web traffic too in analytics.”

Why?

Generally, offices are busiest on Mondays on top of being too hung up on the weekend being over. Usually, people are inundated with email first day of the week, so you don’t want to lump yours in with that batch, especially if you expect people to act on your emails.

What about weekends, you might ask? People don’t usually check their emails during weekends. This is the time they run their errands, spend time with family, or just unwind and not think about work. Open-rates are typically low during weekends.

To date, the tried-and-true approach of sending out email campaigns is still the middle of the week. However, it’s not just the day of the week you’re sending your emails that you should be concerned about. You also have to consider the time.

So when it comes to time, take note of the following:

• 10 am is the most popular time that emails are sent.
• 8 pm also gets a lot of open rates due to people checking their email before they turn in for the evening.
• 2 pm also ranks in the top three due to people checking their emails mid-day as a way to distract themselves from routine work.

Additionally, consider the fact that 50 percent of people begin their day by writing and checking their emails before they get out of bed. There’s a risk here however, as studies also note that while they see your email first thing in the morning, it’s not very likely that they will click or reply to it.

Remember…

The guidelines above are considered best practice, but there are numerous situations and variables that will contribute to different results and veer away from the results I just shared above.

As I said, it’s best to know and understand your audience behaviour and motivations to determine your best timing. If you want to learn how exactly you can do that, contact me at Leadspanda, so we can discuss this topic further.