Source: Pexels
Have you heard of the saying that timing is everything?
While email marketing revolves around more than just timing, the day and hour are crucial for generating optimal results with your email campaigns. There’s more to grabbing your recipients’ attention than writing compelling copies and creating top-notch email designs.
You need to ensure that you’re sending your emails at the time when your recipients are most likely to check them out.
Keep in mind that most of your contacts’ inboxes are flooded with promotional emails every day. Most of them end up forgotten or deleted. While you need to put a lot of effort into coming up with the best kind of content that’ll get your emails opened and your links clicked on, you can’t send your marketing emails whenever you feel like. If you do that, the chances are that they’ll get lost in the crowd of all the competition you’ve got.
Consider the fact that the average email open rate for all industries is 22.15%. If you are coming up with numbers less than that constantly, maybe you’re not sending your emails at the right time.
In this article, we’re going to help you find the answers to two burning questions:
Is there such a thing as perfect timing?
When should I send my emails if there isn’t?
Let’s start by looking at some of the many studies on:
The best day of the week to send marketing emails
The best time of day to send marketing emails
Source: Emma Matthews Digital Content Production @Unsplash
The scenario that plenty of marketers are hoping for is finding an article that will help them determine the precise day of the week that they should send their email campaigns on. The problem is that the answer isn’t that simple. If you check out a few articles that claim they’ve got the best solution, you’ll find conflicting information.
The best short answer that you can get is that it depends. Since that is hardly a satisfying answer, let’s take a look at more extensive data collected by various companies.
The data that we’re going to cover was taken from the research performed by:
Customer.io
GetResponse
Omnisend
Campaign Monitor
The study by Customer.io determined that Tuesday has the highest email open rates on average.
Tuesday is the day of the week when the majority of people that work 9–5 daily jobs become fully aware that a new work week has started. This is also the time when most emails get sent—over 17%.
While Tuesday may be the winner because of the highest open rate, the study highlights that:
Educational emails work better at the beginning of the week
Actionable emails perform better near the end of the week
The report by GetResponse states that Tuesday performs the best with an open rate of 19.9%. It’s closely followed by:
Wednesday—19%
Thursday—18.9%
The picture is different when it comes to the click-through rate. The winners are Friday and Thursday, with the rates of 4.90% and 4.66%. This finding is in agreement with Customer.io’s conclusion that actionable emails perform better near the end of the week.
The report by Campaign Monitor states that Tuesday and Thursday are the best days for sending promotional emails.
What makes matters complicated is that the research generated results that are contradictory to the ones we’ve seen in the previous studies. Thursday is the best day for email open rates, with an average of 18.6%. Tuesday performs better when it comes to click-throughs, with an average rate of 2.74%.
The study performed by Omnisend is in agreement with the one by Campaign Monitor. It determined that the best day to send promotional email campaigns in terms of overall performance is Thursday, with Tuesday taking second place.
The company also pointed out that Wednesday has the highest open rates.
Most of the research suggests that Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are the best days for sending email marketing campaigns. The problem is that the studies came up with conflicting results on which of the days performs best for a particular metric.
We can conclude that the best day to send marketing emails depends on more than just the metrics. We need to take into account a wide range of other factors as well, such as the specific niche, industry, and characteristics of each target audience. Here are some of the industry-based data that the study performed by Sendiblue generated:
The Best Day To Send Emails Based on Industry | |
Industry | Day |
B2B Services | Tuesday |
Software Companies | Wednesday |
Offline Retail Businesses | Thursday |
E-commerce | Wednesday |
Nonprofits | Tuesday or Wednesday |
Even if the data still point out that the optimal day for sending marketing emails is either Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, the best course of action is to use this information as a starting point for testing and not a prescription. Segment your email list and perform tests to determine the best days to send your emails to specific contact groups.
Source: Alvin Mahmudov @Unsplash
When it comes to the best time of day for sending marketing emails, the available research provides more clear-cut answers. Various companies have compiled data for perfect timing based on different industries.
The studies that we’re going to focus on were performed by:
HubSpot
Sendinblue
Springbot
The research performed by HubSpot highlights 10 AM as the overall best time to send emails, particularly for B2B companies.
The study points out that you need to segment your mailing list based on factors such as industry, seniority, job title, and user email habits. You should keep in mind that your audience usually checks out news and updates before they go to work in the morning. They’re more likely to focus on actionable emails at about 3 PM after they’ve had lunch.
Sedinblue’s study states that the best time of day to send emails can be both in the morning and the afternoon, depending on the industry. There is a big difference between what is the best solution for retail and e-commerce businesses and what works for marketing services and software companies. Here are some of the findings:
The Best Hour To Send Emails Based on Industry | |
Industry | Hour |
E-commerce | 10 AM |
Retail | 8–10 AM |
Software/SaaS | 2–3 PM |
Marketing Services | 4 PM |
The study performed by Springbot determined that the best timing for sending e-commerce emails is:
From 6 AM to 8 AM
From 8 PM to 12 AM
This is because people most commonly check their email either before or after work. The report suggests that you should consider offsetting your emails to make them stand out from the competition. This means that you should aim for the hours outside the prescribed intervals, such as 9 AM or 7 PM.
The studies generally agree that the best time for sending marketing emails is at about:
10 AM, when people are preparing for work
3 PM, when they are done with lunch or heading home
The researchers agree that the timing depends on the industry and your target audience’s email habits. The best course of action is to create a customer persona and test different hours depending on your perfect customer’s characteristics.
With these studies in mind, let’s go over some general email marketing tips on how to determine the best timing for your email marketing campaigns.
Source: Pexels
While the studies suggest that Tuesday, Thursday, and Wednesday are the best days for sending marketing emails, you need to be aware that your competitors have access to the same data as you do.
This means that you’re not going to be the only one trying to grab your recipients’ attention on those days. While the primary means of trying to beat the competition may be focusing on writing compelling copies, crafting eye-catching email subject lines, and creating high-quality email designs, you might also try sending your emails on a different day.
While other days may not fit with the studies we’ve discussed, it doesn’t have to mean that they don’t work with your target audience. Here are a few examples:
Friday might be the perfect day if you’re working in the entertainment industry because you can provide your audience with solutions for what to do during the weekend
Saturday and Sunday generally have a low sending volume, but they may be the perfect option for computer-savvy contacts in colder climates
You need to test different days and hours for sending your marketing emails if you want to determine what works best for your business. One of the most common methods is A/B testing. It consists of assessing a single aspect of your email campaign by messaging two different contact groups.
When the aspect you’re testing is time, you need to send the same email to both groups. You can determine which timing works better by tracking the crucial metrics, such as:
Open rate
Click-through rate
Click-to-open rate
For optimal results, you need to segment your contacts based on specific parameters, such as:
Demographics
Psychographics
Firmographics
Factors such as age, industry, and lifestyle have a significant impact on the optimal timing for sending email marketing campaigns.
Consistency is crucial when it comes to email marketing campaigns. When you determine the best time to send marketing emails, you need to stick to it.
One of the most important aspects of email campaigns is building expectations. If your audience gets accustomed to receiving your educational content on Tuesday at 10 AM and special offers on Friday at 3 PM, the success of your email marketing strategy will depend on their anticipation of your emails.
Our Sell SaaS software bundle offers a wide range of solutions. This includes our email campaign creator—a powerful autoresponder tool for creating and automating email marketing campaigns.
You can craft attention-grabbing emails by customizing a variety of elements via an easy-to-use online editor. When you’ve set up a compelling email campaign, you can automate the way it’s going to be sent to your target audience. The autoresponder feature enables you to schedule your emails to arrive in your recipients’ inboxes at opportune times. You can also set up triggers for automatic responses to different user actions, such as:
Opening your email
Clicking on a CTA or link
Visiting your website
Abandoning a shopping cart
Purchasing a product
The email campaign creator is a handy solution for setting up lead nurturing email sequences. You can ensure that your recipients get the best possible customer journey through perfectly timed emails tailored to their every step.
The tool also includes a tracking feature that enables you to evaluate your email campaign’s performance.
We’ve got a variety of other software solutions that can help you improve different aspects of your business. You can check out our:
Enrichment data software
Chatbot solution for capturing leads
API for preventing fake email registrations
Social proof notification widget
Enrichment data software is one of our best lead generation tools. It enables you to make use of our company’s extensive database of B2B domains. You can find cold leads based on different parameters, such as:
Industry
Location
Company size
Once you’ve got your results, you can export them into a spreadsheet file. Use the information you’ve gathered to grow your email list. The tool works hand in hand with our email campaign creator.
Our chatbot solution is a handy tool for providing support to your website visitors. You can set it up to answer the users’ most frequent questions.
If you configure it to ask for every visitor’s personal information, such as their names and email addresses, you can turn it into an effective tool for passive lead generation.
It isn’t uncommon for people to use a fake email address to download a lead magnet or check out a gated piece of content that requires subscribing to your mailing list. You can counteract this issue with our handy API.
The API for preventing fake email registrations is a great email verification solution. It determines whether an email address is associated with an existing email account, and blocks it automatically if it isn’t.
Social proof is a crucial asset for building credibility and encouraging users to take action. Our widget informs your website visitors whenever someone else writes a review, purchases a product, subscribes to your mailing list, etc.
There’s a large number of users that are on the fence about making a decision. When they see that someone else has decided to do business with you, they might be motivated to do so themselves.
You should choose our products because we’ve got a special offer for you. You’ve got two options when it comes to our tools—you can:
Use them
Resell them
When you sign up for any of our monthly plans, you get to use our tools with no restrictions.
The email campaign creator enables you to send an unlimited number of emails to all the contacts on your mailing list
Our lead generation tools don’t put a limit on the contact information you can extract and export
The API will verify any email address that is used for subscribing to your website
We provide you with an opportunity to add your logo, brand colors, and company name to our tools, and resell them at a price that suits your business needs.
The rule is simple—the more you sell, the more money goes to you. All you need to do is partner up with us and share a percentage of all your sales. You can earn between 60% and 80% of the revenue, depending on our partnership level.
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