What is the best time of day to send emails?

Hubspot did a webinar which had some great data on this. It debunks some myths. For instance, never send an email on the weekend. Wrong! The data shows the weekend is good for business emails. I personally think repetition matters too. Send one early and a similar one at 4PM for instance.

Experiment and test too.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor
Find New Customers
http://www.findnewcustomers.com

I've found and there have been a couple of studies to support this - email that is delivered early in the morning has a higher open rate than at any other time of the day. Common sense and logic tells me that this is true. My morning routine is switching on my PC, opening my email program and scanning the From: address and subject lines to see if there is anything that needs to go onto that day's to-do list.

4.15pm on a Wednesday unless its raining in which case 3.45
If its overcast but not raining then 5.25, unless your recipient drives a blue car, then all bets are off and you should send on Fridays only at 6am.

Sorry, I am of course being facetious. My answer is in two parts:
a) The best time to send email is when you have something relevant to say
b) test and test again, then when you know you have got it right, change it and test again (+1 Mr Kordek)

In regards to a site like Focus the audience is international, so when is the work day starting and ending?

You cannot even do it based on where the recipient lives because many Focus experts travel extensively, so morning for me a couple of weeks ago is evening for me now (Australia vs UK).

Whatever you do, do not start sending me the same email twice in a day ;-)
... however Jeff may well be onto something and if I was in charge of your email program, I would want to consider testing the sending of two notifications either end of the week/day.. with the proviso that there is fresh content in both notifications. When there is nothing relevant then do not send.

As Andrew K has said every list is different and what works for a will not work for b.. I would go further and say every recipient is different.. That is why personalisation is so important. Personalised send times... I would love to know if anyone has optimised send times on a per recipient basis and with what success.

I do not know of any ESP offering the solution but optimising the send time based on individual recipients previous 'open or click-through times' would be an experiment I would love to see.

@andrew. Actually Silverpop has a feature called Send Time Optimization which does that. They are able to push an email based on opens and clicks of your subscribers in the past.

Here was the press release on it: http://www.silverpop.com/news/press/send-time-optimization-silverpop.html

Andrew Kordek
Co-Founder, Trendline Interactive
An email marketing consultancy.
Twitter: @andrewkordek & @trendlinei
Email: andrew@trendlineinteractive.com

That is great to know, and I really should have known that. Thanks!

This has been interesting to follow. Some research I saw (sorry, don't recall the source) suggested that Thursday and Friday between 3 and 5pm were the best times to make phone calls if you wanted someone to pick up the phone. The thinking was that people were at their desk, finishing things up, but probably didn't have meetings scheduled.

For me personally? I'm in the office on a Saturday afternoon -- if you emailed me today, you'd probably get me.

That calls to question the AUDIENCE. Are you reaching consumers at home? People at work? Business owners?

I want to thank David Tomen for immutable logic which had previously escaped me. I read somewhere that 10AM on Tuesday is the right time to send email. I probably read that at 7:30 or 8AM while I was going through "the overnights" in my inbox. I am here because Courtney sent an email that arrived before I fired up my system this morning. Emails that arrive during the business day go unread if I am in the middle of other things. Yet I continue to send emails at 10AM on Tuesdays. Overall, my response rates / click rates are pretty darn good - except if I send an email on a Friday (bad bad bad). Now I am wondering if I won't get a better response by sending at 7AM rather than 10AM. If it works ON me, perhaps it will work FOR me.

Of course, as Megan says, it depends on the audience. For me, more testing is definitely in order. Thank you all for an enlightening conversation and have a wonderful day!

Thank you Margaret. I think that we marketers' often forget to use common sense in our marketing efforts. We read all the reports and studies and white papers, and blah, blah, blah ... Yet we as individuals have more than enough knowledge, and hopefully wisdom to go with what our "gut" tells us to do, and not get carried away listening to the "experts". :-)

There is nothing called as best time of the day to send emails. Only thing to keep in mind is what we are sending and to whom we are sending it across. But at times I have noticed that sending emails at the starting of the day has got better results and sending out during mid day or eod.

@ Andrew- currently using Send Time Optimization via Silverpop and it is a great feature. It helps adjust as well for time differences across the country so people are getting & opening your email when they typically check their email despite when you originally sent it.

As for the best day/time- agree totally depends on the organization and the audience- only way to know is to test for yourself. The only piece of advice I can offer which may be universal to some is to avoid sending when someone first opens their email for the day. If a recipient is overwhelmed at 8:00am with emails they are less likely to open & read yours then if it came into their inbox later in the morning after they've gone through any clutter. But having said that- it may work for some so just test it out :)

Hi, here in Brazil we have used send emails at early morning and noon. Of course we must keep in mind the target that we needs "inquire". But, recently we have mailed in early morning and at noon, we saw that the response rates were high until one hour after sending. After this period, the rates have dropped significantly. Conclusion, if you're lucky enough to find its target in front of the computer, you will have a greater chance that he will answer your research as soon as he read his mail, unlike this, you will have to try another time of day.

Andrew K and Carolyn - thanks for the mentions of our Send Time Optimization feature. Yes, the short answer for best time to send is when the recipient is most likely to not only check their inbox, but when they are most likely make their purchases or act.

For a longer answer, here is an Email Insider column I wrote on the topic awhile back - http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=133735

@LorenMcDonald
VP, Industry Relations
Silverpop