The Best Time to Send an Email [Research]

Here’s a little exercise for you: Check the timestamps on the emails you’ve gotten in the past day. What have you found? For me, I noticed that most of my emails, especially my subscription emails, were sent between 9-10 AM, or 5-6 PM.

This isn’t a coincidence, either.

While the answer to “What’s the perfect time to send an email to my customers?” isn’t an exact science, there are some key findings we’ve discovered through heavy research, and those times listed above are right in line with what we found. Keep reading to find out the best time to send an email, according to our findings.

When is the best time to send an email?

We surveyed over 300 U.S. email marketers and found the majority reported the highest engagement for their marketing emails occurred between 9 AM to 12 PM and 12 PM to 3 PM.

The data reflects when most audiences begin their day and throughout the afternoon.

If you’re sending emails that include a sale or promotion, try sending them during the times your audience tends to take their lunch breaks simply because they may be more likely to check their emails at this time.

If you want something more specific when it comes to what time and day you should send an email, here’s what you need to know:

In our survey, we asked marketers which day of the week their marketing emails get the most engagement. 22.6% of U.S. marketers said Monday, 24.9% said Tuesday, and 21.3% of U.S. marketers said Wednesday.

When we asked those same marketers which time of day their emails get the most engagement we found that 34.9% said 9 AM to 12 PM and 27.6% said 12 PM to 3 PM.

From this data, it looks like the best days for seeing engagement fall during the first three days of the workweek, particularly between 9 AM and 3 PM.

For example, to send a customer an incentive, such as gift card from Rybbon, they are more likely to see it during that time. 

Keeping your audience in mind is a good tip for figuring out the time to send your emails. If your buyer persona is a professional with a nine-to-five job, sending emails during their ideal downtimes is the best. 

You can also use tools like postal.io to retain customers and boost leads.

Why Email Matters For Your Business

In our survey, we found that 85.4% of marketers leverage automation as part of their email marketing strategy. Therefore, if you aren’t leveraging automated email marketing your competition probably is.

Automated email marketing provides a chance for you to improve sales conversions — maybe even by 14%. It’s a way to send customers unique offers — such as product sales or newsletters updates — with information your reader can’t get anywhere else.

Emails should be personalized with what your customers want to see, allowing you to communicate with them instantly. Your emails should contain information your customers are interested in learning more about — such as discount offers, business updates, or product or service launches.

HubSpot‘s marketing email tool allows users to create and send automated emails for free. It also gives you the option to schedule your emails according to the preferences you’ve set. Then, your emails will be sent to the list(s) of contacts you select.

When you reach this option in your automated email tool, you probably spend some time wondering when exactly your audience would like to receive your email, especially if it includes a limited-time offer. You want to make sure the highest number of customers possible are reading your emails.

How to Measure the Performance of Your Email Sends

If you’re wondering about the best time to send a marketing email, there’s something you should know first. There’s a lot of data out there on the subject that provides differing answers, and one reason is that it depends on your audience and — more importantly — how you’re measuring success.

For example, the best time for people to open your emails could differ from the best time for people to take action. Here is a breakdown of the most important email metrics:

Click-Through Rate

Click-through rate refers to the number of people who open a link or image in an email. This number will always be smaller than the total number of emails opened since some people will open your email but then abandon it without engaging with it any further.

52.2% of the marketers we surveyed reported increasing click-through rates to be the primary goal of their email marketing campaign. When asked to select up to three strategies that are most effective in improving click-through rates, 48.2% of respondents included email personalization, 36.5% included crafting effective subject lines, and 38.2% included providing value through marketing emails.

Click-to-Open Rate

When comparing the number of people that opened your email and the number that clicked on any links, that data is called click-to-open rate. This metric helps you identify which information in your emails is relevant to consumers. Finding CTOR is done by diving CTR by the open rate and multiplying it by 100%. For example, if your email receives 200 clicks and 120 opens, your click-to-open rate is 60%.

Open Rate

The open rate, then, is the percentage found from the number of subscribers who opened your email campaign. Emails that have great open rates have short, effective subject lines. Plus, they’re optimized for previews and preheader text.

Best Time to Send B2B Emails

It’s important to note that 47.9% of the B2B marketers we surveyed reported the most engagement between 9 AM and 12 PM.

To ensure you’re reaching your target audience, you’ll want to segment your B2B audience down even further — perhaps by job function or seniority — to accommodate different behaviors and modes of working with your email sends. You may even find that other times work better for your list

Best Time to Send B2C Emails

In our survey, 30.9% of the B2C marketers reported the most engagement between 9 AM and 12 PM. Keep in mind that studies differ, consumer behavior is always changing, and performance varies based on which metric you’re using as your ultimate goal.

Continue experimenting and seeing what works best with your audience. One way to do this is by using an automation tool like Seventh Sense which will fine-tune your email sends using artificial intelligence.

Email marketing can be a tricky process . There are so many industries taking advantage of it in their own way and making an impact.

Your subscribers are already interested in your content. They appreciate what you are offering as a company, and as long as you’re sending them emails that relate to that, you have a good chance of obtaining great metrics.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.