#sendtimes

The goal of email marketing is to have your message read by as many people as possible and, with a little luck, getting those people to click through to a website where they can learn more about what you're offering and, for a lot of industries, make a purchase or accept an invitation.

Statistically (and as Entrepreneur depicts in this clever infographic), the top minds in email marketing will tell you 10 a.m. on a Tuesday. However, it's important to decipher a bit more information about just what it is that you're doing before simply walking away and scheduling a launch time.

There are a number factors at play when ascertaining what may be the best time. When beginning to pinpoint a time, it's important to first consider the following:

Who's in my audience (in email marketing terms, your "recipient list")?

What kind of email am I sending?

What am I hoping to achieve with this email?

There's a plethora of benchmarks and studies available online to help sort through the madness and find what works best for your brand or business. We’ll walk through a bit of it below to help you arrive at a time and day of the week that could net the best results by knowing what to consider. Our team at Twisted Rope has thrown in some knowledge they’ve learned in sending thousands of emails on behalf of clients.

WHO'S IN MY AUDIENCE?

We're throwing a lot of questions in your face in this article, but this is the most important.

Here are some things to look at right off the bat:

Is my recipient list made up of folks familiar with my brand or am I reaching out to a group of potential customers (i.e., "leads")?

Are my recipients receiving emails via their work email address (an address that includes a business domain) or a personal email address (an address where the domain is Gmail, Yahoo or one of the many other free email clients available for common use)?

Does my list include a pool of contacts in the same time zone, nearby time zones (like the four in the U.S.) or are they scattered around the world in varying time zones?

“Best-in-breed email programs should regularly evaluate their deployment times,” the consumer credit reporting agency Experian wrote in a report. “Since the optimal time to mail customers is not a static concept, optimal mailing time often depends upon your customers’ behaviors, inbox crowding and the deployment times of marketers.”

Open rates are highest on weekends for consumers, while, for business-to-business emailing, Tuesday mornings are considered optimal. Before mobile devices revolutionized the email industry and put an inbox in a person’s fingertips nearly all hours of the day, scheduling launches between 8 and 10 a.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays were the steadfast standard. The quick adoption of smartphones changed things, giving marketers a new wild, wild west to conquer.

Newer data shows 40 percent of people check their phone within a few minutes of waking up each morning. Another 30 percent take a final look minutes before heading to bed.

“With consumers constantly active on their mobile devices, especially outside of standard 9-to-5 working hours spent at an office desktop, testing sends outside the traditional morning hours is essential,” wrote Vertical Response, a company operating an email marketing platform used to grow businesses.

If the list of contacts you’re sending to are loyal to your brand, there’s a lot more flexibility in when you can send. These folks are likely to open your email regardless of when it may appear at the top of their inbox. If the list is made up of new customers or contacts, however, it would make more sense to send at one of the more universally-optimal times as your brand or company begins to build credibility and a following.

By that same token, it’s not a bad idea to “split up” a contact list into more than one grouping and experiment a little by then sending the divided lists at different times. One list could have the long-time recipients, while another could have the new crew. Taking it a step further to divvy it up by time zones could also net better results by sending to recipients in different parts of the world at the most optimal time for the recipients themselves.

If your list or lists include mainly work email addresses for recipients, sending at an optimal time for the business world makes much more sense than sending in the evening when the email could fall below a stack of others the recipient sees upon arriving in the office the next morning. Likewise, for recipients with generic email addresses, their evening time when they are home after a long day at work, relaxing and binging the latest Netflix-obsession would likely be favorable time to catch their attention.

WHAT AM I SENDING AND WHAT AM I HOPING TO ACHIEVE?

Finally, let's take a look back at our real goal. In a perfect world, what type of email are we sending and what are we hoping people do if they open it? Do we want recipients to click to go to a website and learn more about a topic, check out what’s on sale, take a survey or perhaps register for an event? Sticking to what the studies for suggested send times in particular business niches tends to be the best way to go about it.

But, all this, really, just brings us to our last point …

DO WHAT WORKS BEST FOR YOU!

Experimenting and seeing what works best in actual practice for a brand or company over a sustained period of time will give you data to work with and, conversely, work around.

While some studies focus on the best day of the week or the best time, others suggest avoiding the peak times and focusing, instead, on when a recipient’s inbox may be receiving fewer messages.

The real truth behind this imperfect science is it’s best to test, workshop how your company or brand may be going about email marketing, refine, retool, take subject lines into account and keep at it.

What's the worst time to send an email?  Well, that's a topic for another day …

Hit Send, by the Twisted Rope email marketing team, takes an inside look at a variety of facets on the email marketing spectrum as well as industry trends. Learn how your business or brand can optimize its email marketing initiatives by contacting [email protected].

LEARN MORE

Explore these links to learn more about the send times, days and best practices.

CoSchedule analyzes 10 different studies to try to find consensus send times and dates

HubSpot examines what works best in getting recipients to take action