In this article, the team at AtomPark Software, will share with you their analysis of the expert opinions, existing examples, and tools that will help you to define the perfect day and time of sending email campaigns.

Time is money, especially in email marketing. Are you sure you don’t waste yours?

We don’t.

At AtomPark Software, we don’t only develop mass email marketing solutions but also send newsletters to our subscribers, so the problem of mailing time is highly important for us too.

That’s why we’ve put together this guide to “the best time for sending email newsletters”. In this article, we will share with you our analysis of expert opinions, existing examples, and tools that will help you to define the best day and time for sending your email campaigns.

What influences the time of sending bulk emails?

The most important aspect in sending a newsletter is whether the message will be noticed and opened or not. This is a crucial factor for the other metrics and the success of the campaign — will your efforts be in vain or not?

There are several factors that influence the choice of the optimal time of mass mailing. You should consider them when scheduling the time of your email campaigns:

• the geographical position of your subscribers,
• their culture timing specific (eg. work days & hours)
• online behavior,
• the specifics of your business.

According to the chronological principle of mailbox sorting, your newsletter will be on the top of the inbox or on the bottom — a place in the top increases the chances of the newsletter being opened by the recipient. The lower your newsletter in the inbox list — the greater its chances of being lost.

When to start a bulk email campaign: Follow the sun tactics

Do you have a super system that automatically sends emails based on the user’s online activity? We don’t.

That’s why we choose the “following the sun tactics”.

This means that the basis for the countdown of mass mailing should be the time when the sun rises in its geographic location.

It is important if your email list has IP addresses of people from different countries and time zones.

Following the sun tactics hack

The majority of marketers choose to launch email campaigns’ in the minutes of the hour  _:00 and such times as __: 30 or __: 45.

Sending your emails on these hours, you risk your emails being postponed because of the workload on Internet providers.

The best variant is to send in the quiet minutes, such as:

What time to choose: stand out or go the trodden path?

How great it would be to remove all the guesswork and get the exact answer!

After analyzing popular studies, we have defined the top moments to start mass mailing your campaigns:

Among the majority of marketers, the most appropriate variants are the second and the third. Let’s define the reasons why.

In fact, the choice boils down to:

1. Send emails during peak hours, when the majority do
   • advantages — people are ready to perceive information from emails
   • disadvantages — high competition rate, a newsletter has fewer chances of being open and read.
2. Send at a time when no one does
   • advantages — more chances that your email will be noticed and read
   • disadvantages — most often, people are sleeping or busy at this time

The best time to send emails out according to Newsletter Stats

The goal of your campaign is highly important in the process of choosing the best email sending time.

Here is the list of the most popular email newsletter goals:

• Open Rate
• Click Rate
• Response

If your goal is high open rate the best time to send is 10:00 — 11:00 am:

Remember about the quiet minutes.

• A recent MailChimp study found that the optimal email send time is 10 am:

• HubSpot’s variant (based on Open Rate indicator) — 11 am:

But it differs on Sunday:

• Otherwise, the research of MailerMailer finds out that the best time for a high Open Rate is 12:00 am, and the worst is at 12 pm:

The best time to get a high Click Rate is in the evening:

This is because people are not in a hurry and can take more time for their mailbox.

According to Yesware’s analysis if you want to get a response from the person, it’s better to send an email campaign in the early morning or evening:

What day is the best for sending emails?

So, we figured out the perfect sending time, what about the perfect day?

Let’s start with what day is the most popular for sending newsletters among marketers.

This GetResponse survey says that the top sending day among email marketers is Tuesday and Thursday.

What does it mean for you?

1. On these days, people are most likely to read emails. Therefore, the chances of a positive perception of your offer increase.
2. However, it also means that in the subscriber’s mailbox apart to your newsletter, there will be 50-100 other emails. So, there is a high risk that your message will go unnoticed.

Thus, there are two options: either you send campaigns along with everyone, risking to get lost in the mailbox, or go against the rules and send on less popular days.

If you choose the second way (to go against the “email crowd”), these are results of a rebill.me survey. The colorful one is the “calm days”, most appropriate for email sending:

If you prefer to follow a proven path, here is a table that will help you to navigate choosing the best mass mailing day in accordance with your primary goal:

However, there are always exceptions to the rule.

For example, Dan Zarella’s research “The Science of Marketing” shows that the perfect days to get high Click & Open Rates are weekends.

Let’s summarize the results

• Want your email to be opened — send during daytime, mid-week.
• Want to get an answer — send in the evening on weekends.
• Want clicks — send in the evening at the end of the work week — Thursday, Friday.

Follow/go against the general tactics or find the time that will work best exactly for your business.

Real life examples of Email Time scheduling strategies

If you don’t want to rely on the stats — read these cases of how e-commerce brands found their perfect sending time:

• The Carney Digital Agency sends promotional emails between 8 pm – 10 pm or at 7 am.
  Why: As a result of the A/B testing and survey “When would you prefer to get emails?”.
• Jumpanzee Web-Design Agency found that 10am — 1pm emails work the best.
  Why: This time was chosen as the best based on the users’ activity in the previous email campaigns (open rate/click rate/etc.).
• HealthJoy.com — the All-in-One Health Benefits Platform, chosen Tuesday’s morning (10 am) as a common time to send b2b email campaigns.
  Why: with the help of A/B tests, they checked the efficiency of the marketing studies results for the health care field. It showed that Tuesday morning campaigns have the best conversions.
• Campaign Creators Advertising Agency marketing team used to inform their email subscribers on Sunday after 5 pm.
  Why: this time was chosen after testing their blog, promotions email subscriptions.

• Espresso B2B Marketing Agency relies on the experts’ reports and sends campaigns on Tuesdays, Wednesday or Thursdays.

If you already have an email list, you can start running tests within your email service provider to find exactly what works for your audience.

If you don’t know your audience well enough or don’t have an email list to test — try this:

There isn’t a great difference between the followers of your brand on social networks and the email audience. So why not to analyze the activity time of the first one to implement it for the start of the mass mailing campaigns for the second.

Tools to help you find the best email sending time

Use these instruments to know the moment when your subscribers are the most likely to engage with your brand.

• Followerwonk tool — Just type your Twitter username in the search bar and find out when your Twitter followers are the most active for free (up to 25,000 followers).

For example, this chart shows that the AtomPark readers are the most active at 7pm:

• Use Facebook Page Statistics Data — open the “Statistics” tab of your brand account and go to the “Posts”:

As you can see, Facebook says our followers are the most active on Thursday between 4 pm and 7 pm.

Thus, we found that theoretically, Thursday evening could be a good time to test the time of sending mass email campaigns.

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Content Marketing Manager at AtomPark Software, company that provides professional mass email marketing solutions, tools for email and SMS marketing. A young voice of marketing progress, obsessed with a creative copywriting, design and experiments with new ideas and trends.