After last week’s post about email personalization, I had lots of questions and DMs about when IS the best time to send emails, if not Tuesday at 10 am.
GREAT QUESTION!
Unfortunately, the answer is not as easy. There are a few factors that you need to consider!
At The Yellow House, we are known for taking a data approach to every task. So it is no surprise that this blog starts with looking at your past data and goes further into industry data! From there, you need to infer what will work best for your target audience in your niche, combined with AWESOME email content to really ensure you deliver email ROI.
What does your email data tell you?
The first place to start is in your past send history. Look into historical open rates, click throughs and conversions. If your past send time was always Tuesday at 10 am or you are new to sending emails, start sending at different times and testing. Run some A/B tests to compare performance. That being said,
Generally you will want to look at earlier in the morning, lunch, or after work, as these are the most popular times to check mail. And test multiple days during the week.
The main goal is to hit the top of their inbox when they are reading. Some Email Service Provider (ESP) will help you optimize this.
What is your industry, and target persona?
The ideal email send time also varies based on WHO you are sending it to. Are they B2B emails? B2C? Who is the target customer? An executive? An account administrator? A project manager? Well, it all depends.
From my research across many sources, I have found the following:
B2B mid-level employees:
- Midweek, lunch time
B2B executives and entrepreneurs
- Saturday morning
For B2C, there is not a lot of variance. In general Friday’s are performing better than ever before. Thursday’s score high on open rates and Saturday’s score high on open to click. So, it depends what you want to accomplish!
That all being said, if you can invest in a solution that optimizes send time, they will deliver the email to your recipient at the time they are most likely to read it.
So, let’s generalize!
According to Campaign Monitor’s Ultimate Email Marketing Benchmarks for 2021: By Industry and Day, in general, the highest click-to-open rates are:
10 AM at 21%, 1 PM at 22%, and spike at near 6 PM.
This data reflects when most audiences begin or conclude their day and have the most time to check their emails.
When to AVOID Sending:
Maybe a better way to look at this question, is to examine when NOT to send emails! Campaign Monitor, also provided some great stats on this subject:
- Worst day with lowest email open rates: Saturday (17.3%)
- Worst days with lowest click-through rates: Saturday (2.4%)
- Worst day with lowest click-to-open rates: Tuesday (13.5%)
At the end of the day, you can test. That is what marketing is all about. Take the data above and apply it to your use case and do you best to employ various techniques to improve email subjects and content. Because you can send your email at the best time, but it may not land if the content is not optimized.
How to improve your email open rate:
As a reminder, from last week’s article, there are always lots of areas to optimize to ensure your email delivers the best ROI!
- Be aware of your audience's preferred communication channel (e.g. text, email, social media. etc.)
- Create a welcome series that clearly communicates expectations
- Personalize the experience based on available data
- Test subject lines, images and copy with A/B testing
- Employ remarketing pixels
- Get serious about your data collection and invest and gather more data to inform marketing efforts
Now, let's open this up for debate and perform our own survey. When do you get the best email open rates?
