As an e-business owner, email campaigns surely play a significant role in increasing your revenue numbers. However, you must be wondering when is the best time to send email campaigns to ensure you capture a large pool of audiences. Well, we may just have the ultimate answer to your question, no matter your customer niche or demographics.
Factors To Consider When Determining The Best Time To Send Email Campaigns
Before you begin to determine when is the best time to send email campaigns to your customers, you must consider the factors that define the success of the campaigns. You mustn’t only consider the customer group you are dealing with but also the type of campaign you intend to send.
In general, these are factors to consider:
👉 Customer niche/subscribers, i.e. young, old, single mothers, corporates, military, etc.
👉 Type of campaigns you are sending
For example, according to ActiveCampaign, instant messages are sent instantaneously in response to a trigger event, no matter the time. These emails may be in the form of welcome or confirmation emails. However, other email types such as delays in the form of reminders, promotions, or newsletters should be sent at a specific time to ensure high open rates.
Whilst the factors are worth considering, other elements play a role in determining the right time. However, before you start banging your head on the table, we are not going to confuse you anymore. We’ll just break down the basics to help you understand the key factors in determining the best time to send email campaigns. The rest will come out naturally.
The Best Day Of The Week to Send Email Campaigns
According to research conducted by GetResponse and Customer.io on the best day to send email campaigns, the most popular days to send emails are Tuesdays and Thursdays. Studies conducted by MailChimp support the data as they also show increasing email open rates on Tuesdays, followed by Thursdays.
You must be asking yourself why Tuesday? Well, you must remember that whilst most of these platforms share data based on their customer’s activity, their response is still very similar – so there must be a reason behind. According to researchers from GetResponse, Tuesdays and Thursdays receive more open rates due to their position in the week.
Both days offer a somewhat stable environment for many email users, by Tuesday, people have already settled back in work and the relaxed lingering weekend hangover is worn off by then. Your customer’s attention is back to work thus, enhancing their focus and articulation. During the start of the week on Monday, people are just returning to work. They are bombarding with missed emails during the weekend and busy start-of-the –week meetings.
Chances that they would have time to go through marketing emails are quite low. For Thursday, the energy is the same as on Tuesday. Many people are starting to wrap up at work, thus, they focus on getting all the affairs handled before the end of the week. Whilst you may get some customer activity on Friday, it is normally a more lax day with people looking forward to the start of the weekend thus, having very little to no productivity at all.
In some cases, however, we’ve seen that customers, especially from GetResponse and MailChimp, show high open rates on Saturdays as well. This factor may fall into the customer niche group. Whilst some customers are more likely to open their emails on Saturdays, others may not. Additionally, another factor may be that in general fewer emails are sent out over the weekend.
Thus, people are more likely to access their emails just to be on top of their affairs. The fact that emails are fewer makes them more likely to open most emails that land in their inboxes. The interesting part is that with most data presented from different email marketing platforms, the graphing curves tend to be similar – which proves that whilst platforms are different, customer behavior is the same.
The Best Time Of The Day to Send Email Campaigns
According to data from Mailchimp and GetResponse, the best time to send email campaigns is 6 am, 10 am, 2 pm, and 8 pm. During these times, most platforms have seen a significant rise in the open rates curve.
🕒 At 6 am, most people begin to access their emails whilst at 10 am, this curve repeats itself as it is believed that it is the time where people begin to settle in their workplace and focus on the desk work.
🕒 At 10 am, small morning meetings, coffee breaks, and all the meager hustles of the morning have passed.
🕒 At 2 pm, people return to their emails, this is after lunch or another afternoon business. Thus, they return to their inboxes for a new wave of email correspondence or to even check up on replies from emails they sent earlier.
🕒 At around 8 pm, this is believed that most people are checking their emails before turning in to bed.
What Does Existing Data Say
So far, we’ve analyzed data from studies such as GetResponse research on the best time to send emails, MailChimp’s insights on send-time optimization, ActiveCampaign’s best time to send email campaigns, and customer.io research on the best day to send an email. For both these studies, the answer to the best time to send email campaigns is Tuesday at 10 am.
Conclusion
Whilst the recommendations from these platforms are useful and accurate, it doesn’t have to necessarily reflect your business. After all, many of us believe that you can never get a hang of a concept until you try or practice it. The good news is that whatever email marketing platform you opt to choose, you can always have access to reporting metrics.
Some platforms like Klaviyo also try to make it easier for you by having built-in features to send the email at the right time.
So, whilst you take the recommendation from the research conducted by these platforms, you can conduct your very own research and compare your metrics to find out the best time to send email campaigns in relation to your business, campaign type, and customer niche.