Section 6 When is the Best Day—and Time—to Send Your Marketing E‐Mails?

The problem with attempting to define “best practices” in online marketing is
that different marketers often get wildly different results, making it difficult to
establish definitive rules.

For instance, I recently did an informal survey asking top e‐mail marketers this
simple question: what day of the week, and time of day, should we send e‐mail
marketing messages to our list to get the best click‐through and conversion rates?

“Different people will give you different answers to this question,” says online
copywriter and site optimization specialist Nick Usborne. “But in truth, there is
no ‘best’ day of the week for e‐mailing. Itʹs something of an urban myth.
Individual e‐mailers need to find the answer by testing.”

According to the MarketingSherpa E‐mail Marketing Benchmark Guide 2007, the
volume of daily e‐mail traffic, from busiest day of the week to least busy, is as
follows: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Monday, Sunday, and
Saturday. Stefan Tornquist of Marketing Sherpa adds, “When we periodically
check this, it’s usually a horserace for first between Tuesday and Wednesday,
with Thursday falling just behind them.”

“The most popular and busiest day of the week for e‐mail is Tuesday,” says
Nick. “But some argue that this is a bad day, simply because your e‐mail has so
much competition for attention from other e‐mailers. “The least busy day is
Saturday. So some would say itʹs a great day to send your e‐mail. But itʹs the
least busy day for a reason: millions of people are out

shopping, spending time with their kids, enjoying life, and not checking their
email.

“As for best time of day, I have never come across any data on that. But intuitive
ly, I would start by sending B2B e‐mails at the beginning of the work day, and B2
C e‐mails when people have gotten home from work.

“But thatʹs just intuition. The only way to find out for a particular list is by
testing open rates and conversion rates at different times of day. Also, keep in
mind that when you e‐mail your list at 9am EST in New York City, itʹs 6am in
Los Angeles, and 2pm in London.”

“We have tested different days of the week and have found that Tuesday
performs best for us,” says Josef Katz of Trump University. “Weekends did not
perform well, though we thought they might.

“Thursdays are not bad either but Tuesday seems to work best for our business.
We try to get our e‐mail out early in the day but have not tested day parts in our
efforts. Naturally, we always room to improve and test.”

Ivan Levison, a copywriter in the software industry, comments: “I donʹt send
marketing e‐mails out on Monday. People are back from the weekend and get
ing back in gear. Iʹm not a fan of Friday either, because they are thinking about
wrapping up for the weekend, and I believe are less prone to take action or take
the decision to others.

His favorite days for sending marketing e‐mails: Tuesday, Wednesday, and
Thursday. As for time of day, the California‐based Levison says, “Not first thing.
By 10:30am PST, every one on the West coast is in and has gone through their
e‐mail already, and on the East coast theyʹre just back from lunch. I think this
makes sense, though I have no test results to back this up.”

“We’ve found that the best schedule for us is to send stand alone efforts on
Tuesday mornings, and then a quick ‘in case you missed this’ kind of follow‐up
note on Fridays at mid‐day,” says Katie Yeakle, director of the American Writers
and Artists, Inc.

“Our assumption is that Tuesdays are good, because Mondays are typically such
busy e‐mail days for most people. Fridays are good, because most of us like to
clear out our in‐boxes, and tie up loose ends, before the weekend starts.”

For Patrick Coffey at Early to Rise (ETR), Friday e‐mails actually outperform
Tuesday. Sales start to trend upward on Thursday and top with Friday, then
drop off on Sunday.

“In the past, we thought the best day for mailing to our list was Tuesday mid
morning,” says Patrick. “However, after reviewing our ad sales over the past
year, we discovered that Friday is actually our best day. This definitely shows
you why you need to be constantly evaluating and re‐evaluating.”
Here are ETR’s daily sales shown as a percentage of the total weekly revenues:

•Monday—14.3%.
•Tuesday—13.2%.
•Wednesday—13.8%.
•Thursday—16.6%.
•Friday—23.1%.
•Saturday—13.6%.
•Sunday—5.4%.

“I do have some theories as to why this happens,” he says. “As we start to ap
proach the weekend, people become less focused at work and need a break. So
they’ll take the time to read a personal e‐mail or browse the Web.

“On the other hand Sunday is clearly our worst day. I believe this is caused by
Sunday being a day for people to spend time with their family and run errands.
Another factor could be that fact that many of our Christian readers are attend
ing mass when our message hits their inbox on Snday mornings.”

“I typically send my e‐mails out at 2pm EST on Thursdays or Sundays,” says In
ternet marketer Paul Hartunian. “My rationale is that if I send out at 2pm on
Thursday, people on the East coast get them at 2pm and on the West coast at 11
am, both well within the work day. So the people are not inundated with early
morning e‐mail or wanting to wrap up the day and get out of the office. On
Sundays, the same applies, but people are more at leisure.”

Robert Skrob, director of membership services at the Information Marketing Association
(IMA), is an exception to the “no Mondays” rule.

“Our marketing e‐mails go out on Mondays,” he says. “If I get busy, I donʹt
mind sending them out on a Tuesday. However, I donʹt bother sending anyth
ing on Thursdays and Fridays, my response is minimal on those days.”

These e‐mails are distributed in the afternoon—
after 2pm EST and 11am PT. “I hate having my messages lumped in with the
overnight spam deluge,” he says. “That way, everyone has an opportunity to get
their e‐mail box cleaned out and get into transactional mode. Our e‐mails arrive
at a time when the recipient is dealing with important issues of the day.” One
exception: when sending prospects to a landing page to hear an audio presenta
tion over the Internet, Skrob has found that Sunday mornings get a 3 times high
er opt‐in rate. “Iʹm guessing my prospects have more leisure time to review their
e‐mail, and listening to my presentation is a nice diversion for their day,” he
notes. “The ratio of listeners to buyers stays consistent, so more opt‐ins on Sun
days has meant more sales.” Bob Martel of JMB Marketing Group says: “Iam
sure that in some industries minutes matter and timing is crucial. I manage several
Constant Contact e-mail campaigns for clients and, in general, we schedule e-mails for
Tuesday or Wednesday delivery, after 10am EST in most cases.

“Time limited, direct response special offers to a house list work at all hours any day of
the week. A lot depends on who you are trying to reach, consumers or people in the
workplace, and the overall purpose of the communication. Is there a time sensitive call to action?”

Martel notes that the Internet is a 24/7 environment, even for the 9-5 employee. “I find
that while it used to be true that marketing-driven e-mails needed to be very carefully timed, or so we thought, people are reading e-mails at all hours of the day and late into
the night,” he says. “Sunday nights are very active, as telecommuters clean the slate for
the upcoming work week.”
Michelle Feit of list broker ePost Direct says she focuses on the times within
each day when the marketer is most likely to find the executive receptive, un
cluttered, and at their desk. Her guidelines for B2B e‐mail distribution:

•Donʹt be in the inbox first thing in the morning or after lunch when most of the
e‐mail clutter exists.
•Stay away from major vacation weeks when people will most likely be out of
the office—Christmas week, July 4th week, etc.
•Fridayʹs are fine except afternoon in the summer.
•Avoid Monday mornings. People are trying to finish up last week’s tasks, and
weekends create the most e‐mail clutter.

“Best practices say to e-mail Tuesdays or Wednesdays, early in the morning, for
marketing messages,” says Dwain Jeworski, Marketing Director, Strategic Profits

“But we send later in the day, and on any day, as our audience is worldwide.

“Saturdays have become a great day for us, as people have time on the weekend to read
what we are sending, and also because the e-mail market follows the best practice rule of
weekday mornings except Friday—leaving the weekend quiet for e-mail.”

Conclusions: Best days for e‐mail marketing are Tuesday, Wednesday, and
Thursday, in that order. Time of day is not as critical as day of the week, especial
ly with an audience in multiple time zones. But e‐mailing around the lunch hour
East coast USA time seems safe.

When using e‐mail marketing to drive traffic to landing pages with long audio or
video messages, test e‐mailing on the weekend. Test alternate times and days,
weekends include, for your other e‐mail marketing campaigns as well.