Here’s a little exercise for you: check the timestamps of the emails you received on the last day. What did you find? I noticed that most of my email, especially my subscription email, was sent between 9am and 10am or between 5pm and 6pm.
This is not a coincidence either.
While the answer to “When is the perfect time to send an email to my customers?“Is not an exact science, there are some important findings that we have discovered through extensive research, and the times listed above coincide exactly with those we have found. Read on to find out when we think we can best send an email.
Why email is important to your business
Automated email marketing gives you the opportunity to improve sales figures – possibly by as much as 14%. This allows you to send customers unique offers – like product sales or newsletter updates – with information your reader can’t get anywhere else.
Emails should be personalized with what your customers want to see so you can communicate with them right away. Your email should contain information that your customers want to know more about, such as: B. Discount offers, business updates, or product launches.
HubSpot’s marketing email tool allows users to create and send automated emails for free. You also have the option to schedule your emails according to the settings you have specified. Then your emails will be sent to the list (s) of contacts you selected.
When you hit this option in your automated email tool, you probably wonder for some time when exactly your target audience would like to receive your email, especially if it has a limited time offer. You want to make sure that as many customers as possible read your email.
How to measure the performance of your email deliveries
If you’re wondering when is the best time to send a marketing email, there is one thing you should know first. There is a lot of data on this subject that provides different answers. Part of the reason for this is that it depends on your audience and, most importantly, how you measure success.
For example, the best time for people to open your email may differ from the best time to take action. Here is a breakdown of the most important email metrics:
Click rate
The click-through rate refers to the number of people who open a link or a picture in an email. This number is always less than the total number of opened emails because some people open your email but then cancel it without looking at it.
Click-to-open rate
When comparing the number of people who opened your email and the number of people who clicked links, this data is known as the click-through rate. You can use this metric to determine what information in your email is relevant to consumers. Finding CTOR is done by dipping the CTR with the opening rate and multiplying by 100%. For example, if your email gets 200 clicks and 120 are opened, your CTR is 60%.
Opening rate
So the open rate is the percentage that results from the number of subscribers who have opened your email campaign. High open rate emails have short, effective subject lines. They are also optimized for previews and preheader text.
Best time to send emails
If you are sending emails that contain a sale or promotion, try to send them during the times when your target audience typically takes their lunch break just because they may be earlier to check their emails at that time.
If you want something more specific when it comes to what time and day to send an email, we’ve found some research-backed best practices.
The following numbers are from GetResponse, email marketing software that combed its data to produce a report on email marketing benchmarks. They analyzed 4 billion emails from 1,000 active senders.
When is the best time to send an email?
In general, the highest click-to-open rates are 10 a.m. at 21%, 1 p.m. at 22%, and peaks at almost 6 p.m. The data shows when most audiences start or finish their day and have the most time to read their emails.
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The highest line on the graph represents the opening rate. The purple line (i.e. the one below) represents the click-through rate to open it. Below that is the dark blue line for the click rate. The almost transparent data counts the number of messages sent in percent.
This is the best day to send by email. CampaignMonitor collected data from millions of emails used for their service. You are putting together the best day for data collection.
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From this data it can be seen that the best days for good success are during the work week. People mostly open and read emails in the middle of the week. Also note the lowest unsubscribe rate: at the beginning of the week.
Keeping an eye on your audience is a great tip for figuring out when to send your email. If your buyer personality is a professional with a job of nine to five, sending emails during ideal downtime is best. For example, HubSpot sends emails between 8 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. ET to suit our target audience’s daily routines.
The entrepreneur agrees with the general recommendations above, but further divides them by target group type:
Best time to send B2B emails
Studies suggest that for the average 8-5 office worker, B2B email is best sent around 10 a.m. in the middle of the week. However, entrepreneurs and executives open emails more often than the average employee, so the day of the week is less important. The best time for these people based on open and click rates is 10am on Saturday.
The big advantage here is that you want to segment your B2B target group even further, possibly by job function or seniority, in order to account for different behaviors and ways of working when working with your e-mails. You may even find that other times work better for your list.
B2B is great, but does the time that you send an email matter in marketing consumer and personal goods?
Best time to send B2C email
Studies suggest that there isn’t a huge difference in open rates for B2C emails on certain days of the week. However, Saturday at midnight works best for optimal performance.
Again, keep in mind that studies differ, consumer behavior is constantly changing, and performance varies based on the metric you use as an end goal. Keep experimenting and see what works best with your audience. One way to do this is by using an automation tool like Seventh Sense, which allows you to optimize your email broadcasts using artificial intelligence.
Email marketing can be a touchy subject. There are so many industries that are using and making an impact in their own way. How do you measure up?
Your subscribers are already interested in your content. They value what you offer as a company, and as long as you keep emailing them about it, chances are you will get great metrics.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in November 2019 and has been updated for completeness.