When is the best time to send email newsletters?

What open rate do your email newsletters get? 5%? 2%? .2?

You can increase the number of people who open your email newsletter by controlling the time and day that you send it.

When Are People Opening Their Emails?

A recent analysis of over a billion emails and found that in terms of email volume, Tuesday and Thursday are the busiest days in the week and email opens increased after 12 PM, peaking between 2 PM and 5 PM. Email open rates dropped during weekends.

Source: http://econsultancy.com/blog/62688-six-case-studies-and-infographics-on-the-optimal-time-to-send-emails

Thursday Is Good But 5PM Is Bad.

Get Response analysed 21 million emails sent in the US during the first quarter of 2012, and it found that Thursday is the peak of inbox traffic – percentage sent, open rates and click through rates (CTR). Email opens dropped slightly on weekends but CTR dropped drastically compared to its peak on Thursday. This means that if you send an email on Thursday, your customers are more likely to click on a link and go to your website.

Source: http://econsultancy.com/blog/62688-six-case-studies-and-infographics-on-the-optimal-time-to-send-emails

Get Response reports that 23.63% of all email opens occur within the first hour after delivery – in theory. However, in reality, life can interrupt this ‘normality’. For instance, when an email is sent at around 5 PM, most people are stuck in traffic. By 6 PM, they’re having dinner and by 7 PM, they are busy with their kids. After 8 PM people return to their emails. By this time, the emails sent at 5 PM have less than 5% chance of being opened.

Get Response propose that the perfect time to send out email marketing is 9 AM. This means you need to be aware of time zone differences. When it’s 9 AM in New York, it’s 6 AM in California, it’s 3 AM in Honolulu, 2 PM in London and 11 PM in Sydney. To ensure that your email campaign gets to your recipients at exactly the same local time in any part of the world, use time travel scheduling based on time zone segmentation.

Afternoons Are King

Experian also suggests that afternoons are better. It found that email open rates averaged 21.7% from 8 PM to 11:59 PM and 17.6% for 12 AM to 4 AM. The afternoon period before 4pm also had the highest click through rates of all times during the day.

What Works For Your Audience?

Even though it may be tempting to just follow the crowd on when to send out an email, the only real way that one can measure accurately what time of day is perfect for sending email marketing online is to run different tests.

Attempt an experiment and divide your list up into random groups. Send each group the same newsletter but at different times and on different days. Track your results and you can approximate when it is best to send your newsletters and other marketing campaign materials. Always remember that what may work for one business does not automatically mean that it will work for yours.

When do you send your emails for maximum exposure? If you want someone else to run some tests to find out when is the best time to send an email, contact Complete Cloud.

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