If you are like me you have your work and personal emails sent right to your phone.
Which means each morning I wake up to 20ish new email newsletters from companies.
It is a little overwhelming.
So they immediately get deleted, never to be read or clicked on.
All that work that a company put into the content and email marketing were wasted. Just because they choose a poor time to send that email to their audience.
And I am guessing that you have the same ritual each day.
This led me to wonder what would be the ideal time to send an email newsletter.
So I set out to find when the best time to send an email newsletter is, in the most scientific way ever … by signing up for 100 different newsletters and recording all of their send times. These were newsletters from The New York Times, Buzzfeed, Tim Ferris, Entrepreneur on Fire and many more.
Let’s just say I cast a wide net when signing up for newsletters, which led my inbox to virtually explode over the next month. From that massive data set, I picked 500 email newsletters for this study and recorded the date and times they were sent at.
This is just a brief intro to the study but what I found is definitely going to surprise you.
In the full article, I outline the best and worst times to send an email. Also, we select the perfect day to send an email newsletter.
#1. From 2-3 PM
In my opinion, the best time to send an email is when no other companies are sending it. I mean why would you want to be fighting with other emails and newsletters for attention.
That immediately decreases the chance that your email is going to be seen. And you will see a drastic slip in open rates pretty quickly. Or even worse, people will unsubscribe because they are overwhelmed.
Like I have done multiple times.
That is why I selected from 2-3PM as the best time to send your newsletter.
Not a single email was sent over a month during that time period. This is a great opportunity for your email newsletter to take advantage of. There will be no other emails, or very little, for it to compete for attention with.
It is perfect! And Mailchimp seems to agree. Plus it is during that mid-afternoon lull that every office has, so your audience will be looking for a distraction. And boom, your email is to save them.
#2. From 9-11AM
If you have a fear of being the only person to send an email during a certain time block, there are some options for you. Well, actually there are two hour-long time blocks that you can choose.
In our study, there was only 1 email send during both the 9-10AM and 10-11AM time block.
Because these time periods are back to back you can start testing between the two and then dial in a perfect time for your customers.
I think that this is another great time to send an email newsletter. Especially if you are sending them something related to their job. Also if you send something on a normal work day it will definitely be seen.
Your audience has already gone through all their emails from the day or night before and they are at inbox zero by this point. They have settled into their desk and are sipping on their coffee. Not deep into a project yet, but also not completely distracted by something small. And your newsletter pops up at the perfect time.
I mean if this were me I would definitely read the email. It is the little distraction I need at that time of day.
#3. From 12-1PM
This is another time period in which just a few emails were sent like in the previous section. Now it is not as solid as one where no emails were sent, it is still pretty good. You will be catching your audience at in a somewhat relaxed state as well.
The third best new time period that I found is from 12-1PM.
There were only two emails out of the hundreds we looked at sent during this period. As you can see, that is a fraction of what some of the other busy times.
Unlike the other times I have given you, this could be a bit risky. People may be extra annoyed to get a newsletter during lunch. But it also can have a huge reward.
Especially if you are sending them a newsletter that deals with a hobby or something they enjoy doing. It is a great opportunity and could put them in a better mood for the rest of the day. Plus they will hopefully connect that good feeling with getting your newsletter. And actually look forward to it each week!
BONUS: The Worst Time To Send Your Email
You already have read what the are best times to send an email, but that is only one side of the coin. To send a successful newsletter you also should know when the worst time to send an email is. And after looking at all of the data for this article I was able to see a pretty clear pattern.
Sending your emails when your users are asleep is a bad idea. You are going to be fighting with a ton of other emails for their attention. We saw that almost 60% of all emails were sent inbetween 9PM and 6AM.
Or, well, when most people are asleep. Not to mention they probably don’t want to be reading about marketing automation at 6 in the morning. So your great newsletter will be either ignored or sent to the trash pretty quickly.
I recommend picking one of the times I outlined above and avoid sending your emails during the night.
Conclusion
Now that we made it to the end of this study, I need to go unsubscribe to 100 or so newsletters. My inbox is a mess. Although this was a brief overview of the study, you can see the rest of what I found on Venngage Infographics.
In the full article I explain why:
- From 2-3PM is the perfect time to send an email
- You should never send a newsletter on a Tuesday
- Sending emails in the early morning is bad
- And more!
Check out the full post here if you want to learn more about email marketing.
