When is The Best Time to Send an Email Blast? (Days & Hours)

The best time to send an email campaign is on Tuesday or Thursday between the hours of 10:00 am and 3:00 pm.

While we can tell you the most optimal email send times based on research, the truth is that there are no hard and fast rules. The best email send time largely comes down to your industry and specific campaign goals.

In this guide, we’ll talk about the importance of email send time and factors to consider when choosing an email blast time for your list.

4 reasons why email send time matters

While most people have access to their inboxes 24/7 via their smartphone, timing your emails correctly is still important.

Here are four reasons why email send time shouldn’t be overlooked:

1. Increased open rates

Nailing the right email send time ensures that your campaigns will land in subscribers’ inboxes during peak email-checking times.

The goal is to match your subscriber’s routines when sending emails to catch them at the right moment of their day. Nailing this is one of the best ways to increase your open rate over time.

2. Improved click through rates

You don’t want people to just open your emails — you ideally want them to actually engage by clicking through to your website or promotional offer.

Timing your emails correctly can be the difference between:

• Subscribers clicking through to your website to make a purchase, learn more about your company, sign up for an event, etc.
• Your email getting lost in the sea of other emails in their inbox, never to be opened at all

To increase your CTR, you need to time your emails so they’re being opened while your subscribers are most likely to check their inboxes and able to take action.

3. Reduce subscriber email fatigue

On average, people receive around 121 emails per day. If you email too often or at inconvenient times, you could cause your subscribers to become fatigued and less likely to engage with you.

Well-timed email blasts are more likely to catch your subscribers when they’re most open to receiving email. This leads to a more engaged list with subscribers that are less likely to ignore or unsubscribe from your emails.

4. Reveals subscriber habits

When you nail your email send time and get more subscribers opening your campaigns, you’ll garner valuable information about your list.

For example, some of your subscribers may only interact with certain emails you send. Others may be only interested in a single product or service you offer.

All of this is data that you can use to further segment your subscriber list — ultimately boosting your CTR rate and increasing revenue.

Factors to consider when choosing an email blast time

Now, let’s break down the key factors you should consider when deciding on an ideal email blast time for your business.

Audience demographics

Factors like your target audience’s age, location, and occupation can have a great effect on the best time to send an email blast.

For example, if your audience is primarily based in the United States, you should avoid sending emails on Sundays as this isn’t a regular working day.

If you have a lot of subscribers in a specific time zone, you could cater your send time based on when their work day is starting.

Similarly, the best times to send emails can differ depending on whether you’re a B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer) company as these tend to have very different audiences.

For example, some B2C audiences may actually be more likely to check email after working hours than during.

The best thing you can do is leverage analytics to collect key data about your subscribers — everything from their location to behavior patterns — to decide when to send campaigns.

Industry best practices

Believe it or not, each industry has its own optimal email send time based on recent studies.

Most industries have similar “best send” days of the week, but the best hour to send campaigns varies depending on peak email-checking times for that type of business.

Here’s a breakdown of the best email send times by industry:

• Ecommerce: Tuesday or Thursday, 10:00 am
• Software/SaaS: Tuesday or Thursday, between 2:00 and 3:00 pm
• Marketing services: Wednesday, 4:00 pm
• Offline retail/hospitality: Thursday, between 8:00 and 10:00 am
• Professional services (B2B): Monday or Tuesday, between 8:00 and 10:00 am
• Nonprofits (NGOs): Tuesday or Thursday, between 3:00 and 4:00 pm

So what if your business doesn’t fall within one of these categories or has overlap between multiple industries?

Your best bet is to default to the standard best send time: Tuesday or Thursday between 10:00 am and 3:00 pm.

Campaign goals

While certain days and times are more ideal than others when it comes to sending email blasts, keep in mind that different campaigns have different goals.

You should take into account your goals for each individual campaign when deciding on the right email send time; don’t assume that one size fits all.

For example, let’s say you’re promoting a flash sale. The goal of this campaign would be to create a sense of urgency.

To drive as many conversions as possible, you may need to tweak your send time to peak shopping periods or weekends when people are more likely to make purchases.

Another example is if you’re sending out a “back in stock” email blast. The best time to send an email of this nature would be as soon as possible.

If you wait until the “optimal” time in this instance, you’ll be losing out on sales and revenue that you could’ve earned if you’d sent out the email earlier.

At the end of the day, don’t be afraid to stray from suggested email send times if you think it would better serve the goal of your campaign.

How can you measure the performance of your emails?

Tracking the performance of your email campaigns is the first step to refining your email marketing. The ultimate goal is to increase your return on investment (ROI) over time as you learn more about your audience and the best time to email them.

Many SMBs only focus on the most basic metrics like open rates and unsubscribe rates — but these can actually be some of the most unreliable marketing metrics to focus on if you want a holistic view of your results.

We’re not saying you shouldn’t track open and unsubscribe rates, but you also need to keep other key metrics in mind.

Some of the top metrics for determining true email marketing effectiveness include:

• Clickthrough rate (CTR) measures the percentage of email recipients who clicked on at least one link in an email.
• Conversion rate measures how many recipients took the action your email asked them to take, such as purchasing a product.
• Bounce rate is the percentage of total emails sent out that aren’t delivered to the intended recipient’s inbox. This typically indicates that your email got caught by the recipient’s spam filters and landed in their junk folder — a real problem.
• List growth rate measures the rate your email list is growing, represented by a percentage.
• Forward/share rate keeps track of how many subscribers click on a “share” or “forward” button on your emails. This metric is important because it’s a great way of generating new subscribers with no extra effort on your part.

The good thing is that most of the popular email marketing softwares track many of these metrics already, so all you’ll need to do is analyze them and take action.

Some of our favorite email marketing tools with built-in analytics are Mailchimp, Omnisend, and Klaviyo.

Wrap up

Every subscriber list is unique, so it can be tough to land on the best time to send an email for your audience. However, it’s generally recommended to send emails on Tuesdays or Thursdays during work hours, specifically between the hours of 10:00 am and 3:00 pm.

The best thing to do is rely on data to analyze and adjust your email send times as your list grows and matures. Email marketing software can be a great help here as most of them automatically track important metrics.

We’ve reviewed some of the best email marketing softwares at SMB Guide to help you get started.

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