If you send marketing emails to your customers, you’ve probably already asked yourself this: when’s the best time to send my newsletter? The time you schedule your emails determines how well your opens and clicks will be. And there are a lot of factors at play when deciding the best time to send your emails.
Below, we’ll give you some tips on identifying the best days and times to send your newsletters and some recommendations to improve your overall email marketing strategy.
When should I send my email newsletters?
Your sending schedule largely depends on whether you’re a B2B or B2C brand, and the industry you’re in. But in all cases, studies indicate that there are still some days to avoid sending your newsletters.
What are the best days to send your emails
According to numerous studies compiled by CoSchedule, Tuesdays and Thursdays are the best days to send your emails. During these days, most emails are sent.
Wednesdays, according to various research, is a solid second option in terms of opens and clicks. If you send emails twice a week within these days, make sure to pick a combination of Tuesdays and Thursdays, though. Sending emails on either days plus Wednesday will make your customers feel overwhelmed and not read your emails at all in the process. Not good.
And a caveat: people also get the most emails during these days. Maybe you might want to send your emails in another day of the week to have less competition in the inbox.
Source: CoSchedule
Days to avoid sending out your newsletter
On Mondays, people are either planning out their week or are sifting through the emails they’ve received during the weekend. And let’s be honest, we’re not the sharpest workers on Mondays. We’re still recovering from the weekend. So as a general advice, just avoid Mondays.
On Fridays, people have mostly tapped out on reading new emails. So clearly don’t send your newsletters on Fridays.
And on Saturdays and Sundays – well, do you read your emails on the weekend? You probably don’t, and this is the same for others…avoid the weekends.
So always consider your target audience and the times they could be potentially looking at their emails. Formulating an email marketing strategy based on user habits, such as when they read their emails and so on, can really improve your email marketing sending practices.
How to choose a day to send your newsletter
No matter what, if you regularly send weekly emails, be sure to send them on the same day every week. This builds trust and anticipation as your audience will come to expect your content at that time. At Mailjet, our newsletters include great email tips, best practices and our latest blog posts, and you can expect these newsletters every Thursday.
During holidays or special events, don’t hesitate to send your newsletters at a later date. It’s better that people read your emails than have your emails delivered but remain unopened.
What’s the best time to send your newsletter?
Generally, here’s how you can choose the best time to send your emails.
6:00 – 8:00 am
Some people look at their emails after waking up or during breakfast. Most of the time, they look at their emails via mobile, so make sure your emails are responsive and mobile-optimized.
10:00 – 11:00 am
According to many studies, this is the best time to send your emails.
12:00 – 2:00 pm
This is also a great time to send your emails. While on lunch break, people will be looking at their emails before getting back work in the afternoon.
6:00 – 9:00 pm
This is the end of most people’s work days. Some will be looking at their emails during their commute, others right after work. But avoid sending emails after 10pm, you will not be read immediately and by the time they get to their inbox in the morning, your email will have been pushed down the pecking order.
Source: CoSchedule
B2B vs B2C
Keep in mind that each person does not use their professional and personal inbox in the same way or at the same time. There is no one-size-fits-all answer. For example: Is the type of people you target more likely to check their inbox when they wake up or during their lunch break?
Do you send newsletters to personal or professional email addresses? Keep in mind that this distinction between B2B and B2C is very important, as users behave differently when using different email accounts. If you have defined marketing personas, they will be very useful in understanding your target users’ habits.
How to determine the best time to send your newsletter?
As we have already said, the best time to send your emails depends on a lot of things – your business, your customers, your targets, your newsletter type, and so forth. Ultimately we encourage you to do your own tests and analyse the best time for you and your customers. You can compare and contrast different email campaigns using Mailjet’s Compare Campaigns tool for example :).
If you have a regular sending schedule and want to figure out which day is the best time to send, you can do a test spanning two weeks.
For example, in the first week of the test, send your newsletter on Tuesday at 11:00 am, and then on Thursday next week, at 11:00am. Do this test in a mundane time of the year to make it more reliable. You can also try A/B testing by sending a campaign to half of your list on Tuesdays and the other half on Thursdays. Compare and analyze the results, and move onto the next experiment. Just like in science class 🔬.
How to compare email campaigns with Mailjet
Finding the best day to send your email newsletters can be a difficult task that requires experimentation, time and coordination when establishing the best schedule. As we have already mentioned, a lot of variables are at play, including the content and scheduling of your email campaigns.
While A/B testing can help you create your content in a way that will lead to better email opens and clicks, Mailjet Campaign Comparisons allows you to analyze different campaigns, effortlessly. This lets you figure out the best day to send emails backed by data.
Our results page is packed with visual and quantitative data – everything you need to analyze and continuously optimize your campaigns.
The “Compare Campaigns” button can be found in several places:
And on a campaign’s details page.
From your Campaigns page, click the “Compare Campaigns” button.
A new pop-in window will appear, where you can select up to 10 campaigns to compare simultaneously.
Once you have selected all your campaigns, click the “Submit” button to continue.
The results are displayed in a graph and summary chart format to let you easily determine what part of your campaigns your customers responded positively to.
You can view the results in a few different formats on the graph. If you hover your mouse at any point on the graph, a popup will appear showing the elapsed time at that point and KPIs for each campaign.
The data in the table shows the lifetime results for each metric of each campaign and is continuously updated. Both the percentage and total figures are displayed for each metric, and you can sort by campaign name, date, or engagement metric, by simply clicking the “arrows” at the top of each respective column.
And that’s a wrap! You are now ready to compare and optimize your email campaigns – and on your way to higher opens and clicks.
How to optimize your email marketing strategy?
In addition to our tools for optimising your email campaigns, Mailjet also offers features that allow you to create, deliver and track your email campaigns. With an easy-to-use visual builder and many responsive email templates, you can create engaging newsletters in a few minutes. Our features include segmentation, A/B testing and advanced statistics. These features allow you to really track and improve your email marketing results.
And to work even more efficiently on your email campaigns, we’d recommend our Collaboration Toolkit to save more time when creating your email campaigns.
You can work with other colleagues in real time on your templates and even allow them to directly comment in the same builder to avoid inefficient back-and-forths amongst your email team. And to really master your brand, you can save sections of your emails, including the header and the footer, to include in other email templates. You can also link the same sections across different email templates and do execute updates across all of them with a single click. This allows you to keep your branding consistent across different emails.
If you’ve experimented on your email campaign schedules, share your experience with us on Twitter @Mailjet. We’d love to hear it.
This article is an updated and translated verison of Julie Paci’s article Quel est le meilleur moment pour envoyer votre newsletter ?