A lot depends on the time of the mailing – how the user will react, what will be the percentage of rejections and transitions to the site. These metrics tend to vary based on target audience, time zone, and other factors.
How to choose the time for email distribution and not make a mistake – we will tell you in this article.
Why is shipping time so important?
If the mailing is intended for different regions of the country, then it should be understood unconditionally that one user can receive a letter at 10 in the morning, and another at 8 in the evening. As a result, one addressee will read the letter, and the other may not open it.
On certain days and hours, people tend to study letters and shop. It mostly depends on the target audience, but there are a few general rules to be aware of.
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The best day to send a newsletter
A frequent dispute among marketers is which day will be the most successful for email distribution. Some say that it is clearly not Monday, because it is the first working day and the post office is flooded with hundreds of letters. Others say that it is not worth sending letters on Friday, because the person is already tired of the content during the working week.
Such thoughts can be found every day, and they will all be true and false at the same time. It depends on many factors, there is no special formula. However, there are statistics that allow you to understand how the mailing week is organized.
A SurveyMonkey study of 100,000 surveys sent during the week found that Monday is a good day to send emails. On this day, you should create a newsletter aimed at feedback from the audience.
But research by Harland Clarke Digital showed that the best days are Wednesday and Thursday. They sampled a billion letters from newsletters in a year and found that the percentage of opening letters on these days was 20.6% and 16.9%. But at the same time, 26.9% of sent letters fell on Wednesday, and 14% on Thursday.
And another study showed that Friday is the most successful day for sending letters to the B2C segment.
Self-opening mailings for the B2B segment fall on weekends. This especially applies to newsletters for entrepreneurs and business owners. Most likely, this is due to the fact that entrepreneurs are freer on weekends, but this is only a guess.
From all this, we can come to the disappointing conclusion that there is no “ideal” day for sending – everything depends on the audience and other factors.
The best time to send a newsletter
The situation with time is the same – there is no specific hour when users willingly open emails. However, there is some data that points to the times when audiences are most active.
Omnisend data shows that 8 am is the time when the opening is most successful – as much as 20.32%. The click rate is 7.8%.
Mails sent at 10:00 a.m. have a high open rate of 19.83%, but they result in significantly fewer orders at just 4.66%. This is a sign that subscribers who open emails in the morning are not planning to spend money.
In general, there is a close connection between the timing of an email campaign and its final results. It’s safe to say that emails should be sent when most people have time to read them – at lunch, before or after work. Also, if possible, you should avoid the time between 19:00 and 7:00.
In general, it all depends on your business. You can understand which time is suitable for you through the analysis of various data.
How to choose a day and time
Content
For entertainment content, it is best to choose weekends – this is the time when many people like to relax, subscribers will be interested in reading something interesting. For more serious topics, it is better to choose weekdays.
It is also worth taking into account the time of year – in autumn and winter, many people sit at home or in cafes in the evening, and therefore spend more time on the Internet. At such a moment, you can send a longgrid with an interesting topic or show a collection of goods for the next month. Another option is to send the same entertaining content with an emphasis on the season.
Time zones
Above we have already mentioned time zones – this is a very important indicator that should be taken into account. You can work with it through the segmentation of the address database – it will help determine the location and time zone. So you will understand that one addressee lives, for example, in Moscow, and the other lives in Kirov. Based on this, it will be possible to think about what and when to send in mailings.
Audience
It is difficult to give specific advice regarding the target audience, because it is different for everyone. But if we take the general type, it looks like this:
- businessmen, as a rule, read newsletters on weekends or during lunch breaks;
- office workers reach their personal mailboxes most often on weekends or in the late evening on weekdays;
- young people sit on smartphones and computers during the day and evening, so it is appropriate for them to send letters at this time;
- pensioners usually check their mail in the morning.
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Information drives
Current topics are an opportunity to increase the openness of letters. At the same time, the time of dispatch does not matter at all – in this case, the speed of dispatch plays a big role. Fresh and popular topics are always appreciated by subscribers.
World news or business events can be similar topics. The main rule is not to miss an opportunity, otherwise the letter will become uninteresting. For sending time, rely on 4-6 hours after the publication of the event, but the sooner, the better.
A/B testing
A/B testing is an experiment that allows you to compare two versions of a newsletter to test hypotheses and determine which version is better. Divide your subscriber base and send newsletters at different times, then compare the results. It is better to collect data in an interval of 2 to 4 months. Yes, the method is not so fast, but you can get a real result that will help determine the best time and day for an email campaign.
Conclusion
To determine the best time and day to send an email, it is necessary to conduct many tests. Target audience analysis and A/B testing will help you with this. By conducting them, you will find the most effective time to send the newsletter.
