Email marketing, however old, is still one of the easiest and most effective forms of marketing today. Nearly everyone has an email address that has access to the internet. The overwhelming majority of email users are willing to subscribe or sign up for mailing lists, giving advertisers a direct line to potential customers — the dream.
However, getting these leads to open and respond to these emails is a different story. Numerous factors go into what makes a mailing list recipient click, open, and respond — and timing is part of it. Now this question of, “when is the best time to send marketing emails,” is anything but clear cut. If it were, this blog post wouldn’t be longer than a single sentence.
So why is there so much ambiguity?
No two consumers are alike. This is what makes marketing such a difficult aspect of business. For one company, their mailing list may like receiving emails at 7 AM on Wednesday mornings, and another company’s mailing list may prefer 6 PM on Sunday nights. The timing preferences between audiences can vary between industries and even between competitors — making it a difficult factor to pinpoint.
So is there a perfect time to send emails or not?
Depending on the link you click on, or the graph you’re looking at, you’ll find data that says XYZ is the optimum time, but then another set of data with say ABC is the best time to hit send. The best advice is to TEST, TEST, TEST. Play around with times and days and see how your audience responds. Additionally, your open rate is not directly tied to the day and time — the biggest component is your subject line. If you can concoct an interesting, brief subject line people will open it, no matter the day or time — after all, an email isn’t going to disappear within a certain amount of time.
Moral of the story: play with your send times and days. Focus on your subject lines, and don’t bombard your readers with too many emails.
