Best Time To Send An Email To Increase Reply Rates

Do you know that the average reply rate for cold emails is between 1 and 5%? Quite low, isn’t it? Therefore, as a sales professional, one question may be plaguing your mind all the time – When is the best time to send an email so that I get maximum replies?

Your prospects can be busy, and you wouldn’t want to bother them in the middle of something important. So, you must be looking for the right time to get in touch with them when they are more likely to give a positive response. After all, you are emailing them to build a relationship and to close a deal eventually. 

The only solution is knowing the window of the day when prospects have the time and the frame of mind to read your email.  So, we bring you the best days of the week and the best times of the day when you should shoot emails to get maximum responses.

So, without much ado, let’s get started.

Why Are Emails Important?

Sending emails is an absolute necessity for any business that wants to generate leads and turn them into paying customers over some time. You must personalize your cold emails, and the recipient should find them relevant. You can use an automated cold outreach tool like SalesBlink and simplify the email sending task. However, you might also wonder what exactly the right time to schedule cold emails and follow-up sequences is.  

We’ll take a look at that further in this post. 

Email Metrics To Measure Campaign Performance 

The best time to send an email also depends on how you measure success. There are certain metrics that you have to take into consideration, and they are the following:

1. Click-through rate

Click-through rate provides you with the number of individuals who opened a link or image in your email. This email metric will be less than the total number of emails open, as not everyone will engage with your emails.

2. Click-to-open rate

The click-to-open rate of your email campaign is the percentage of recipients who opened your emails and also clicked on the link present in it. With this metric in hand, you can determine how effective your email campaign has been.

3. Open rate

The email open rate refers to the percentage of recipients who opened your emails. High open rates indicate that your subject lines are on point and relevant to the recipients.

Why Not To Send The Emails At Any Time In A Day?

Even if you manage to write a stellar email, there is a likelihood of getting poor results if you send it at an unfavourable time. Not all times are the best for sending an email, which also holds good for a cold email. This is chiefly because everyone has a personal life. They may reside in a different country with a different time zone. At a more personal level, everyone may not be in a good mood when they engage with your email. 

For instance, you might be working extra hours, but that doesn’t mean everyone follows the exact timing. If the prospects are busy with their family, they are less likely to respond positively to your email. 

There can be times when you send emails that are not the best, and prospects open your email but do not respond or choose to decline because of their mood. It is a fact that the mood of humans keeps changing the whole day, and it is tough to predict that. A popular opinion is that a person may not make favorable decisions before eating lunch. 

Time zone is another big reason that you must consider. The time difference between you and the prospect can be the deciding factor. And you are probably emailing them when it is convenient to you without thinking about the time at their place. 

Best Time To Send Email From The Marketers’ Point Of View

As email marketers know their target audience inside-out, they have an idea of the best days of the week to contact prospects. 

Here is what they have observed about the best time to send marketing emails,

1. Monday

This is certainly not the best day of the week to send in your email. On Mondays, people are pretty busy planning their workweek. They would certainly pay more attention to business emails than other emails hitting their inbox. So, it is better to avoid sending newsletters or cold emails on Mondays.

2. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday

All three days of the week are suitable for sending emails. Their office work for the week is all set, and they can open other emails in their inbox. 

3. Friday

The last working day of the week makes people dream of the parties and get-togethers they have on weekends. They would probably be in a rush to finish off their work and head home. The chances of engaging with your emails on Friday are remote, and it is better to avoid sending emails on these days.

4. Weekends

Usually, people don’t check their inboxes on weekends. However, in the US, Sunday evenings are a reasonably good time to send emails as people start preparing for the week ahead in advance. Moreover, as most marketers don’t send too many emails on Sundays, yours will be easy to spot in the cluttered inbox.

The Right Email Sending Time Based On Statistics

After understanding the popular opinion of email marketers, you should decide the right time for send emails in bulk based on statistics.

As per popular stats, sending emails on Tuesdays is the best as the chances of emails being opened are high. Apart from Tuesday, you can consider sending emails on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. 

Weekends see fewer emails coming to inboxes and can be beneficial to you. However, Sundays are the worst days for your email campaigns, as per most stats. The open rates hit an all-time low on Sundays.

Best Hours To Send Emails To Prospects

Now that you know the suitable days of the week to email prospects, you should know what the best time to send an email to get a response is in the day,

• On Tuesdays, you can send emails around 11 am, as the open rates and click-through rates are the highest. 

• On Fridays, you can send emails around 11 am as well. In fact, between 10 and 11 am is the perfect time for email marketing. 

• On Sundays, you can email prospects in the afternoon for the best results. Ideally, it’s best to send emails between 9-10 am if you want high open and click-through rates. 

On the whole, it is most favorable to send an email at 11 am on weekdays (Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays). 

At the same time, it is not appropriate to hit the send button between 9 pm, and 9 am as your recipients would be asleep or getting ready for work. 

The Best Day Of The Week And Time To Send Email Based On Country

Based on another study, the best time to send cold emails to prospects varies from one country to another.

1. US and Canada

While sending emails to individuals residing in the US and Canada, you have to pay attention to when you send them. The study observed that sending emails at 6 am or between 9 and 10 am is ideal. 

As far as the day is concerned, Friday and Monday are the best days of the week in terms of open rates. On the other hand, in terms of clicks, Tuesday and Thursday are the best days. 

2. Latin America

The study shows that when you Latin America, you can try sending emails between 6 am and 4 pm, i.e., in the morning and early in the afternoon, for best results. As far as the day is concerned, Monday seems ideal as per the study because it recorded the highest number of opens and clicks. However, even other days of the week are okay for sending emails except for Sunday as it has the lowest open rates and click-through rates.

3. Central and Eastern Europe

The study shows two peaks in engagement per day for Central and Eastern Europe. There is one between 10 am and 12 pm and the other one between 5 and 7 pm. This suggests that individuals engage in emails later than other regions, but they respond even after working hours. It indicates that there is no need to send emails first thing in the morning while targeting this particular geographical region. 

For this region, the best day to send emails is Monday. However, the emails would get the maximum response when sent early in the week. 

4. Asia-Pacific

In the Asia-Pacific region, the engagement rates are good enough during working hours, i.e., between 9 am and 6 pm. Notably, the ideal emailing time is quite different from the rest of the regions. Despite this, marketers send emails even later in the night as they get average click-through rates. 

The first half of the week are the best days to send emails to the Asia-Pacific region, the highest being Tuesday and Wednesday. Keep in mind that weekends are not the ideal days to send emails to consumers of this region.

5. Europe, the Middle East, and Africa

For this region, the best time to launch an email campaign is between 8 am and 7 pm. While Friday and Monday are the ones that had the maximum engagement in the study, the other days of the week fared well too. And that includes weekends. 

6. Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (DACH)

For this region, the ideal emailing time is 8 am or between 2-5 pm as these hours witnessed the highest engagement rates in the study. Also, marketers prefer launching campaigns in these hours. 

The best time of the week to launch email campaigns seems to be the weekend. Sunday has the highest open rates, and the click-through rate is the highest on Friday. However, as a salesperson or email marketer, you needn’t always plan your campaigns for the weekend. You can do so once in a while.

The Best Time To Send An Email Based On Device

Studies say that the device used to open an email is also related to the time of the day. It is quite easy to guess that emails are opened on mobile phones before people start the workday and after they end it. In those hours, you will not see a huge number of emails open on desktops. 

On similar lines, desktop opens increase during work hours as people spend less time on mobile devices. You would agree to this as you also like to read emails while travelling to work and then move to a laptop or desktop once you start your workday. 

Statistics indicate that the Click-to-open rate of desktops is at par with mobile devices. Therefore, you have to ensure that your emails are optimized for smartphones and tabs. 

So, what is the best time to send a sales email? Instead, you can work on making your emails well-optimized for mobiles instead of looking for the perfect time.

The following are the time windows that people have to open their emails,

The 3-minute window

This is when the prospect is most likely to check their phones for emails. For instance, when the person takes a water break or waits for a snack at the cafeteria, they have the time to look at the emails received and prioritize them quickly. 

The 5-minute window

In this window, the recipients check their emails using their mobile phones. It can be the free time between meetings they use to respond to urgent emails.

The 10-minute window

In this window, people check emails on their desktop or mobile device. It can be the free time they have at lunch. It lets them respond to all kinds of emails. 

Your emails have to be well-optimized so that the prospect can engage with them in any of the time windows mentioned above. 

Maintain A Regular Emailing Schedule 

Consistency is the key when it comes to sending newsletters. It helps in building trust. At times, subscribers would wait to receive your email at a designated time each day. Therefore, when you maintain a regular emailing schedule keeping the best day and time to send email in mind, you build a rapport with your subscribers.

Factors That Affect Email Timing

Though we saw the optimal times to send emails, there is also an opinion that the best times to send an email are not universal. You can never narrow down to a standard’ right time’ to reach out to someone as every person is different and has their preferences and schedules. Also, what your email contains also decides the timing of the email campaign. For example, if your niche is news, you have to send an email as soon as there is an occurrence worth reporting. If you have a restaurant, you can choose to send coupons to your subscribers closer to mealtime. 

Therefore, several factors affect your email sending time. They include the following,

1. Your industry

2. The products or services you provide

3. Your email subject lines and frequency

4. Your target audience and their behavior

5. The geographical location of your target audience

6. The current season in the place they reside in 

7. Uncommon occurrences around them

It is, therefore, better to customize your email communication as per the convenience of every subscriber. It won’t be taxing on you if you choose to use email marketing software for this purpose. 

Buckle Up For More Responses!

As you just saw, timing has a huge role to play in determining the fate of your email campaign. The email sending time should be such that it fetches you the highest number of opens and clicks. You should send the email when the prospect is in the right mental space. Only then things are more likely to work in your favor. 

Many factors decide the best time to send sales emails, including your industry, target audience, geographical location, and many more. What works for one target audience belonging to one geographical region may not work for another. 

Do try using our inputs and see how things change for you!

Happy Emailing!

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