When Is the Best Time to Send Marketing Emails for Higher Open Rates?

Why Email Timing Matters

Timing is one of the most important factors in email marketing success. The best time to send email campaigns can significantly improve open rates, click-throughs, and conversions. While there is no universal “magic hour” that works for every business, analyzing benchmarks, testing different days and times, and understanding your audience will help you find your unique sweet spot for maximum engagement.

An AI email agent can provide significant assistance in optimizing send times. For example, Bika.ai allows you to customize sending times and conditions, automatically triggering emails at the optimal moment.

Best Time to Launch an Email Campaign

Determining the ideal time to send marketing emails requires a mix of research, audience insights, and testing. While there is no universal “perfect hour,” understanding your subscribers’ habits and preferences is key to maximizing engagement. Start by analyzing your audience’s behavior: when are they most likely to open emails, click links, or convert? Use analytics tools such as your email platform, Google Analytics, heatmaps, and CRM data to identify patterns across different days, times, and devices.

Segmenting your audience can make a significant difference. For example, a fitness brand might target weekday professionals with early morning motivational emails, while weekend-focused subscribers receive workout tips or challenges on Friday afternoons. Time zones also play a crucial role — sending emails between 10 AM and 12 PM in each recipient’s local time can improve open rates for geographically diverse lists. Travel agencies, e-commerce brands, and global campaigns often benefit from segmenting audiences by region to ensure emails arrive at the most convenient time.

Frequency preferences are equally important. Some subscribers may prefer daily updates, while others engage better with weekly or monthly newsletters. Tailoring your send cadence to match these expectations helps maintain engagement without overwhelming your audience. Ultimately, combining benchmark data, audience segmentation, and A/B testing enables marketers to refine their email timing strategy and achieve the best results.

What Day of the Week Has the Highest Email Engagement?

Research shows that, compared to other weekdays, emails sent on Tuesdays generally achieve slightly higher open rates. After returning from the weekend, people are usually at their most focused and receptive on Tuesdays. Sending emails at 11 AM (Eastern Time) tends to result in higher open rates, with a secondary peak around 1 PM. Open rates typically decline over the weekend. As you can see, not all datasets are consistent across the board.

These findings also align with my own experience in email marketing. I have worked for an AI large-model company and tested sending emails at various times and on different days, and overall, the results largely match these conclusions.

What Time of Day Is Best to Send Emails?

Research suggests strong performance at:

• 7 AM → when users first check inboxes.
• 11 AM → aligns with mid-morning breaks.

However, there is no universal answer. The best practice is to run A/B tests until you find statistically significant timing patterns for your audience.

Factors That Influence the Best Send Time

1. Audience Type (B2B vs. B2C)

• B2B (Business-to-Business): Recipients usually check emails during work hours, so Tuesday–Thursday mornings (9 AM–12 PM) are often the optimal sending window.
  Example: HubSpot data shows that B2B emails sent on Tuesday at 11 AM have slightly higher open rates.
• B2C (Business-to-Consumer): Consumers may be more active during weekends or evenings, making weekend or off-work-hour sends more effective.
  Example: Retail research indicates that promotional emails sent on Saturday mornings (9–11 AM) have a 15% higher click-through rate compared to weekdays.

2. Geographic Location & Time Zones

• For audiences spread across different regions, emails should be sent during local peak activity times.
  Example: A travel company sending emails to both East and West Coast clients found that sending at 10 AM–12 PM local time resulted in the highest open rates, outperforming a uniform 10 AM EST send by 12%.

3. User Behavior Patterns

• The time of day recipients check emails heavily influences engagement:
  • Morning commute: Many check emails on mobile while commuting.
  • Lunch break: 12–1 PM is a high-engagement window.
  • Evening leisure: After work or before bed can also be active times.
    Data: Twilio SendGrid found that during Black Friday, peak send time was 7 AM, with peak opens between 8–9 AM, confirming mornings as highly active.

4. Industry Characteristics

• Different industries have distinct active times:
  • Retail & eCommerce: Weekends and holidays often generate higher open rates.
  • Software & SaaS: Users are more likely to engage during weekdays.
    Example: Over Memorial Day weekend, emails sent at 7 AM showed significantly higher engagement than other times.

5. Email Type

• Email content type also impacts optimal sending time:
  • Newsletters: Tuesday 10–11 AM performs best.
  • Promotional Emails: Tuesday–Thursday 9–11 AM or 1–3 PM works best.
  • Abandoned Cart Emails: Should be sent 1–4 hours after the user’s action.

6. Send Frequency & Subscriber Preferences

• Too frequent emails may lead to fatigue, while too few may reduce engagement.
  Example: A fashion eCommerce brand segmented its audience by preferred frequency—daily, weekly, or monthly—and found that weekly sends produced the best open and conversion rates.

Best Send Times by Email Campaign Type

The optimal dates and times listed in the table are based on statistical data and personal experience. However, the best time to send an email marketing campaign largely depends on your email’s purpose and your target audience. For example, the ideal timing for a mass email sent to your entire audience may differ from the best time to send a promotional coupon to a specific segment.

General guidelines:

• Avoid sending emails on Mondays (inboxes are crowded) and Fridays (people are distracted by the upcoming weekend).
• Send emails at off-peak times (for example, avoid exactly 8:00, 9:00, or 11:00) to prevent ISP traffic congestion.
• Test everything—your audience may behave differently from general trends.

Best Time to Send Broad Email Blasts

Sending broad email blasts to your audience requires careful timing to maximize engagement. Research and industry benchmarks indicate that midweek mornings, particularly Tuesday through Thursday between 9 AM and 12 PM, often yield the highest open and click-through rates. Avoid sending on Mondays, when inboxes are crowded, and Fridays, when recipients are winding down for the weekend.

Other key considerations include:

• Audience Type: B2B audiences typically engage during work hours, while B2C audiences may respond better on weekends or evenings.
• Time Zones: Segment your list to ensure emails arrive at optimal local times.
• Device Usage: Mobile users tend to check emails during commutes or breaks; desktop users engage mostly mid-morning or after lunch.
• ISP Traffic: Avoid sending at exact hours like 8:00 or 9:00 to prevent delays; instead, schedule at odd minutes such as 7, 21, or 36 past the hour.

By analyzing historical data and testing different send times, you can identify the sweet spot for your broad email campaigns, ensuring your messages land at the right time for maximum engagement.

Best Time to Send Promotional Emails

To achieve higher engagement, consider these trends when scheduling promotional emails:

Midweek Advantage: Emails sent on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays generally perform better, as inboxes are less crowded and recipients are more receptive compared to Mondays and Fridays.

Morning and Early Afternoon: Target late morning (9–11 AM) or early afternoon (1–3 PM) when people are most likely to check their inboxes during short breaks.

Avoid Extremes: Sending emails very early in the morning or late at night can lead to your messages being overlooked or buried.

Lunch Hour Window: The 12–1 PM lunch break is another effective period, as many recipients catch up on emails during this downtime.

Best Time to Send Marketing Emails

Marketing emails have a much broader “reach” than promotional emails—they can cover everything from industry insights and customer stories to product announcements.
Optimal send window: Tuesday to Thursday, before 9 AM.
While promotional emails are like flash sales that get deleted after a quick glance, marketing emails are often saved for later reading. Sending them during those crucial early-morning 30 minutes when recipients check their inbox and decide “which emails are worth keeping” increases the chances of your email being added to the “read later” list.

Best Time to Send Email Newsletters

Newsletters are a marathon, not a sprint, so your sending schedule should be designed for long-term engagement.
Prime time: Tuesday at 10:00 AM local time.
By then, the Monday inbox “rush hour” has passed, and readers are settling into “weekly digest mode” with an open mind, ready to absorb industry insights.
They’re likely to read the newsletter during their “coffee break” or post-lunch downtime, so there’s no need to grab attention at the crack of dawn—just hit their inbox promptly at 10 AM.
Build familiarity: Send consistently between 10–11 AM on Tuesdays. After four consecutive issues, your audience will instinctively check for your newsletter.
Avoid Mondays and Fridays—Monday is too chaotic, and by Friday, readers’ focus has already drifted elsewhere.

What Variables Should You Test?

Treat your send time as a “control experiment”:
Start with three broad tests, then refine the details:

• Day vs. Night: Morning coffee crowd vs. night owls
• Weekday vs. Weekend: Structured workdays vs. relaxed weekends
• Within the Workday: Morning coffee check, lunch break scroll, last glance before leaving work

Once you’ve identified the prime window, fine-tune in 15-minute increments so your email lands within the first few lines of the recipient’s inbox—right where it’s immediately visible.cipients per variant and run tests for 4–6 weeks before drawing conclusions.

When NOT to Send Emails

• Avoid sending at exact “00/15/30/45” minute marks—when marketers worldwide hit send simultaneously, ISP channels turn into rush hour, and your emails get stuck in the queue.
• Instead, quietly move an 11:00 campaign to 10:55, or get a bit more creative by choosing :07, :21, or :36—these “offbeat minutes” help your emails dodge the mass traffic and ride the VIP express lane.
• Time it, track it: Record delivery times and open-rate patterns, then continue fine-tuning in 3–5 minute increments until you discover your own “invisible fast lane.”

Global Strategy: Following the Sun

Global audience but no manpower for “time zone scheduling”? Let the sun do the work with a “follow-the-sun” strategy:

Break a large email blast into multiple micro-batches—say 38 segments—and send each one so it lands around 30 minutes before or after sunrise in the recipient’s local time.

Benefits:

1. Your email hits the inbox when it’s least crowded locally, securing top visibility.
2. Traffic is staggered, preventing ISP bottlenecks, and delivery speed improves noticeably.

How to implement:

1. Use IP addresses or registration data to determine the recipient’s approximate longitude and latitude—just enough to identify the time zone, without violating privacy.
2. Set up “rolling sends by time zone” in your ESP or use an API loop. Adjust for sunrise offsets, and the system will deliver your emails sequentially from UTC-12 to UTC+14.

Transactional emails (orders, verification codes) don’t need this—they are triggered in real time and sent immediately, independent of the sun.

Transactional vs. Marketing Emails

• Transactional emails (order confirmations, password resets) must be sent immediately.
• Marketing emails need strategic timing to maximize open rates and conversions.

Streamline Your Email Workflow with AI

AI tools can optimize your email workflow and help determine the best send times. For example, Bika.ai integrates AI-powered email tools that allow you to customize sending times and conditions, automatically triggering emails at the optimal moment.

With these AI agents, you can tailor email send times for each individual recipient, ensuring your messages arrive when they are most likely to engage. If analytics show that a customer’s audience is particularly active on weekday evenings, AI might recommend scheduling email campaigns during that window to maximize open and click-through rates. The AI continuously learns and adjusts based on real-time data, refining its recommendations to reflect changing audience behaviors and preferences.

FAQ on Email Timing

Q1: Should I send marketing emails on holidays?

• B2C: Yes, holiday promos often perform well.
• B2B: Usually avoid holidays.

Q2: How does automation affect send times?

• Welcome emails: immediate.
• Abandoned carts: 1–4 hours.
• Re-engagement: midweek work hours.

Q3: How to handle international subscribers?

• Segment by geography or use time-zone–based delivery.

Q4: Does timing impact deliverability?

• Yes. Avoid peak ISP times to prevent delays.

Q5: How often should I update my send schedule?

• Test for 4–6 weeks, then refine quarterly.

Q6: Do mobile and desktop users prefer different times?

• Mobile: mornings and evenings (commuting).
• Desktop: mid-morning and post-lunch.

Q7: How do I know my timing tests are working?

• Track open rates, CTR, conversions, and revenue per email.

Conclusion

There is no single “perfect” time to send an email. Instead, use industry benchmarks as a baseline, run continuous A/B testing, and refine your schedule according to audience behavior. While timing is important, content quality and consistency ultimately drive long-term engagement.

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