Best Timing for Marketing Emails?

Summary: The timing of marketing emails does impact the reach. Below documents the tests on the time of sending and the open rate.

B2B Email Campaign

According to the testing of Hyland Software, Inc, the email sent at 9 am vs 1pm local time at four U.S. time zones increased the open rate in all time zones:

EST – 12.5% lift
CST – 100% lift
MDT – 35% lift
PST – 4,090% lift

B2C Email Campaign

In 2013, Dell employed eBay Enterprise to conduct a test on the timing of sending out emails to customer. The team analyzed the usual email open time of each customer and send out the next email accordingly. The individualized send time increased opens by 6.6% and unique clicks by 8.2%.

The week of the day also matters. A Place for Mom, America’s largest senior referral service, conducted a test in-house using WhatCounts batch email service. The team sent an email with identical subject lines and content to 1/5 of their list every day over two weeks — so each segment received the test twice. It was found that emails sent out on Thursdays has an open rate 11% better than Tuesdays.