We’re often asked when is the best time to send mailings and if there are days or times to avoid. While there’s no magic send time, there are a few commonly held notions about the timing of mailings. Remember that your best chance of getting people to read and respond is during the first few hours after delivery, so making sure your emails arrive when people are most likely to be in front of their computers and paying attention is the real key.

Which day of the week and time is best?

Mailings that are sent Tuesdays through Thursdays have traditionally fared a little better than mailings that go out on Mondays or Fridays. On Mondays, people are dealing with overflowing inboxes and a full to-do list. On Friday, it’s a simple matter of math, as some of your audience will have headed out early for the weekend and are not opening emails.

We also recommend avoiding late night / early morning mailings in general. First thing in the morning, people are often sifting through a night’s worth of emails, so a serious email somewhere in the middle of all that clutter is likely to get lost in the shuffle.

Other elemental factors to consider

Other factors can also come into play, such as the timeliness of your message, the geography / time zones of your audience, and the habits of your subscribers. Some factors are out of your control, like how quickly servers deliver your emails to their intended recipients — most of your emails should arrive shortly after you send, but in some cases, you may have stragglers that aren’t delivered for hours or more (which is why you’ll always want to allow several hours for your entire mailing to arrive, and even more time for larger mailings).

So as much as we can all try to find that perfect window of delivery, our advice is to avoid less-than-ideal mailing times when you can, let the timeliness of your message help determine when you send, and use your account’s response tracking to see how different days and times affect your response rates. To that end, in addition to telling you who opens your mailings and who visits your website, we also tell you when they opened and clicked.