When is the best time to email blast?

Testing is really the only way to know for sure. For example, it used to be the general consensus that Monday was the WORST day to send emails, so as a result the volume of Monday emails went way down.but then someone got the bright idea to send their emails on Monday and suddenly Monday became the BEST day to send theirs.

There are benchmarks out there but its hard to find one that mirrors your product, your offer, your demographic, your timing, etc.

I have used this list of pros and cons in sending email for each day of the week, which originally appeared on the 60-Second Marketer, written by Jenn Abecassis, as a general guide.

Monday -

Pros: Office work has not filled inboxes yet.

Cons: People are in “work mode” and won’t be focused on non-work tasks.

Best Practice: Send emails late Monday morning, after people have cleaned the weekend spam from their inboxes.

Tuesday -

Pros: People have organized their week, and can find personal time for emails.

Cons: Emails poised for a weekend response may be too early.

Best Practice: Use Tuesday for emails that request action during the workweek.

Wednesday/Thursday -

Prose: People are planning their weekends and gearing up for personal time.

Cons: Time during the workweek is running short, and requested action may be pushed back to the following week, or even forgotten about.

Best Practice: Focus leisure and weekend notifications during these key weekend planning days.

Friday -

Pros: Studies indicate fewer total emails sent compared to the rest of the week, increasing visibility among the myriad of other messages.

Cons: People hurry to leave the office early, and may not take time to view non-work related emails.

Best Practice: Send emails early in the day to give consumers more time to take action. An unopened email from Friday will sort to the bottom of an inbox on Monday, and is often discarded.

Weekends -

Pros: People check emails on weekends, too, so weekends may have untapped potential.

Cons: A B2B weekend email may seem overly-intrusive to some people.

Best Practice: By all means test. People tend to be less stressed and tolerant on weekends. Plus with mobile devices outselling laptops, emails are opened and read at all hours after work.

So, The BEST way to move forward is to:

1. Use the guidelines above in making an initial educated guess
2. Test to see whether your guess was right or not
3. Once you've got the best day nailed down, try experimenting with what time of day works best
4. Make sure you maintain accurate reports so you can benchmark your results moving forward.
5. Be careful about general company metrics. We have seen completely different test results within the same company for different business units.