While there are many studies out there that give high-level data for which day of the week is the best day to schedule your mailings, these studies can fall apart for certain audiences. Each subscriber list is unique, so it’s important to find data that matches the preferences of your group of subscribers.
A great place to start is to formulate a hypothesis based on your knowledge of your audience, and then test those send times to see what works best for your specific subscribers. Here are some helpful hints to help you find the best day of the week to email your subscribers.
If you’ve been sending email for any length of time, it’s a good practice to review your results and then use this information to inform your email marketing plan. Critical Impact’s Statistical Charts report can help you quickly find the most effective day of the week for your message sends.
This report includes a chart that shows the open and click rates, organized by day of the week. This information can be very helpful as you select the send times for your upcoming email campaigns: you may find that your mailings on a specific day typically have higher open or click rates.
Since each list of subscribers is unique, it’s crucial to test what works best for your lists. What may work well for one industry, may not work for you. Develop a hypothesis based on your knowledge of your audience, and then test those send times to see what works best.
A great way to test send times is to run an A/B test that will break apart your send 50/50 and test two different send times. For example, you could send Test A on Monday, and Test B on Tuesday. It’s good to test the same exact content for each test, so that your results aren’t effected by other variables such as subject or message content.
After you send a couple of A/B tests, take a moment to review the unique open and click rates to see when your emails performed best. Continue to test send times until you find one that works best for your specific subscribers.
By finding the “sweet spot” for your message send times, you can optimize each send so that you get the highest open and click rates from your subscribers.
