#56. What Is The Best Time To Send Emails? | Podcast

Vira: 0:16

I really do like the topic of this episode because we get asked all the time, what is the best time to send emails?

Alissa: 0:46

Hello, hello everyone. Episode number 56 here at Email Einstein. Vira and Alissa here. We are two email marketers at an email marketing agency called Flowium. We are so passionate about email marketing, and because we love what we do, we want to share our insights with you. Flowium is one of the fastest growing email marketing agencies in the world. We specialize in providing a premium full-service e-commerce email marketing experience for all of our clients. Our service is tailored specifically for your business and is to help increase your online retail revenue by 20 to 50. That’s 50%. We deliver the right message to the right person at the right moment. That’s what we’re all about here at Flowium. And Vira, take us away with today’s episode.

Vira: 1:33

Yeah, I like today’s episode really much. I mean, we haven’t recorded it yet, but I really do like the topic of this episode because we get asked all the time, what is the best time to send emails? Spoiler alert, we will not be giving you one answer, but it all comes down to knowing your customer. For example, like on most days I wake up around 6 a.m. and I do what like 35% of American population does the first thing in the morning. Alissa, guess, guess what it is the first thing in the morning when you just like wake up, open your eyes? What would it be?

Alissa: 2:23

Go to the bathroom?

Vira: 2:25

No, before, before that, you just like open the eyes. The first thing that you do— I don’t know about you, but I reach for my phone.

Alissa: 2:32

Yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay.

Vira: 2:34

It’s like the first thing that I do. And they say, they say that 35% of population does this the first thing in the morning. But honestly, I think that this number should be higher because that feels really low. Yeah. I mean, we all know that it’s a bad habit, but I just, I can’t resist. So that’s like the first thing that I do in the morning, just like to wake up and everything. I reach for my phone and usually I have maybe like a few work emails there, a few promotional emails. And generally I have like 20 minutes maybe like to scroll through my messages before I go to bathroom or start my morning routine or whatever. So for me, probably like hitting me with an email like the first thing in the morning might not be the smartest idea if it’s like a promotional email because I don’t do like shopping first thing in the morning. But there are some people whose schedule is different, and probably your schedule is different with like having like a little one and managing like a few things at the same time. So sending time, it all comes down to knowing your customer. And that’s exactly what we will be talking today in this podcast about. But before we go there, Elise, I know you have prepared a really cool pro tip of the week.

Alissa: 3:42

Mm-hmm. Sorry, when you were just saying that, I was thinking about my morning routine and I’m like, yeah, it’s pretty rough.

Vira: 3:50

2 seconds, 2 seconds to wake up. It’s funny that like while we’re recording this podcast, Alissa is actually having her lunch and she’s like literally eating bread out of the bread bag just because you don’t have any other time.

Alissa: 4:06

I don’t have time to eat anything else or make anything. Yeah, it’s, uh, the morning for me is not, it’s not chaotic because, well, it’s kind of chaotic. So I wake up at around 6 o’clock in the morning as well, but the second my alarm goes off, I literally jump out of bed and then just start going like like crazy doing everything I can because we usually pull Henry out of bed at around like 8:30, 9 o’clock. So I have like the second my eyes open, I have a countdown timer. When the countdown timer runs out of time, that’s it. It’s me and Henry all day. So yeah, that, those like 2.5, 3 hours in the morning are like the most precious moments of my day ’cause I’m like, it’s just me. ‘Cause my husband, I love him to death, but he wakes up and he kind of opens his, he reaches for his phone first, Vira, and he looks through Twitter and he thinks about his life and then he gets up. And I’m like, by that point I’ve already cleaned the entire house. I’ve done all the dishes. I’ve folded all the laundry. I’ve already worked for 2 hours. I’ve done everything. I’m ready for the day. So yeah, morning routine is definitely very different, which I agree with you, Vira. The morning is not the time to get me to online shop. Like 9:30 is my online shopping time where I’m like, okay, like I’m feeding Henry, but I can also scroll through my phone at the same time. So Yeah, but anyways, pro tip of the week. So our tip this week is to make use of available preview text. So making use of the preview text, it’s very simple. Write your subject line and then add some context. So the subject line itself, when you’re sending out these emails, and even as a receiver of these emails, you can see that the subject lines typically inspire some level of urgency, like last call or open this. It’s some kind of like, please open me sort of message. While the preview text, it’s is there to offer more specifics and more context behind why the person should open, right? So like, um, there are some different ways that you can play around with this. When we had— oh my gosh, Vira, I feel like a horrible person, I can’t remember his name from Chubbies, but he was on and he was talking about how he does the subject and preview lines.

Vira: 6:08

He was Eric, or actually they call him Erich.

Alissa: 6:11

Yeah, yeah, Erich, Erich, Erich. Yeah, yeah, that’s right, that’s right. But technically Eric. So, and if you guys sign up for Chubbies promotional emails, just as like an email marketeer, if you’re just interested in seeing how like the big dogs do it. They make their subject and preview text kind of play off of each other. It’s a lot of fun. So there’s always like something kind of weird and eye-catching in the subject line. I do it too. I know what to expect. I know their emails are coming, but I look at the subject line and I’m like, what the what? And then I look and I see the preview text and I’m like, oh, I know what’s going to be in this email. And then I click in it and I kind of have a level of what to expect. So definitely make use of that preview text. You can make it funny if that’s on brand for you. You can make it more serious, but utilizing that preview text, I’ve noticed that a lot of brands Don’t do it. We would recommend doing it. The added context helps. And if someone gets what seems like a weird subject line in an email and they’re like, oh no, this is spam, that preview text saves a lot of the people who send emails to me, the promos that I get, that preview text saves it. So use the available preview text because it is very useful for sure.

Vira: 7:16

And I feel like we can do the separate episode about preview text only. Yeah. But right now let’s get back to what is the best day and time to send the emails. So what is the best day and time to send emails? The short answer – Tuesday and Thursday. The long answer it depends on your customers. Yeah, because that’s like the question that I get from my customers all the time, from my clients all the time. They’re like, so what is the best day? And I’m like, industry speaking, like, or in the industry, Tuesday and Thursday are considered to be the best days. But once you get to know your customers better, that day and that time can be totally different. And it all comes down to like lifestyle and to schedule. Schedule. For example, my schedule is totally different from Alissa’s. I made French casserole for lunch yesterday just because I had extra 40 minutes over lunch, and Alissa’s eating, eating bread or having a water milkshake because that’s all you have time for, right? So our schedules are very different. It also depends on the industry. For example, entrepreneurs from the Miracle Morning community might be alert and ready to go by 7 AM, and maybe that’s the good time to hit them up with email. But gamers who stayed up until like 3 a.m. playing Minecraft probably like won’t be ready to receive your promotional offers at like 7 a.m. But if you want to know some fun facts, I have them ready for you about the best time to send emails. So data from MailChimp suggests that Thursdays and Tuesdays are the best day to send emails. That’s like across all of the industries and platforms. And most studies also show that working days have significantly higher open rates than the weekend. But again, it all comes down to who you’re sending your email to. That said, weekends are also when fewer emails are being sent. So maybe it’s worth running an A/B test and just like to see whether or not your specific customer would like be interested in receiving your email on the weekend. So again, all comes down to knowing your customer. And Alissa, I know you have a really good formula on how to find out your perfect day and time. Share it with us.

Alissa: 9:36

I love it. I love it. And I love how we’re phrasing this, like, how to find your perfect day and time. It’s very like exclusive. Like, take this quiz and find out what Disney princess you are. No, no, I don’t know which one I am actually. I’m— we’ll see. I’ll have to take that quiz. You have to send it to me.

Vira: 9:56

Oh yeah.

Alissa: 9:57

So the only way to truly know the best days and times to send your emails— and also you have to remember it’s based on what kind of email you’re sending out, but we’ll get to that— is to conduct conduct a handful of good old-fashioned tests on your customers. And guys, don’t even play with me that you don’t know that marketing is all about testing. There’s no perfect resolution, no perfect answer, no finite answer to anything. It’s ever-changing and you always have to test, which is why we always say that perfection is the enemy or the mother of enemy of something.

Vira: 11:02

Good one, Alissa.

Alissa: 11:03

No, there’s a thing. There’s a thing. There’s a I’ll find it, I’ll find it, I’ll find it. Anyways, so how are you going to find the perfect time for your audience? We have a few steps here that we’re going to share today. So the first one is understanding your audience. So before you can decide what’s perfect for them, you have to know who they are, right? So you can segment based on behavioral, demographic, and psychographic data. Yes, I did just say psychographic. So here are some standard recommendations. 8:00 AM is a great way to capture people who check their emails first thing in the morning, like a person like Vira, not like first, first thing in the morning, but kind of first thing in the morning. 1:00 PM falls during slash kind of after a lunch break. So actually for one of my clients, 1: 30 PM is like the perfect time to send his audience emails, which is not common for my other clients, but it works for them. 4: 00 PM is when people need a little pick-me-up to get through the last hour of the workday. So much like, I don’t know I don’t know if any of you have ever tried to do this, but you go to Starbucks at like 3 o’clock thinking like nobody’s gonna be at Starbucks, I can be in and out in a second, and then you get there and there’s a line out the door. It’s that pick-me-up time. So treat your emails kind of like how you would treat a Starbucks Frappuccino, like a late afternoon pick-me-up. And 6 PM usually falls during or after an evening commute. So you obviously don’t wanna get people while they’re in the car because guys, no texting and driving. But you do want to catch them when they get home, right? They kind of plop their bodies on the couch, put their feet up, and they’re like, ah, let me open my phone. And I just made some money, so let’s spend some money, right? So while these marketing standards, they do typically give you a solid foundation to build on, again, like I mentioned, there’s no hard and fast rule for sending out emails. So what works for one business might not work for another. So again, like I mentioned, one of my clients, clients, it’s 1:30 PM. Another one of my clients, it’s 8:30 AM. So go figure, right? It’s not the same for everybody, like everything else that we talk about. For you to understand your audience, there are a few questions that you should ask yourself as the business owner or as the email marketeer who’s targeting the audience. And here are the things that you should come to ask and find out about your audience. What do you know about your subscribers and their relationship with you? How do they view your brand? Why did they sign up for your emails? Is it to entertain? Is it to inspire? Is it Is it to inform? Is it to educate? What do they do for a living? So what does their day-to-day look like? If you know what a person does for a living, it’s likely that you’ll have a good idea of how their day is run. So like a nurse at the ER, probably not gonna look at your emails for like 12 to 24 hours, ’cause they have really funny shifts, right? If you’re targeting healthcare workers, it’s likely that you’re working with a very different schedule. What does a day in their life look like? So again, that will be very telling based on what these people do for a living. When are your subscribers likely to be thinking about the kind of content that you’re sending out? So for example, one of my clients, it’s a women-focused brand. And so we love to send emails out for them on Sundays at 9:30 AM. Why? Because more often than not, women on Sunday mornings, as they’re getting ready for brunch, they’re sipping on their coffee, it’s a later morning. I’m doing that in quotes ’cause 9:30 AM is not that late, but, and they’re looking through their phone, right?

Vira: 14:21

Yep.

Alissa: 14:21

Thinking about online shopping. So that’s a really good time for women-oriented brands. And then also, What kind of content are you pushing out? So again, based on what I had said before, knowing your audience, but understanding the kind of emails that you’re sending out, it’s likely that an educational email would go out at a different time than an email that you’re sending out just for the sake of entertaining. An entertainment email is more of like a pick-me-up versus like a sale email you wanna send at the start of the day if the sale is urgent and limited. So just think about that kind of stuff as you’re deciding and getting to know your audience. And Vira, take us away. What’s the next step?

Vira: 14:54

Yeah, the next one is kind of nerdy and exciting and And here at Flowium, we believe that it’s best to let the data, not your intuition, do the talking. That’s why step number 2 would be A/B test different dates and times. As you can find, I don’t know, all the information in the world, you can read all of the Klaviyo blogs and all of the HubSpot blogs and they are amazing. We do hang out there all the time, but it all comes down to your customer. Once you’ve broken your database into like different segments with like similar behavioral returns sort of thing, then you can start A/B testing different things. So that Sunday sale, Alissa, it’s actually an excellent example just because most stats will tell you that Sunday is the terrible day to send your email, all for like open rates and click-through rates and everything. But from our experience, and I’ve experienced it the same thing with my own client who’s also like female-focused brand, our Sunday sales are best performing emails in terms of open rate, in terms of click-through rate, in terms of even revenue. And yeah, we still don’t understand the reason behind it, but we tested, we tested that email segment at that time and day so many times. At first we send it on Thursday and it did perform pretty well. Then we did it on Monday and it did not perform well for this specific audience, for this specific segment at all. Then we had that Sunday sale and it became our basically the main day when we target our customers. So you need to understand what will people in this, in your specific segment, will be doing when they receive and open your email. So a lot of studies suggest that most emails are actually getting open within 4 hours of being sent, but most of them get open within like the first hour and a half. So if you send an email at noon Eastern Standard Time to, I don’t know, segment of business professionals on the West coast, that email might not perform really well because for them it will be not noon but 9 a.m. or whatever. So that’s something that you should understand as well. And this is where tools like that allow you to send emails based on recipient time zone can be really, really handy. And I know for sure that Klaviyo has it. I mean, I’m pretty sure all of the email platforms has this feature, so utilize it for sure because it’s really important to understand, first of all, what are your people in specific segment doing when they receive an open your email and also understanding where they are in the world.

Alissa: 17:38

Yeah, I love this, Vira, because the A/B testing, you can get even more granular with it where once you kind of get an idea of like, okay, we have really good open rates at this time, then you kind of go into, okay, now let’s start A/B testing different days and times so that we can determine when we have the best click-through rates as well as open rates. So you can get like more and more into it. So internally what we’ve found out is that actually Thursdays are not only the best day to send an to garner the highest open rates, not only the best day to send emails to garner the most clicks, but also the best days for the highest conversion rates. So Thursday internally for our team, as an average across all our clients, we’ve seen that Thursdays are the days where we can make our clients the most money when we send out a campaign. So there’s a lot of testing that goes into that. So you gotta be prepared to test. So step number 3, as Vira mentioned, If you do have Klaviyo, a lot of the other ESPs, just as a note, do also have some features in place to help you in terms of sending. But in Klaviyo specifically, they actually have a Smart Send feature. So if you are an e-commerce business and you’re using Klaviyo, we would strongly recommend using that Smart Send feature. So what is it? Smart Send time provides insights into your customer’s engagement by using data to find the optimal messaging time to maximize open and click rates. Rates again within your audience. So the algorithm that they use for this feature, it automatically sets up and executes A/B tests that are required to determine an optimal send time. So that step that Vira just mentioned, if you have Klaviyo, they can actually do it for you, which is kind of nice.

Vira: 19:19

Pretty much.

Alissa: 19:19

And the A/B tests are really the only consistently accurate predictors of how recipients react to different send times. So it’s something that’s really smart to actually have in place, hence why they call it the Smart Send feature, just because it helps, right?

Vira: 19:34

It does.

Alissa: 19:34

So a little more insight into how it works. It first explores how your customers respond to emails at different send times by sending to them over a 24-hour period. Once it goes through that 24-hour period, it then narrows that period down to a smaller, most fo— more focused window of time. So usually about 3 to 4 hours, and then it starts to send your emails at the best time while continuously collecting more data to determine if that send time is optimal or if it needs to be adjusted. And the nice thing is, is you can actually do different smart send time tests in Klaviyo as well. You can set up multiple versions. So like for one of my clients, according to Klaviyo, the best time to send the campaigns are from 7: 00 PM to 11:00 PM. That’s like the focused window. And then the optimal time is 9: 00 PM. I don’t think this is true because this is the client that I was talking about that 8: 30 AM is the best time.

Vira: 20:26

Right. That’s really interesting, Alissa.

Alissa: 20:28

But with them, what I can do and what I have been doing is setting up a separate smart send time test where I’ve now decided on a different sending window, which is 7:00 AM to 11: 00 AM instead of the PM. And then now I’m in the process of testing to see when Klaviyo decides what the optimal send time is in between what I believe to be the peak. So you can create your own versions of smart send time tests, even if Klaviyo has one predetermined for you. So that’s another little top tip in there. So there is also a feature in there through the kind of sending options that Klaviyo has called exploratory send, where basically over a 24-hour period, Klaviyo sends out an email and each recipient is randomly assigned a time in their local time zone. So if someone is assigned to receive an email at 11:00 AM, they will get it at 11: 00 AM, but in their actual local time. So that’s an interesting feature to use too. I typically use that with like brand, brand new clients who like, they don’t even understand who their audience is. And they’re like, you know what, let’s just test everything and see what works, what sticks. And then we kind of go narrow it down through the exploratory send feature. So the other thing to note is your number of campaign recipients actually affects how many exploratory sends are required from you. So you have to keep in mind that the Smart Send Time feature is only available for accounts with at least 12,000 active profiles and for campaigns with at least 12,000 recipients. So if you’re sending to a smaller group than that, it doesn’t quite work. If you have fewer profiles, the sample size is too low for Klaviyo to accurately determine the best send time. So it’s important to grow your list first. And I mean, that’s kind of just like a caveat across the board. Like if you don’t have a sizable list that you’re working with, with, it’s really difficult to test anything. It’s really difficult to justify paying for an expensive ESP. It’s difficult to justify like anyone working on your email marketing, right? Because you need to have some level of brand recognition traffic to your website on a regular basis before you start implementing a lot of this email marketing. So that’s just something to think about across the board. But yeah, it’s a great feature. I love this feature. The Smart Send feature in Klaviyo is truly phenomenal.

Vira: 22:36

So basically if you have Klaviyo and if you have big lists, use the Smart Send feature. If you don’t have a big list, just do it yourself. Set it up manually, test it out. We are all about A/B testing here at Flowium. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So step number 4, and it’s my favorite one. I don’t have the name for this one. So, Alissa, maybe you can help me to come up with a cool name. Enjoy the growth or I don’t know. Step number 4. It’s basically when you start to enjoying all of benefits of all of the hard work that you’ve done in the past. Once you’ve sent like enough emails to achieve that like statistically significant, I don’t know, like results, you’ll start to notice like the trends. You’ll start to notice the trends with your audience and then you’ll obviously your open rates will go up, your click-through rates will go up, and as a result your revenue will go up as well. And that’s what we are here all about, right? So, and when I say statistically significant, I’d say that generally usually like $0.05 to $0.10 is usually like enough if you are testing time of the day. Yeah, anything less than that, I wouldn’t really believe that information.

Alissa: 23:50

Yeah.

Vira: 23:51

Do like up to $0.10 and then you’ll be, you’ll be good to go. And obviously it also matters like how big is your list? The bigger your list, the less emails you’ll need to send.

Alissa: 24:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, to a degree I agree with that. I definitely agree with that. I think the very bare minimum should be $0.05 5 cents if you have like a really large list, ’cause obviously you want to have a few kind of different options that you’ve tested. But I mean, for me, like I always err on the side of larger when it comes to testing. So like, yeah, if you’re testing something in your flows, make sure it’s running for at least 3 months before you start making some like serious assumptions. Same with the testing of the timing, right? Make sure that you go with the 10 emails. It doesn’t hurt anybody. You’re testing. Again, like we mentioned before, marketing is all testing. So the day that you say like, I’ve determined what is the best, like you You are not in a good place, my friend.

Vira: 24:41

Yeah, I know.

Alissa: 24:41

You gotta keep testing. So yeah, but I love that. What, what did you call it? Enjoy the growth. That’s a good— Enjoy the growth.

Vira: 24:48

I don’t know.

Alissa: 24:49

Yeah, I love it. Or like, show me the money.

Vira: 24:53

That’s, that’s a better, that’s a better way to say it.

Alissa: 24:55

No, I love it.

Vira: 24:56

That’s great.

Alissa: 24:57

Well guys, there you have it. 4 steps that will help you to figure out what your perfect send day and time is. Well, perfect in the moment. And then make sure that you always keep testing. Don’t ever forget to stop testing, but don’t forget to subscribe and share this podcast with your friends. Thank you as always for listening. And as a reminder, we do have that special going on. Special, I guess it’s a special where if you leave us a review, we will send you your very own free pair of Flowium socks. So make sure that if you do send us a review or leave us a review, you screenshot it, email it to myself or to Vira, and we will make sure to get your info so that we can send you a free pair of Flowium socks.

Vira: 25:39

Have you left us a review, Alissa?

Alissa: 25:42

Uh, no, I haven’t. Am I allowed to? I, I don’t know.

Vira: 25:45

I don’t know. That’s what I’m thinking. I, I really, I, I really wanted to get the socks. I want the socks badly. So I’m like contemplating whether or not I should leave us a review.

Alissa: 25:55

Can we leave a review? Can we leave a review for ourselves?

Vira: 25:58

Well, we could, we could take names. Yeah, right.

Alissa: 26:02

Hello, I am Sally and, uh, This is my review. I think Vira and Alissa are awesome. Thank you. Yes, please send socks.

Vira: 26:15

I’m going to think about it. Yeah. Nice. Come back next Tuesday. Next Tuesday we’ll be talking about 4 proven e-commerce conversion rate optimization hacks. And I know that we all here love a good conversion rate optimization hack. So come back next Tuesday and share that episode with us.

Alissa: 26:34

Yeah, love it, love it. Thank you guys and see you next week.

Vira: 26:37

See you next week. Bye.