There’s nothing we’d love more than to tell you a magic time and day that would get the best results for your email marketing campaign.
While we can’t give you exactly that, what we can give you are best practices and proven tactics that help small business owners succeed.
Determining the best time to send emails to your customers can take some trial and error, but with these tips, you’ll have a much easier time and avoid a lot of frustration.
Here are the key details you need to know to knock your email marketing out of the park and send your email blasts at the best time for your business!
When is the best time to send email marketing campaigns?
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: there isn’t an exact formula for building the perfect email. The same goes for when to send it!
Salesforce conducts regular studies on their partners’ email send and open times, and in 2025, they advised that mornings and weekdays typically have higher open rates than evenings and weekends for business-to-business (B2B) organizations. For business-to-consumer (B2C) brands, evenings and weekends, along with Friday afternoons, garnered the most email opens. And while that data is helpful, it’s probably not granular enough to progress your email marketing strategy on its own.
Dig into your data to start honing your email strategy and targeting your peak email send times. Look at when your emails are opened and when you’re getting the most engagement on your social media pages and website.
As one of our email marketing experts, Maria Halovanic, Director of Customer Lifecycle Management, advises, “If you aren’t using a platform that has intelligent sending time, you can refine your sending time through testing and understanding how your subscribers want to engage with you.” That means looking to open rates, click-through rates, unsubscribes, and audience demographics to figure out the best send time based on your content type and subscriber persona.
To start, let’s explore the main tactics you can use to understand how your audience interacts with your emails and build a solid sending strategy.
Understanding your target audience
Determining the best time to send an email starts with the who, not the when. Think about your audience’s daily routines and when your message has the highest chance of reaching them.
Pay attention to the following factors that might influence audience engagement:
- Time of day: Consider how different times of day affect how your audience perceives your communications. Morning emails might work better for a yoga studio trying to reach its target audience of professional women in their 20s and 30s. However, an evening send could be the best choice for a brand targeting consumers interested in a particular product, like home tech gear or cookware.
- Industry: What are the most common professions among your target audience? When and where do your subscribers work or study? Their work affects when they’re able to check their personal email inboxes. For example, if you run an online business that caters to college students, you’ll probably fare better sending emails in the evening when students are out of class.
- Age: The age of your target audience will affect when they’re most likely to engage with your emails. Take a subscriber base that is mostly made up of retirees over the age of 65. They might want to receive email blasts in the morning or during the day as opposed to the evening, as that time is often reserved for family and friends.
- Routines and behaviors: Data you gather on your target audience’s routines and behaviors will be beneficial in helping you choose appropriate send times. Say you’re a service provider and you notice that customers tend to log in and double-check their appointment information three days before their scheduled service. With this behavioral information in your back pocket, you can pick the best time to send automated reminder emails and cut out unnecessary effort for your clients.
- Time zone and location: Running an online business opens you up to customers from all over the world, so your audience may fall into multiple time zones. A scheduled email that arrives at the perfect time for some people will arrive in the middle of the night for others. Segment your audience by time zone or location to ensure your emails reach individual subscribers when they’re awake and ready to read.
Don’t forget to consider how your audience is checking their emails. Mobile devices like cell phones and tablets are often the primary way people go through their inboxes. Customers don’t need to be sitting in front of a computer at home or at work to read their emails, so you’ll need to think about whether your email campaigns are more likely to be read on large or small screens when you send them.
Focus on your campaign goal
In addition to thinking about your audience, consider how the content of your email is connected to your send time.
For example, if your restaurant is running a limited-time special on appetizers, you could announce it the week before and send daily reminder emails, or you could choose to send an email the day the promotion begins with periodic reminders throughout the length of the deal. The former strategy gets customers to plan their visit ahead of time, while the latter puts urgency at the forefront and encourages customers to visit ASAP.
The goal of your campaign will help determine the best time to send emails. With an email newsletter, you want to establish trust with your audience by regularly providing them with helpful, informative content. Subscribers value consistency when receiving recurring emails, so sending your newsletter at the same time each week shows you’re dependable and lets subscribers look forward to your content. Dig into your analytics to see when most subscribers open your emails and build a newsletter timing strategy from there.
Tip: Show that your message is timely with your subject line. If you have an event coming up, add the date in the subject line to create a sense of urgency.
Experiment
A/B testing is especially useful when you’re working with a large email list. Start by segmenting your list into two or three smaller groups that have been randomly assigned. Then, experiment by sending the exact same message to each group at a different time.
You could test the best time to send an email by splitting your list into morning, afternoon, and evening segments. Or, you could test the send date by sending the email to each group on a different day of the week.
Keep everything else inside the email consistent so that the timing is the only thing that changes. Compare the open rates of each mailing to get a clear picture of what works best for your subscribers. Don’t be afraid to go through multiple rounds of testing — you won’t know what your audience wants until you try it!
Set expectations
Setting expectations with your customers is vital regardless of the product or service you provide, and the same goes for your emails! Choose an email send time and stick with it. If you send multiple kinds of emails, like newsletters, sales promotions, and company announcements, pick a specific time for each type of message.
Ideally, you want your contacts to expect to hear from you and be on the lookout for your next message. Be consistent and avoid days and times that are known to be busy, such as holidays and standard meal times.
Based on your business, there may be emails that your subscribers will expect to receive, like abandoned cart alerts, appointment reminders, and birthday messages. There’s no single best time to send emails like these, since they’re fully dependent upon the customer. Automating these emails will help instill trust and promote customer loyalty.
Tip: Add a short description including approximate sending times/frequency of emails to your sign-up forms. New subscribers will appreciate your transparency and get excited about your upcoming content.
How to measure the effectiveness of your email
To measure the effectiveness of your email content, you’ll want to pay attention to click-through rates (CTR). Your click-through rate is the percentage of subscribers who clicked on a link in your email and followed through to the next step. This could be a button with a call to action to register for an event or a product image that brings the subscriber to a product detail page on your website.
To measure the effectiveness of your emails in your customers’ inboxes, pay attention to open rates. Your open rate is the percentage of customers who opened your email. This could be related to an attention-grabbing subject line, an interest in your product or content, or the importance of your message, like an appointment reminder or company announcement.
As of September 2021, Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection policy has made email open rates from subscribers using Apple products unreliable. The privacy settings preload all email data, which can mark an email as opened on your end even though the subscriber hasn’t read it yet.
While this may sound a little scary, remember that there are plenty of subscribers who check their email from devices that aren’t Apple products. Open rates from these subscribers won’t indicate if your email was effective in helping you meet a particular goal, but they will help you understand whether subscribers are taking notice of your content in their inboxes.
Email open rates by industry
Industry trends are a great starting point when you’re first thinking about the best time to send your emails. At Constant Contact, we regularly analyze customer email results and collect industry-specific data to help you know where you stand. Our KnowledgeBase includes up-to-date information on the average open, click-through, and bounce rate trends by industry.
Tip: There’s a good chance you already have plenty of data about what works best for your audience within your email reports. While many factors influence email open rates, look for patterns that point to optimal times or days.
How to improve email open rates
To ensure your emails are getting noticed in the inbox, test your subject lines to see which types of messages are most attractive to subscribers. To execute a simple A/B subject line test, follow these five steps:
- Craft two subject lines for the same email. Pick one element to change between the two subject lines, like tone, goal, or length.
- Select two subsections of your audience. Make sure the test groups are similar in size and have the same demographic or interest makeup. If you have customers around the world, you may choose to limit your test to one country.
- Select a time threshold to run your test. While it may be tempting to run a quick test to get results right away, remember that subscribers may not open your email until hours after receiving it. Typically, 24-48 hours is a long enough window for an A/B test.
- Send your test messages to both segments at the same time.
- Wait for your results to trickle in.
Whichever subject line garners the most opens lets you know what resonates with your audience!
Here are some examples of subject line content to juxtapose in your test:
- Urgency versus empathy
- Adopt a pet today!
- Bring home a new friend
- Desire versus logic
- You NEED to add this look to your closet
- Get 20% off [Product] — coupon inside!
Reaching your audience in the right place at the right time
Unlike many other marketing channels, email marketing works because you’re sending messages to people who have asked to receive them. Plus, you’re reaching them exactly where they expect: their inbox. Email is one of the best ways to establish consistency, trust, and dependability with your audience.
To start on your quest to find the best time to send emails, make sure you have access to the right data. The history of your previous sends has a lot to say about how your audience interacts with your content. Set time aside to go through your email metrics and consider how your past email send times have influenced your open and click-through rates.
Use your data as a springboard to success by experimenting with your email marketing. Try A/B testing your send times and subject lines to discover what resonates with your subscribers.
Figuring out the best time to send an email takes trial and error, but Constant Contact has your back! Test out our email tracking software to get the insights you need to make informed decisions. Knowledge is power — so start sending!
