The best time to send emails (2024 research)

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When it comes to email marketing, timing is not just important — it’s crucial. Knowing the best time to send email messages can help your email campaigns to stand out and engage the audience more effectively.

To take the guesswork out of the equation for you, we at Omnisend regularly conduct deep dives into marketing metrics, which give us a precise understanding of what works. We’ve analyzed data from 2019 to 2024 and examined countless campaigns to determine when recipients are most likely to open, click, and convert from emails. 

This article will give you all the details about the best days and times to send emails, as well as discuss how you can leverage them to improve your email marketing efforts.

The best time to send emails: Quick summary

Based on extensive research, we’ve identified the best time to send emails or schedule them for maximum impact. 

Our analysis reveals that:

• Tuesdays and Fridays are the best days of the week for sending emails. This results in higher open, conversion, and clickthrough rates.
• 2 PM, 5 PM, and 8 PM are the best times of day to send an email. Recipients are most likely to engage with your message during these times.
• The best time of the month for emails is at the beginning and the end — precisely the 10th and the 24th for higher open rates, the 2nd and 26th for increased clickthrough rates, and the 1st and 30th for a boost in conversion rates.

Why email sending time matters

The timing of your emails can greatly impact your overall email marketing and their effectiveness. Here are three key benefits of knowing the best time to send email messages:

• Increases open rates: Emails sent at the appropriate times (2 PM, 5 PM, and 8 PM) have higher chances of being noticed and opened by recipients. This is because they align with peak email-checking times.
• Boosts clickthrough rates: The best time of the day to send email messages can vary depending on your audience’s routines and habits. Sending emails when they have more time to engage can increase their likelihood of clicking on links and interacting with your content.
• Improves conversion rates: Even if a recipient opens your email, they’ll only convert to customers if they take an action. By timing your emails right, you increase a chance that your emails are not only seen but also acted upon.

The best day of the week to send emails

First, let’s look at the data to determine when should you send an email during the week.

This question is actually a bit more complex than it may seem at first. Specifically, it’s a question of what you’re optimizing for. 

Most people want the highest opens, but it’s also important to consider the clickthrough rate and conversion rates. 

Let’s look at these separately.

Tuesday has an average open rate of 11.36%, but Wednesday and Thursday are very close with 11.33% and 11.29%, respectively. 

Takeaway: The middle of the week, Tuesday-Thursday will probably be the best time to send marketing emails for high open rates.

The winning days here are much clearer. Friday and Sunday are much better for clickthrough rates, with an average of 13.58% and 13.57%, respectively. 

The third-best day of the week for clickthrough rates is Wednesday, which is still in line with our insight above to send emails on Tuesday-Thursday.

Monday is the worst day of the week for clickthrough rates, coming in at only 13.07%.

This time, it isn’t really close. The conclusion is clear: customers who click on emails on Fridays are more likely to buy, compared to the other weekdays.

Next in line are Thursday, Sunday and Monday, which have a conversion rate range of 5.32-5.34%.

So to summarize, Omnisend data shows that:

• The best day of the week to send emails for open rates: Tuesday 
• The best day of the week to send emails for clicks: Friday
• The best day of the week to send emails for conversions: Friday

Overall, we’d still give it to the middle of the week, Tuesday-Thursday for good days to get overall the best results for your emails. Friday is also worth a try.

However, as always, test this to see which day works best for your brand. Some Omnisend clients are seeing success in sending out emails on low-competition days like Sundays.

The best days to send emails

Of course, the best time to send emails depends on specific customer actions. For example, the best welcome emails are sent out shortly after a new subscriber joins your contact list. 

With that being said, other types of emails go out to your entire list. If you offer a weekly or monthly newsletter, let's say for your digital marketing blog updates, that message should arrive at a predictable time every week or every month.

Sending these messages at the wrong times will have a negative effect on engagement and make it harder to reach your campaign goals.

Let’s see what the latest Omnisend data can tell us about email engagement at different times of the month. This data will help you adjust your newsletter routine to get optimal results.

First, let’s look at click rates:

As you can see, two days stand out: the 10th (10.19%) and the 24th (10.18%). After that, the 3rd, 26th, and 27th bring in average open rates in the range of 10.12-10.13%. The 29th is the worst, at 9.91%.

Let’s look at the clickthrough rates by day of the month:

Here, both the 2nd and 26th have the highest average conversion rates of 14.33%, quickly followed by the 7th (14.3%) and 6th (14.24%). The worst days are the 14th (13.64%) and the 12th (13.68%).

Lastly, the average daily conversion rates:

Here, the 1st has the highest average conversion rate at 5.52%, followed by the 30th. The worst conversion rates are on the 23rd (4.81%). 

What we can glean here, in total, is that the middle of the month isn’t really the best for conversions, clicks or — to a lesser degree — opens. Starting from around the 20th of the month, the numbers begin to trend upwards.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to say which factor or factors are responsible for these statistics. Pay schedules are one reason why customers appear less likely to make purchases at the end of the month.

Most consumers are paid at the beginning and/or in the middle of the month, so these may be better opportunities.

The best time to send emails

In this research, we analyzed the best time to send email campaigns for optimal performance. We've updated our findings to include the latest data, including emails sent up until 2024. 

Unsurprisingly, email performance is closely tied to the typical customer’s workday. With that in mind, it’s important to adjust your approach to email timing for weekday and weekend campaigns.

In order to grab this data, we looked at the brand's local sending time, which gives a better understanding of the overall correlation between email sending time and performance. Alternatively, many other studies look at one time zone, like UTC, which may not be very helpful since it reduces all sending times to one time zone.

In order to grab this data, we ignored our send optimization data, in which brands can schedule emails to be sent based on their customers' time zones.

Let’s see what the data says:

In terms of open rates, we've got a few surprises here. The absolute best time for open rates (a whopping 59%) is surprisingly 8 PM, followed by a more common sense 2 PM (with a 45% open rate).

After that, we're getting into the late evening, with 11 PM showing a 40% open rate.

Before we draw any conclusions, let’s look at the data for clickthrough rates:

Here, we've got a few more surprises. We've got two sets here:

• 5 AM and 6 AM
• 5 PM and 6 PM

In terms of evening, that makes a lot of sense since people are reading and clicking on relevant emails after work.

As for the 5 AM-6 AM high click rates, that's most likely a result of low competition: whoever's up at that time and receives an email will check and click on it, because there aren't that many new emails in their inbox.

Something to remember.

Overall, for both open and click rates, we're seeing that the classic early morning 6 AM-11 AM have good opens and clicks. After lunch we have even better open rates (compared to morning opens), but click rates drop a bit.

In general, sending emails from roughly 7 PM-7 AM should mostly be avoided — unless your tests show that it works for you. It's possible that the best time to send a newsletter for your store is later at night.

If you’re using a good email marketing platform, you can schedule your newsletters to go out according to your customers’ time. For example, with Omnisend, you can schedule your email to hit all of your customers at 8 AM their time.

Some thoughts on the best time to send email campaigns

Use timing to your advantage — if you want to send an email on an off-day, as previously mentioned, choose the best time to send a newsletter on Friday. 

While many “best practices” might discourage sending on a Sunday, INGLOT Canada found that sending a campaign alongside an SMS yielded great results on Sundays, when shoppers were relaxed and had more time to shop.

When sending an email on a Sunday, opt to move outside of the typical 9-5 workday and shoot more for mid-morning to noon. Nailing the perfect timing for your emails is a breeze if you can schedule your marketing emails ahead of time.

Omnisend can help you perfectly time your newsletters with automatic scheduling.

5 ways to improve your email metrics

Besides timing, there are other important things to consider if you want great results from your newsletter campaigns.

 Clean up your contact list

While list building is crucial to long-term success in digital marketing, quality is more important than quantity.

Make sure you:

• Review your contact list at least once every six months to remove any inactive subscribers
• Don’t send messages to users who aren't interested in your brand, as this can hurt your deliverability
• Limit your newsletter to active subscribers to improve your sender reputation and help you prioritize customers who are more likely to convert

Optimize your email frequency

Along with email timing, frequency is another factor that can have a surprising impact on each campaign.

Sending more emails won’t necessarily lead to more orders. Instead, it may make customers ignore your messages, or even unsubscribe.

On the other hand, sending campaigns too infrequently may cause you to miss out on important opportunities for engagement and sales. 

While once per week is a good starting point for most newsletters, the only way to optimize your email frequency is to test out different strategies over time.

Understand your target audience

Knowing your target audience is the most important thing in all of marketing. 

If you sell to customers in their 20s, you might not have any trouble generating interest in a 10 PM email. 

On the other hand, stay-at-home parents are more likely to open promotional emails during business hours compared to subscribers who are busy at work.

The perfect time for one of those groups is unlikely to be as convenient for the other.

Double-check your subject line

It’s easy to make subject lines the afterthought of each campaign. 

The problem with this approach is that the subject line is your best chance to get customers to open the email. 

Consistent testing is the best way to ensure that you’re fully optimizing each message. Check out our guide to the top email subject lines if you’re looking for a little inspiration.

You can test your subject lines with our free subject line tester.

Leverage email automation

With marketing automation, you can configure emails to send at specific times and then focus on other tasks.

Keep in mind that automated emails can still be personalized in a variety of effective ways.

For example, you might trigger a cart abandonment reminder to send 24 hours after a user leaves your site. Include the customer’s name and unique product recommendations based on their browsing history.

Even though this email is “automatic,” it’s still highly relevant to each user’s behavior.

With this, you don’t have to worry about the best (manual) time. These messages go out based on your customer’s time (and actions).

You can also consider combining emails with text messages and look at the best time to send them.

Wrap up

Let’s review some of the most actionable insights from our deep dive into email timing:

• The beginning and end of the month tend to see better email performance. This will vary month-to-month depending on holidays and weekends 
• The best time to send an email is Tuesday-Thursday during the morning (8 AM), after lunch (1  PM), and at the end of work (4 PM–5 PM) 
• Test sending on Sundays to offer a relaxed shopping experience 
• Avoid sending on Mondays and Saturdays when it makes sense

Again, keep in mind that different audiences will respond differently to the same strategies. In short: leverage these stats to optimize your email timing, but make sure to use them as one factor in your decision.

Email timing and other marketing choices should also be based on your knowledge of the audience as well as your industry and brand image.