When should you send emails?
Stuff I send my list.
I read a nice post the other day over on Reddit about the best time to send emails. I’ve been spending more time on Reddit lately. It feels a little more human to me. Kind of like a jungle of brutal honesty. I dig it.
Almost like the LAST bastion for actual humans who just want to go back and forth on a subject. It’s like ZION in the matrix movies, lol.
Anyways…
So this kind soul says:
After experimenting a bit, I found that sending emails in the middle of the week (Tuesday or Wednesday, specifically) had a significantly higher open rate compared to Mondays or weekends. I also played around with sending them at 11 AM instead of early morning or late afternoon — turns out that’s when people are more likely to check their inbox.
Now the truth is this is 100% anecdotal information and no actual tests have been done. The other truth here is that this kind of information will not serve others too well, because it is 100% list dependent.
That is to say, the way your list responds might be totally different than how my list responds.
And to go even deeper on that, the way my list responds right now, might be different than how it responds this time next year.
Lists change. People come and go and come back again. That’s the nature of an email list.
Some AI disciples would say that “AI can find the PERFECT time to send the email to each individual.”
Personally, I don’t believe that. I remember I was using that feature with SendLane a few years ago, and it made very little difference for me.
Letting AI decide when to send out my emails is a little too close to letting AI drive my car, for me. Not interested. Especially the car that makes me a bunch of money. I’ll keep hold of the wheel if it’s all the same.
So when SHOULD you be sending your emails out?
It’s up to you to test that and figure it out. However, I will tell you my personal philosophy on it.
Pay no attention to the time. Send out at 1am today…
Send out at 3pm tomorrow.
Send out at noon the next day.
Keep them guessing.
Why?
Because the element of “unexpected” is powerful. Especially in terms of email marketing.
There is a balance between consistent and unexpected that can serve you very well with email marketing.
You are consistent enough to be reliable…
…yet you are surprising enough to stay interesting.
Good email marketers strike that balance.
I could tell you my preferred times, but I think I have them because they are more of a habit for me, and they won’t really do you any good. The truth is exactly what I said…
Consistent yet surprising.
That’s all I got! Keep rocking out there!
Kam
P.S. I just started the “BONUS BIN” for my VoiceMail audio newsletter. The first bonus is already added. It was “The Making of Issue 15 of VoiceMail.” A video documentary discussing the behind the scenes of the making of Issue 15 of VoiceMail. So if you are a subscriber to Voicemail, be sure to check that out. Thanks for being a subscriber, and I’ll see you in the issues!