When to Send Emails to Optimize Engagement

Picking the best time to send an email can be tricky. While we do have data to show certain trends when it comes to what works and what doesn’t, it can be different for every audience. And, most of the studies done on this topic really only give us half the picture. So what’s missing? Well, many studies only tell us when emails are more likely to be opened, but this is only a small part of our email KPIs. What about the best time to send an email to maximize CTR? 

Tuesday at 10 am has been noted as the “best time to send an email.” But this only covers you for open rate. If your goal is to get a person to actually engage with your email, the best time to send that email may surprise you. “Our data shows there’s a significant difference in the days and times when people most often open emails versus when they actually interact with the content in the newsletters,” says PowerInbox CEO Jeff Kupietzky. “Where the most popular days and times for opening are weekdays around mid-morning, the weekends are when people are more apt to engage and take action, by clicking on content in those emails.”

That’s right folks, weekends are the best times to send emails when your goal is engagement. And if you think about it, it makes a whole lot of sense. While people may not be at work, they are checking their emails on their phones or laptops at their own convenience. Weekends are when people have more leisure time, so spending an extra few minutes with your email isn’t cutting into work tasks. 

People also receive fewer emails on the weekends, so you have a higher chance of standing out! “It seems to be a consistent finding,” says Kupietzky. “The theory is that people not only have more leisure time on the weekends to actually read emails, but also there are fewer emails sent on the weekends because most publishers plan their sends based on the most popular open times, during the workweek. This data shows that they should be rethinking that strategy.”

It goes without saying that just because you send an email at a certain time, that doesn’t give you an automatic win. You need to have content that truly shines to get people interested and clicking. Personalized and relevant, to-the-moment content served to your audience is a great place to start. Live images are the best way to accomplish this at scale. Live images are personalized images that are updated at the moment of open. You can add in personalization tokens, weather information, location data, and any other information you can gather, to truly get your email to the next level. 

This level of relevancy gives emails some of the highest engagement marketers have seen. “Delivering fresh, personalized content contributes directly to higher engagement,” says Kupietzky. “Content that is updated on the open will be more relevant. In addition, using email as a unique identifier is important as it gives us a much clearer picture of the individual user – their demographics, click behavior, interests and more – than other types of personalization and audience segmentation.”

So there you have it. If you want to send an email and get the most people to open it, stick to weekdays in the mid-morning, but if you want email engagement, try sending out a couple of emails on the weekends. See how they perform and adjust from there. Don’t forget to be more relevant! Use information that is up-to-date at the moment of open if you really want to up your email engagement. The feeling of 1:1 communication can really improve CTR! 

Want to see how Zembula is changing the way marketers use live images in email? Schedule a call with one of our experts and see what we are cooking up!