What is the best day and to send a B2B email newsletter?

Most publishers send bulk emails, newsletters, and paid exclusive customer sends to their audience. So what is the best day and time to send these emails? We studied the available research, and here’s what we found:

Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the best days to send marketing emails for B2B companies, as those days have the highest open and click-through rates.

Sundays are the least effective days to send campaigns for a B2B brand.

The best time to send a B2B email is during working hours, especially between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. or between 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. when people check their emails during their lunch breaks.

The worst time to send an email is during evenings or weekends, as most people are less likely to check their emails or engage with them.

Most ESP will also optimize for these times around the country if you schedule 48 hours in advance.

Narrowing it down even further

However, narrowing the day-of-week and time-of-day further depends on the intention of the send.

The ideal time to send B2B emails based on open rates (top-of-funnel educational emails) is 10 a.m. on Tuesday (Hubspot, Experian) or Thursday (MailChimp). MailChimp has a lot more B2C data in its data  – millions of emails sent, so for B2B, stick with Tuesday.

But Wednesday at 10 a.m. is the better day. For clicks and conversions, LocalMediaInsider found that Wednesday’semails get 500% more direct responses, that is, people subscribing and calling on the phone.

So if your email tempts an executive to click on the website to sign-up for a webinar, Wednesday is the better day.

As email marketer Sendblue describes it:

“Ecommerce, SaaS companies, and NGOs …All three industries have spikes for the forthcoming volume on Tuesday and Thursday. But, if you look at the click volume graph below, you’ll see that the largest amount of clicks by far takes place on Wednesday.”

Another email marketer, Sendio, compiled similar data, showing that B2B e-commerce spiked during the beginning of the week, peaking Wednesday and dropping off.

So if sales are the goal, Wednesday is still the day, followed by Tuesday.

Another snag is the three hours change in time zones; that is to say, it is always 10 a.m. somewhere. Some ESPs, such as MailerLite, will send based on time zone if you schedule 24 hours in advance. If you cannot pre-schedule or your ESP does not have this functionality, here are a few things to think about and workarounds:

If the most important market is in California, it may be advisable to pick 10 a.m. there, although the rest of the country and your prospects will be in the mid-day email open dead zone.

We would instead send at  10:30 to 11 a.m. on the East Coast and have more or less most of the country in the prime email opening and clicking hours: Weekday mornings, 8 to 10 a.m.

As long as you stay within the 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. window, don’t worry too much about the exact time. 

But you want to stay in that zone; almost all studies show that the highest open rates come from sending in the morning, around  8 to 10 a.m. Both Hubspot and MailChimp agreed on a peak time of 10 a.m.

It opens drop off radically when the send is at noon. If you miss the morning, there is another bump around 3 p.m.

Incidentally, if you have to send it n Sunday, the highest open rate is at 9 p.m.

Also, note that about 25% of openers open within the hour.  

The number of openers quickly reduces as the day continues, so a morning send also allows most recipients to act before the close of the business day. LocalMediaInsider reported that  B2B email opens are still going days later in small spurts due to information being resent to others or flagged to read later.

Other considerations may still trump these choices

The differences from Tuesday to Thursday are in the 10 to 35% range and may be trumped by timeliness that creates extra urgency or relevance.

For example, reminders should be sent about 24 hours before an important deadline, such as a client contest or webinar,  for maximum urgency.

After studying the data, one more email marketer, Jilt, said, “While Tuesday and Thursday perform the best, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday aren’t too far behind.

“If there’s something unique … that makes Monday a better day to send your emails, don’t be afraid to send that day.”