Best day to send a newsletter

Many of my autoresponder customers continually ask this question. I thought I knew the answer but I'm not so sure anymore after I have heard others give their rational for certain days.

What is the best time and day to reach customers with a newsletter?

Thanks,

Izzy brewer

 

I think it depends on whether you expect the person to read the newsletter using their business mail or home mail??? Sending something on Friday as people are ready to get out of work is likely to get your email trashed. Actually, sending it to their work is likely to get your autoresponder trashed by "spam" programs automatically.

My newsletter customers tend to be home related and generally older. While weekend traffic is slower then weekdays for me, I find a newsletter dropped on their lap Friday morning, is a great boost to my traffic over the weekend! Generally I find the elderly more responsive to this form of communication. Especially if I personalize it.

 

The best time/day to send a newsletter is the exact day/time the subscriber signed up to your email list.

For more general information Aweber.com has some quite interesting statistics on open rate and clickthrough on their site.

Nothing is clearcut

 

All audiences and businesses are different. Think about your product or service and how often your customers use it, or buy it, to determine how often to communicate. Generally, if you are sending promotional emails about a product or service, two or three times per month is plenty.

Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are better days for both consumer and business audiences. Mondays and Fridays naturally achieve a lower response rate as the beginning and end of each week is generally hectic. Mid-day (e.g. 11am-2pm) gets better open and click-through rates than evenings. Always avoid sending on or immediately around holidays. School vacation days, known long weekends, religious holidays and the like lower response rates.

The frequency and timing of email communications will be different for every business. By testing alternatives and monitoring your subscriber feedback and unsubscribes, you can establish the frequency and timing that is ideal for your audience.

imaginemn

ImagineCreativeServices.com
Web Design, Development, Video Services and more!

 

I agree with Andy on this one, nothing is clearcut. From researches I've read, Wednesday always seems to oupull most other days, but that's not guaranteed, as it depends on your industry and your audience.

Andy's theory (via Aweber) makes perfect sense, as you dynamically schedule the delivery of your newsletter for each recipient, based on a time where you know the visitor has been available to view your website in the past. Chances are, that time would be best for them to view your newsletter too, in the future.

Mondays are out the window AFAIC - all e-mails from Saturday & Sunday & Monday morning tend to stack up, which results in an overall lesser tolerance & average viewing time for each e-mail.

Just my 2 cents

Adi Friedman
TwoBelievers.com Web Holdings.

 

I would have thought Monday. They come into work and check their email boxes.

 

Thanks very much for your oppinions guys.

 

From my experince of sending newsletters to business, Monday is time to settle back into the swing o' things and Friday is preparedness for the weekend... so Tues/Weds/Thurs are good days for getting a response. Just bear in mind holidays can turn Tuesdays into Mondays and Thursdays into Fridays

 

I personally found that mid afternoon on a friday works the best, you catch all the 'weekend' users plus once the workers log in on a monday morning it's the first thing they see

 

I always thought friday too for some reason. Havnt a clue why and nothing to back it up. Think iv just read that a few times.

 

I've several years of experience and research data from one of my lists (30.000 opt in subscribers in travel industry, most private people) ...I found out, that Tuesday morning around 10 AM has the best open ratio of the newsletter. Wednesday (morning) is also ok, but Tuesday is the best at least in my case. But as others have said, too, this is heavily related on your industry etc.

A tip... just ask your subcribers by publishing a short survey (I did it in the beginning and the message was clear)

 

One additional benefit of sending email at the exact time that a user signs up is server load. Obviously you still need to add in some scheduling delays, and some services can cope with some massive volume.

If it is a time limited promotion that you can't promote until an exact time on a particular day, the time to send the email is obviously when the promotion starts. Otherwise your competition might well get the sale.

 

AndyBeard - I think that's a good idea. Sometimes, though, you want to mail a time sensitive offer, or an offer that is actual to today / tomorrow (e.g. a news item, a donation request for a major disaster, etc.) and in that case doing such a mailing based on the subscriber's registration date won't fly.

Other than that, I would agree

Adi Friedman
TwoBelievers.com Web Holdings.

 

As some people said, midfriday because people usually come back from school, work or something of that sort. They usually are relaxed and check their emails and stuff.

 

Wednesday - 4 pm. I'm not kidding.

 

A few great points have been made.

First, I certainly think it will depend on the market demographic that you're trying to reach.

Before I hung up my shirt and tie and resigned from the "corporate" world, I did Internet Market Research for the GoArmy.com. Part of our problem was that we'd get bounced emails from people who'd sent in emails, questions, etc. and mainly this was an issue for "free" accounts like hotmail and others that have limited space inboxes.

I always had my employees archive these messages through the week and do a resend on Sunday or Monday. Why? For our market, the weekend was when they would generally go to their email accounts and clean house so come Sun. night or Monday morning, they had space. Secondly, based on research at the time, Monday was the busiest day on the Internet, followed by Thurs and then Sun.

Internet News and a few other research site might be your best bet. Neilsen and others also have some great online marketing demographical statistics that might help you better advise your clients on a case-by-case basis depending on their newsletter genre.

Do you like how I posted all of that and never came to an answer or conclusion? I'm practicing for a career in politics ... just kidding ...

Personally, if Monday proves to still be the most active day on the Internet, I would send out over the weekend, like late Friday to Sunday, so that it is waiting for the user on Monday ... my .02

Good Luck!

 

Hi not really relevant to the question but i thought you all would know. i would like to start a newsletter 2000 mailings weekly, but dont know how to produce one in dreamweaver and to send through outlook express. i am confused - some sites offer email marketing software for $40 others for $2000 and others a monthly fee - it all seems to amount to the same thing - some say i need a licence?! - any advice?
Thanks

 

No doubt that if your audience is consumers then you can keep your open rate up and bounce rate down by sending in the late afternoon. If they recieve your email during work, they will be quick to delete. With that said, Tuesday through Thursday are best although I have had some Sunday afternoon success.

For business, early afternoon on Tuesday through Thursday only. It's a short window. Morning emails and late afternoon emails are quickly deleted.

However, Andy mentioned

. That's a great idea! Outside of Aweber, I'm not sure how to accomplish this though.

- JD
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