What Is the Best Time To Send an Email? Factors + Tips

When it comes to messaging, timing can be just as important as the message. Whether you’re releasing a new product line or promoting a Black Friday sale, a perfectly worded email subject line can go that much farther when it arrives at just the right time. 

To help you nail down the right time to schedule send, we’ve pulled in third-party data from email marketing platforms. Read on for tips on the best time to send an email, to help you implement more sophisticated email marketing strategies.

What is the best time to send an email?

The best time to send an email is when your own audience is most likely to open it and take action. Averaging out several email platform surveys, this ideal time slot typically falls on weekdays between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. in the recipient’s own time zone. Tuesday and Thursday mornings are especially effective. However, it really depends on what you sell, what type of email you’re sending, and how your specific subscribers behave. Best times can vary depending on several factors.

Why does email send time matter?

Sending a summer savings announcement or holiday gift guide preview at the optimal time can boost your open rate, which is the percentage of recipients who open an email. Down the funnel, it can also mean improvement for metrics like click-through and conversion. Data from Mailchimp, a popular email marketing service, shows the average open rate is 35.63%. This can vary by industry; for ecommerce, it’s 29.81%.

Jacob Sappington, director of email strategy at Homestead Studio, a growth agency that’s worked with brands including HexClad, Casely, and Brightland, recommends that email marketers track key metrics while also comparing against their own historical data. That way, they can see whether specific times are leading to better open and conversion rates.

“[We track] open rate, click rate, place order rate, [and] revenue per recipient,” Jacob says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “Those are probably the top four that we keep our eyes on. But [we’re] mostly comparing against our own numbers. The important thing is to understand how these metrics change over time and what variables play a factor in that.”

Email KPIs to track

To figure out if your timing works, watch these key performance indicators (KPI) and see if they’re trending upward:

• Open rate. How many people opened your email out of everyone who received it?

• Click-through rate. How many clicked a link in your email?

• Click-to-open rate. Of the people who opened, how many clicked (this separates timing from content quality)?

• Conversion rate. How many completed what you wanted them to do: Buy something? Sign up? Download?

• Place order rate. How many people who received your email completed a purchase?

• Revenue per recipient. How much money was generated from the campaign, divided by emails sent?

Factors that affect email benchmarks 

• Your industry
• What you’re sending
• Your audience
• Time zones
• Day of the month
• Season

Some general timing rules hold true across scenarios. However, differences between industries, messaging, and your target audience can matter just as much. Consider these key factors:

Your industry

According to an analysis from Brevo, an email marketing and automation platform, the overall best time to send an email is on Tuesday or Thursday, between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.. However, their recommendations shift depending on the industry. They found that ecommerce emails see the best open rates on Tuesdays and Thursdays mid-morning, after recipients settle into their week. Nonprofits see the best open rates on the same days but later, around 3 to 4 p.m.

They also found that business-to-business (B2B) sendouts do best on weekday mornings when people are at their desks. Meanwhile, SaaS businesses—such as to-do list apps or workplace communication software—see engagement spike around 2 to 3 p.m. The following table is a general guide to when you’ll see the best results for your industry:

Different surveys yield different results. For instance, MailerLite found that sending on Mondays, weekends, and evenings led to a boost in conversions and open rates. Most other surveys indicate these times leave something to be desired. That’s why you’ll want to experiment and generate a custom report to see what times or strategies work best for your brand specifically. For instance, if you sell skin care, you might find evenings work better when people think about their nighttime routine.

What you’re sending

Data from Twilio Sendgrid found that different types of emails perform better at different times. If you’re running a promotion, aim to send it either mid-morning (9 to 11 a.m.) or during the post-lunch window (1 to 3 p.m.) when people are browsing. Email newsletters do best on Tuesday mornings, around 10 to 11 a.m.

Transactional emails—the ones triggered by what someone does on your site—follow different rules than your scheduled campaigns. For example, abandoned cart sendouts remind browsers about products they didn’t buy. In that case, send reminders out around four hours after someone leaves items behind. By the same token, welcome emails should be sent the moment someone subscribes.

Your audience 

Moosend ran the numbers on the best time to send emails depending on age demographics. Working professionals check their emails before the workday kicks off, or in the 8 to 9 a.m. window, while they’re commuting or having a cup of coffee. College students and younger adults operate on a different clock, with inbox checks happening around noon. 

That hours-long gap between these groups tells you something: not everyone’s inbox habits follow a 9-to-5 schedule. If you’re selling backpacks to Gen Z, sending an 8 a.m. sale email means your message may already be buried by the time they look at their phone.

Time zones

When your subscribers span multiple time zones, sending one blast means some people get your email at terrible times. The safe bet is to assume the best sending times we’ve discussed apply everywhere, just adjusted for local time. That means that if 10 a.m. on Tuesday works well, schedule your emails to go out to your East Coast clients and customers at 10 a.m. ET and your West Coast ones at 10 a.m. PT. 

Day of the month 

According to data from Omnisend, you might not see the same results if you send your email on the first of the month versus a later date. They surmise that the first day of the month drives higher conversions because that’s likely when a lot of paychecks land and people mentally reset their spending budgets. Interestingly, the data shows different peaks for different metrics—opens spike on the 10th and 24th, clicks peak on the 2nd and 26th, but conversions are strongest on the 1st and 30th of the month.

It’s not necessarily that your emails suddenly get more compelling on certain days—people’s willingness to spend often shifts based on when their bank account looks healthier. Time your big promotions for the bookends of the month (the 1st or 30th/31st), and you’re reaching customers when they’re ready to spend.

Season

There’s not a lot of hard data on the best times to send emails across different seasons. But we can formulate some educated guesses about when to schedule your email campaigns during different times of the year.

In North America, the biggest shopping season is Christmas, so ramp up your email frequency starting in November through December, when people are actively shopping for gifts. For Black Friday and Cyber Monday specifically, data from Twilio Sendgrid shows the sweet spot for send time is 8 to 9 a.m. 

Summer and major holidays likely show lower email engagement since people are on vacation or spending less time in their inbox, but you’ll want to ramp back up in late August and early September to catch the back-to-school shopping wave. Your business type matters too. Lawn care companies should concentrate email campaigns in spring (March through May) when people are planning their yards. Fitness brands should lean into January when New Year’s resolutions have consumers motivated to sign up for that Pilates bootcamp or purchase new activewear.

Tips for finding the best time to send marketing emails

• Begin with Tuesday or Thursday mornings
• Skip weekends, especially Saturdays
• Segment by geography
• Explore Shopify Email
• Test Shopify Automations

Benchmarks give you a starting point, but you still need to test what works with your specific audience. Yes, Tuesday mornings and Thursday afternoons work broadly, but maybe your target customers are night owls shopping at midnight. Perhaps they’re early risers browsing before their espresso finishes brewing. 

Test these strategies systematically to find your audience's peak engagement windows:

Begin with Tuesday or Thursday mornings

You’re safest starting your testing on Tuesday or Thursday between 9 and 11 a.m., as these days of the week show the strongest engagement numbers across different industries. Tuesday specifically generates the highest open rates. For ecommerce brands, Tuesday mornings may catch shoppers at the start of their week when they’re potentially planning purchases for the weekend ahead.

Use these days to test your success. Schedule one email campaign for Tuesday at 10 a.m., track the opens and clicks, and compare future A/B tests to this baseline. Only change one element at a time. You don’t want to switch both day and time at once, or you won’t know which one drove results.

Skip weekends, especially Saturdays

Saturdays and Sundays consistently show the low open rates and paltry click-through rates, no matter what the industry. Weekend email engagement likely struggles since people prioritize leisure activities, family and friend time, and home admin over checking promotional emails. This means your thoughtful product launch sendout or flash sale announcement may not reach its full potential if you schedule it for a Saturday morning.

Segment by geography

Most email platforms let you set up these segments once and schedule them to send automatically based on time zone, so you’re not stuck manually scheduling multiple versions of the same campaign. It’s about making sure your email arrives when people are actually checking their inbox, not three hours before they wake up or right when they’re logging off for the day.

Explore Shopify Email 

Lean into the tools you already have to help perfect your email timing. If you’re an ecommerce merchant on Shopify, you have free access to Shopify Email. Its intelligent send time feature helps you reach customers when they’re most likely to interact with what you have to say. 

Choose a recommended send time powered by Shopify Magic, which analyzes your audience’s behavior to drive higher click-through rates. You can prepare your promotional campaigns in advance and schedule them to send at these ideal moments. 

For example, schedule your weekend sale announcement based on Shopify’s recommendation, whether that’s Thursday at 10 a.m. or another peak engagement time for your target audience. This gives subscribers time to plan their weekend purchase while potentially upping your email’s performance.

Test Shopify Automations 

Shopify email lets you create and send campaigns manually, but Shopify Automations handles trigger-based emails that go out based on customer behavior. 

For example, you can set it up to send welcome emails as soon as someone subscribes to your newsletter, winback campaigns trigger 60 days after a customer’s last order, and upsells are delivered after someone becomes a first-time buyer. 

You can also control the timing with conditions. An automation can wait 60 days after an order, check whether the customer has made another purchase, and send a winback email if they haven’t. Instead of a mass sendout, messages arrive at the most relevant moment for the subscribers in your system.