What’s the best time of day to send your email campaigns?

Let’s just say we get this question… a lot. There is a large amount of data on the topic, but something I stumbled upon today from Get Response Email Marketing gave nice data points that I thought were worth sharing. The figures below are based on 21 million emails in the first quarter of 2012.

Of particular interest:

•  24% of emails are opened in the first hour they are sent (about 10% are opened in the second hour)
• 90% of the openings will be achieved within 5 hours
• Top times for openings are 8 and 9 am, and 3 and 4pm

So what are the key takeaways? If you send too early in the morning, you’ll get lost in the overnight surge of messages. If possible, target the message to send at 8 am in your time zone. Another option is to have the send go in the early afternoon. If you’re a global business, segment your distribution lists by region and send each at the same local time. Above all, measure your results against previous sends and make sure that the new times work for YOUR business.