Email marketing is one of the best methods to generate and nurture B2B leads. Not to mention, it is also efficient and cost-effective. If you’re already familiar with the concept, you’ll know it’s a little more complicated than simply drafting your cold email campaigns and pushing “send” as soon as it’s finished.
Sure, you may have targeted potential prospects and crafted a personalized and appealing email. However, you still need the target to read and reply to your cold email to get new business from senior marketing decision-makers.
Simply put, the day and time you send your email significantly affect your or your sales team’s performance. This article will teach you the best time to send a cold email. If you’re interested, keep reading this article to learn more about it.
But before we dive in, let’s first understand what factors affect email open rates.
5 Factors Affecting Email Open Rates
1. Email Subject Line
Over one-third of your subscribers only consider the email’s subject line when deciding whether to open it. Your subject line is your first—and occasionally—the only chance to catch the interest of your subscribers and pique their curiosity. [1]
Therefore, create your subject line carefully, keeping in mind that it contributes significantly to the open rates of your cold emails. Your subject line should also be short but convey as much as you can about the substance of your email.
Another study claims that 47% of marketers test various email subject lines to enhance the effectiveness of their emails. That is why it is critical to write subject lines that are interesting enough to entice visitors to click through. [2]
As soon as your subscribers read it, it should be able to capture their interest.
2. Target Audience and Demographics
Another factor you must research is the behavior of your target customer’s email subscribers, location, and local time zones before sending any cold emails.
It is also not a wise choice to conduct Sunday cold email outreach campaigns to people residing in European nations. There is less possibility to read letters because it is their weekend.
3. Sender Information
The sender is another factor that may impact email open rates. They are less likely to read your email if they don’t know who you are. Therefore, include your name and contact information in the email signature.
Using email addresses like info@ or sales@ that are too general is likewise a bad idea.
Instead, use the name and email address of a real person. Doing this will increase your chances of your receiver opening the email.
4. Relevance to the Potential Client
One of the reasons your email gets deleted or marked as spam is that you send out emails that do not benefit the recipients on your list.
Every subscriber has different demands and wants. They fit into several groups, and other interests motivate them. The caliber of your email information can impact email open rates.
In addition, your emails will almost go unopened if you send a message to your list containing uninteresting or weak content.
People admire information but value it even more when they can use it in practical ways.
5. Time
The time of day can also impact email open rates. Your receiver is less likely to see an email you send after business hours. When sending cold sales emails, it’s crucial to consider the prospect’s time zone.
Also, you should only send cold emails early or late in the day. The likelihood of someone opening their email at these times is lower unless you specifically aim for early risers or night owls (or only check their mailbox).
But let’s assume that isn’t the case. Instead, try to send your email campaign during regular business hours. These people are more likely to check their email during this time, which boosts the chances that they will see your message.
Does Timing Matter for Cold Email Outreach?
By selecting the correct day of the week and time of day, you can significantly improve your or your sales team’s performance.
Therefore, the right time to send cold emails is not precisely defined. Instead, the ideal time may change depending on the audience.
People also receive a large number of emails daily in their inboxes. They only read about 65% of the emails; the rest are deleted.
Only sometimes are optimal for sending an email, and this is true even for a cold email. The main reason for this is that every person has a personal life. They may also live in a different nation with a different time zone.
Everyone who responds to your email could not be in a good mood. For instance, just because you put in extra time doesn’t indicate that everyone else does. Prospects are also less likely to reply favorably to your email if they are preoccupied with their families.
If your target audience doesn’t read the email within 24 hours of sending it, they will likely never open it again. So, email timing is crucial in email marketing to enhance the sales process.
Best Days to Send Cold Emails
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays
You can send cold emails on any of the three days of the week. They can also access other emails in their inbox now that their office work for the week is finished.
So, schedule your efforts to go out on Tuesday mornings at 10 AM if you’re starting with cold email marketing to a purchased list of B2B contacts. This time and day may be the best time to send to a particular industry audience. One who adheres to regular office hours won’t be the best time to reach everyone.
However, this does not mean that sending your cold marketing emails on Tuesday early morning at 10 a.m. won’t be the optimal time to do so — it may be.
Put yourself in your (possible) customer’s shoes if you’re trying to reach a group of people who work late or on weekends.
Best Time to Send Cold Emails
In 2023, around 192 million examined emails from CampaignMonitor were opened. The study indicates that 53% of those emails were opened between 9 AM and 5 PM during working hours. The hours between 10 AM and 4 PM had the best open rates during that period. [3]
From 2019 to 2021, Omnisend examined email data spanning over three years. The hours with the highest open rates were 4 PM, 1 PM, 3 AM, and 8 AM. They wanted to know what time of day had the best open rates. [4]
While we advise against sending cold emails too early or too late in the day, you can still send them anytime during business hours.
Getting up early or staying late to send emails at specified times is optional. You can arrange emails in advance using the platforms and tools for sales development available today.
Our email deliverability tool called InboxAlly guarantees higher opening rates for emails that have been forwarded. Users can plan email broadcasting campaigns based on their customers’ time zones. [5]
Best Time of Day to Expect an Email Response
Oddly, there must be a clear trendline from previous data regarding prospects responding to your emails. The timing of when the recipients should return their answers varies.
Some of them like to do it right away (between 5 and 8 a.m.) after reading the email, while others choose to wait until the start of the workday (9 a.m.). Also, there is a sharp increase in email responses sent after lunch (2 p.m.).
Only a modest cumulative percentage of emails are answered at the end of the workday after this rise. According to the research, prospects like to respond to most of their emails in the morning hours.
When Not to Send Cold Emails
It’s best to avoid the evening hours. People will likely be winding down at this time and might not need a little time or interest to respond to a cold email.
Additionally, they are more likely to view your message as a nuisance and hurl their phone across the room out of fury if it comes through.
Lunchtime is another wrong time to send cold emails since people are eating. They won’t be able to reply because they won’t think about work.
While we’re about it, sending cold emails around the holidays is terrible.
Conclusion
There are several considerations to make while drafting sales emails and selecting the optimum time to send them to maximize the chance of getting a response. But, you can boost your chances of success by:
- Testing out emails sent on weekends and during “off hours.”
- Scheduling your emails and creating a sales cadence using software like InboxAlly;
- Tracking replies rather than views to determine success
These three strategies will identify your strengths and weaknesses and adjust your sales email strategy.
InboxAlly is the ultimate deliverability tool that experts and email service providers use to resolve complex email deliverability issues.
Book a live demo to discover how it can make your email campaigns successful.
Footnotes:
- https://exceleads.com/33-of-email-recipients-open-email-based-on-subject-line-alone/
- https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics
- https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/best-time-to-send-email-campaigns-by-device/
- https://www.omnisend.com/blog/best-time-to-send-email/
- https://www.inboxally.com/