What is the best time to send emails for optimal engagement?
Michael Ko
Co-founder & CEO, Suped
Published 1 Aug 2025
Updated 15 Aug 2025
6 min read
The question of the "best time to send emails" for optimal engagement is one that email marketers constantly grapple with. While countless studies and industry benchmarks offer insights, the truth is, a universal "best time" often doesn't exist. What works for one audience or campaign may not work for another.
Instead of chasing a magic hour, a more effective approach is to understand the factors that influence engagement and how to tailor your sending strategy to your specific audience. This involves a blend of industry insights, data analysis, and continuous testing to discover what truly resonates with your subscribers.
Understanding your audience's behavior
The primary determinant of optimal email send times is your audience. Their demographics, daily routines, professional lives, and even geographic location (time zones) play a significant role. For instance, B2B audiences might engage more during working hours, while B2C audiences could be more active in the evenings or on weekends.
Understanding what email engagement factors are most important for inbox placement also helps define your optimal send times, as engaged users are less likely to flag emails as spam, which positively impacts your sender reputation. Consider segmenting your audience based on their historical interaction patterns, not just broad categories.
The nature of your email content also influences the best send time. A breaking news alert might need immediate delivery, while a weekly newsletter could perform better at a consistent, anticipated time. Transactional emails, on the other hand, are typically sent instantly following a user action, regardless of the time of day.
General trends and data insights
Despite the caveats, aggregated data from various studies can provide a useful starting point for your email campaigns. Many analyses point to weekdays, particularly Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, as the days with the highest engagement rates. Weekends generally see lower open and click-through rates, though this can vary by industry.
Regarding the time of day, late mornings (around 9 AM to 11 AM) and early afternoons (1 PM to 3 PM) frequently emerge as popular windows. These times often align with breaks in the workday or moments when people check their inboxes. For example, some data shows that most newsletters are sent out on weekdays, with Thursday and Friday being the most popular days, as reported by MailerLite data. Similarly, HubSpot's research indicates late morning tends to get the most opens, specifically around 11 AM.
However, it's crucial to remember that these are general trends. Your audience's specific habits might deviate significantly. Consider how your email sending speed best practices for deliverability also factor into your timing strategy, as sending too many emails too quickly can affect inbox placement regardless of the time.
Day of week
Optimal time window
Notes
Tuesday
9 AM - 11 AM
Often cited as the top day for open rates and click-through rates.
Wednesday
10 AM - 1 PM
Strong engagement, particularly for newsletters and promotional content.
Thursday
1 PM - 3 PM
Good for afternoon engagement as the week winds down.
Weekends
Varies by audience
Generally lower, but can work for specific B2C niches or leisure-related content.
The impact of timing on deliverability
Beyond simply getting your email opened, send time significantly influences deliverability. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and mailbox providers, such as Gmail and Outlook, closely monitor how recipients interact with your emails. High engagement (opens, clicks, replies) signals to them that your emails are valued, which in turn boosts your sender reputation. Conversely, sending at times when your audience is unlikely to engage can lead to negative signals.
If emails are consistently sent at a bad time, they may be ignored, deleted without opening, or even marked as spam. These actions (or inactions) can harm your domain and IP reputation, making it harder to reach the inbox in the future. Mailbox providers might start filtering your emails to the spam folder or even add your sending IP to a blocklist (or blacklist). Understanding how a blacklist works can highlight the severe consequences of consistent low engagement.
Best practices for deliverability and timing
Segment by time zone: Ensure your emails arrive at an optimal time in each recipient's local time, which can significantly boost engagement.
Monitor engagement metrics: Pay close attention to open rates, click-through rates, and complaint rates. A sudden drop in engagement might indicate a timing issue.
Warm-up new IPs/domains carefully: When starting with a new sending infrastructure, follow best practices for email sending speed to build a positive reputation.
Testing and optimization strategies
Since there’s no single best time, the key to success lies in robust testing and continuous optimization. Start with the general industry benchmarks, but quickly move to A/B testing different send times for your specific campaigns and audience segments.
Many email service providers (ESPs) offer built-in features for send time optimization, using machine learning to predict the best time for each individual recipient based on their past engagement. Utilizing such features can significantly enhance your email program's performance without manual guesswork. This can also help you improve email inbox placement.
Regularly review your campaign performance data. Look beyond just open rates to include click-through rates, conversion rates, and even unsubscribe rates. These metrics provide a more comprehensive picture of how your timing strategy is affecting overall engagement and return on investment. If you're not seeing the engagement you expect, re-evaluating your send times is a crucial step.
Manual A/B testing
Process: Divide your audience into segments and send the same email at different times to each segment. Analyze results manually.
Pros: Full control over variables, works with any ESP, good for smaller, focused tests.
Cons: Time-consuming, less scalable for large lists, limited by manual analysis capacity.
Automated send time optimization
Process: ESPs use algorithms to determine and send emails at each recipient's predicted best time.
Pros: Highly scalable, leverages individual user data, potentially higher engagement due to personalization.
Cons:Requires an ESP with this feature, less transparency into how optimization works.
Views from the trenches
Best practices
Always segment your audience by time zone to ensure local relevance for send times.
Use historical engagement data from your email platform to identify peak activity periods for your subscribers.
Test different days and times for various email types (newsletters, promotions, transactional).
Common pitfalls
Assuming a universal "best time" applies to all audiences and industries.
Sending emails precisely at the top of the hour, which can lead to inbox congestion.
Failing to account for time zones, resulting in emails arriving at inconvenient times for recipients.
Expert tips
If direct email engagement data is unavailable, examine your website's hourly traffic data to infer when your audience is most active online and send just before those busy slots.
Some ESPs provide advanced features that allow you to send emails at the individually optimized "best time" for each recipient, which can offer greater granularity than manual testing.
For large campaigns, consider a phased rollout, sending to highly engaged segments at optimal times first to establish a positive sending reputation, then expanding to broader audiences.
Marketer view
Marketer from Email Geeks says finding a single best time is a fallacy, and historical contact engagement data is more reliable.
Nov 26, 2020 - Email Geeks
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks says to avoid sending emails precisely at the top of the hour.
Nov 26, 2020 - Email Geeks
Finding your optimal send time
In the quest for optimal email engagement, pinning down a single "best time to send" is less about finding a definitive answer and more about ongoing discovery. What truly matters is understanding your unique audience and continuously adapting your strategy based on their behavior.
By leveraging your own data, experimenting with different send times, and utilizing available automation tools, you can refine your approach to ensure your emails reach recipients when they are most receptive, leading to higher engagement and better deliverability. This proactive and data-driven strategy is how you truly maximize the impact of your email campaigns.
Gmail and 
Outlook, closely monitor how recipients interact with your emails. High engagement (opens, clicks, replies) signals to them that your emails are valued, which in turn boosts your sender reputation. Conversely, sending at times when your audience is unlikely to engage can lead to negative signals.
