Most datasets offer a starting window, not a rule. Recent analyses disagree on the best day and show that opens and clicks can peak hours apart. Use your audience, time zone, and conversion goal to choose two plausible send windows, then test them with every other variable held constant.
Choose send windows to test
Brevo recommends Tuesday or Thursday as starting points in its email marketing guide. MailerLite analyzed 2,138,817 campaigns sent from December 2024 through November 2025 and found Friday had the highest average open and click rates. It also found opens usually peaked in the morning while clicks often peaked in the evening. These are different sources and measures. Choose two windows to test with your audience.
Best time by audience type
B2B
Start with weekday business hours, then test morning against early afternoon. Work audiences often read around the workday, but the click window can differ from the open window.
B2C
Test evenings and weekends instead of assuming business hours. Personal-inbox behavior varies by audience, and recent datasets show that opens and clicks can peak at different times.
Newsletters
Choose a slot your audience can recognize and your team can sustain. Then test whether a different window improves clicks or conversions.
Product, lifecycle & transactional
Use behavior when the message follows a product action. A welcome email fires on signup. A usage nudge fires when the in-product signal happens. That event is a better starting point than a benchmark hour.
How to find the best time for your audience
For an audience across time zones, compare equivalent local windows. Use a repeatable test plan:
- Choose one audience segment and one goal. Do not mix regions, lifecycle stages, or objectives in the same result.
Choose one audience segment and one goal. Do not mix regions, lifecycle stages, or objectives in the same result.
- If your platform does not deliver in each recipient’s local time, segment by region and schedule separate sends so the comparison is fair.
If your platform does not deliver in each recipient’s local time, segment by region and schedule separate sends so the comparison is fair.
- Change only the send window. Keep the audience, subject, sender, and message fixed, then compare clicks or goal conversions after a full measurement window.
Change only the send window. Keep the audience, subject, sender, and message fixed, then compare clicks or goal conversions after a full measurement window.
- For behavior-triggered email, use Loops Workflows. An Experiment node can split contacts into timer variants, and the workflow metrics show sends, opens, and clicks for each branch.
For behavior-triggered email, use Loops Workflows. An Experiment node can split contacts into timer variants, and the workflow metrics show sends, opens, and clicks for each branch.
Common myths about email send times
- Studies do not support one universal best time. Treat the consensus window as a hypothesis to test.
Studies do not support one universal best time. Treat the consensus window as a hypothesis to test.
- Weekend performance depends on the audience, so test Saturday and Sunday before ruling them out.
Weekend performance depends on the audience, so test Saturday and Sunday before ruling them out.
- Check list quality, audience selection, and message relevance before interpreting a timing result.
Check list quality, audience selection, and message relevance before interpreting a timing result.
- Re-test as the audience and product mature. A winning window can drift.
Re-test as the audience and product mature. A winning window can drift.
- Open rate is noisy. Apple Mail Privacy Protection can preload tracking pixels, so judge timing with clicks and conversions.
Open rate is noisy. Apple Mail Privacy Protection can preload tracking pixels, so judge timing with clicks and conversions.
FAQ
What’s the best time to send email?
What’s the best day to send email?
What’s the best time for marketing emails?
Should I use my time zone or the recipient’s?
How do I find my own best send time?
Do open rates still tell me when to send?
Next: learn how to run an email A/B test, then use lifecycle email for behavior-triggered timing.
