We analyzed thousands of campaigns to understand the best day to send emails. Here’s the data we found

9 min read

July 17, 2024

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What is the best day to send marketing emails?

In an era of endless notifications and noise, that’s one of the most common questions we get from ecommerce marketers—and it’s a big one, considering that when you send an email is critical to driving revenue through one of your most important marketing channels.

The bad news: there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. A variety of factors influence the best time and day to send emails, from your vertical to the size of your business to your audience. Above all, finding your brand’s optimal send time requires a meticulous process of A/B testing.

Here comes the good news, though: after compiling and analyzing data from thousands of email campaigns in 2023, the Klaviyo product analytics team identified significant differences in open rates, click rates, and order rates based on email send times.

Here’s a summary of the email send time data they uncovered. (Note: This data pull removed machine opens to capture actual opens from human recipients and more accurately compare performance on different days of the week.)

Wednesday and Thursday are the best days to send emails

Across industries, Wednesday and Thursday tend to be the highest-performing days for email campaigns.

Here’s how the engagement metrics break down:

Average email open rates for each day of the week

Monday: 12.42%
Tuesday: 12.52%
Wednesday: 12.49%
Thursday: 12.43%
Friday: 12.14%
Saturday: 11.29%
Sunday: 11.68%

Average email click rates for each day of the week

Monday: 2.09%
Tuesday: 2.14%
Wednesday: 2.18%
Thursday: 2.13%
Friday: 2.10%
Saturday: 1.95%
Sunday: 1.95%

Average email placed order rates for each day of the week

Monday: 0.22%
Tuesday: 0.20%
Wednesday: 0.21%
Thursday: 0.22%
Friday: 0.20%
Saturday: 0.18%
Sunday: 0.19%

The best day to send emails varies by industry

Here’s how the email send time data changes when you slice it by vertical:

Apparel and accessories

The apparel and accessories vertical follow the overall trend. The highest open rates occur on Tuesday (11.17%), while the highest click rates happen on Wednesday (2.20%). For order rates, Monday through Friday all perform equally well (0.14%).

Here’s a Wednesday snapshot for apparel and accessory brands:

Average open rate: 11.11%
Average click rate: 2.20%
Average order rate: 0.14%

Food and beverage

For food and beverage-focused businesses, the highest open rates are on Tuesday (13.67%), the highest click rates are on Friday (2.33%), and the highest order rates are on Thursday (0.61%).

Here’s a Tuesday snapshot for food and beverage brands:

Average open rate: 13.67%
Average click rate: 2.27%
Average order rate: 0.46%

Health and beauty

Health and beauty brands align with the overall trend. The best send day for open rates is Tuesday (12.05%), and the best day for click rates is on Wednesday (1.63%). For order rates, Monday through Thursday (0.24%) performed equally.

Here’s a Wednesday snapshot for health and beauty brands:

Average open rate: 12.01%
Average click rate: 1.63%
Average order rate: 0.24%

Home and garden

For home and garden businesses, the highest open rates happen on Tuesday (11.65%). For click rates, the best send times are on Wednesday and Thursday (2.08%). Finally, order rates are highest on Tuesday (0.16%).

Here’s a Tuesday snapshot for home and garden brands:

Average open rate: 11.65%
Average click rate: 2.03%
Average order rate: 0.16%

Jewelry

For jewelry brands, Thursday is the best send time for both open rates (11.20%) and click rates (1.92%). For order rates, Monday is the optimal send day (0.14%).

Here’s a Thursday snapshot for jewelry brands:

Average open rate: 11.20%
Average click rate: 1.92%
Average order rate: 0.10%

Sporting goods

For sporting goods businesses, open rates are most optimal on Tuesday (13.34%). For click rate, Sunday is the best send time (2.79%)—making this the only vertical where a weekend day is the highest performing. (Although the average can be pulled up by outliers, median click rate is also highest on Sunday.)

Finally, for order rate, Tuesday through Thursday (0.17%) are all equally optimal.

Here’s a Tuesday snapshot for sporting goods brands:

Average open rate: 13.34%
Average click rate: 2.59%
Average order rate: 0.17%

Automotive

Our sample size for the automotive industry was a bit smaller, so the only statistically significant claim we can make is that weekday sending is preferable to weekend sending.

Electronics

The same goes for the electronics industry. Because our sample size was smaller, the only statistically significant finding is that weekday sending is preferable to weekend sending.

How to weave email send time data into your email strategy

While these benchmarks are a great starting point, it’s important to layer in your own data to get the most accurate picture. Specifically, running your own analysis can reveal not only the best days to send your marketing emails, but also the best times.

Your initial instinct might be to look at the historical data of your email sends and pick out the most successful days and times. But our data science team tested this theory and found that historical data isn’t a reliable way to determine the best email send days. That’s why we encourage businesses to run their own tests instead.

Here are two key ways you can use Klaviyo to do find your unique brand’s best time and day to send email marketing:

Option 1: A/B test for send times

With Klaviyo, you can A/B test your emails for optimal send time by setting your campaign to send at different times throughout the day and randomly selecting subscribers from your target audience.

You can also have two or more variations of the same email within a single campaign—ensuring that everybody gets the same content, with send time as the only variable. Here’s how:

Prepare your campaign.

Set up your email campaign as usual in Klaviyo. This involves selecting the audience you want to target and creating the email content you’ll send to your subscribers.

Add variations for A/B testing.

Click on the “Add a variation” link located in the “Message Content” section of your campaign. Then, switch to the “Test send time” configuration by clicking the “Switch to test send time” link at the bottom of the page. This will allow you to set different sending times for each variation of your email. If you want to track the performance of each variation separately in a tool like Google Analytics, add UTM parameters for each variation.

Schedule your campaign.

Once you set up your variations with their respective sending times, schedule your marketing emails. Click the “Save & Schedule campaign” button to proceed with sending the A/B test campaign. This will initiate the process of sending your email campaign to your target audience.

Analyze the results.

After sending the A/B test campaign, it’s important to allow sufficient time for data collection. Wait 24-48 hours before analyzing the results to ensure you have enough data to make informed decisions. To view the results, navigate to the “Campaigns” section in Klaviyo and click on the campaign you want to analyze. Then, click on the “Variations” tab to see the performance metrics for each variation, including open rate, click rate, and placed order rate.

Option 2: Use Klaviyo’s Smart Send Time feature

Another option is to use Smart Send Time—a Klaviyo AI feature that automates the process of experimenting and finding the best send time for your unique audience.

“From the many Smart Send Time tests, my results vary by merchant and audiences,” says Smart Send Time user Joseph Hsieh. “For some brands/audiences, the timing of the email is pretty crucial. One example is brands that cater to folks during the working hours (think office supply or corporate gifting brands, etc.)—finding the right time to send was helpful and drove comparative higher engagements.”

The process begins by exploring how recipients respond to emails at different times of the day through a 24-hour A/B test. Once sufficient data is collected, Smart Send Time makes optimal send time available as a sending option, maximizing open rates while continuing to learn and explore subscriber habits.

Finding the right time to send was helpful and drove comparative higher engagements.

Joseph Hsieh

Klaviyo Smart Send Time user

(The amount of data required varies based on list size. Smaller lists, for example, may require several sends to determine the best send time.)

Even after identifying optimal send time, Smart Send Time continues to explore by sending emails within a 4-hour window around the optimal time. This ongoing exploration enables the system to adapt and track potential changes in best send time, always using the most up-to-date information. The entire process is conducted in the recipient’s local time zone to effectively reach global or localized audiences.

Mohsin Farooqui, another Smart Send Time user, believes this is a tool every ecommerce brand needs to optimize their performance.

Timing is a great way to optimize open rates.

Mohsin Farooqui

Klaviyo Smart Send Time user

“Smart Send Time is definitely worth exploring and is a great feature that can help you target your right audience (based on your segmentation strategy) at the right time,” he says. “Timing is a great way to optimize open rates and leveraging tools like this from Klaviyo can be of great help.”

Important note: In order to conduct the exploratory and focused tests outlined above, you must be able to send campaigns to an audience of 12,000 people or greater. These tests cannot be conducted for a campaign with a recipient list smaller than 12,000. You must also be on an email billing plan that supports sending to this many profiles.

Optimize performance by discovering your best day to send marketing emails

Determining the optimal day and time to send your email campaigns is pivotal to your entire email marketing strategy.

By increasing your odds of customers seeing your emails, you open up more opportunities to get them in the door and nudge them closer to a purchase—tapping into more potential revenue and brand loyalty.

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Sophia Lee

Sophia is a writing coach for founders and a freelance writer for tech startups across all stages and various industries—from HR to ecommerce to healthcare. Prior to starting her own business, she was a writer at First Round Capital and worked as a marketer at a Series C startup.