When is the best day to send a email newsletter in the next week?

December 28, 2014 9:00 AM

I am a small business owner and am sending an email newsletter out to a few hundred people in the next week or so. It's ready to go, and I'm trying to decide which day to send it out to get the highest chance of people reading it. All recipients are in the US.

If I send it before New Years (today, Monday or Tuesday), some people will have downtime (either at home or work) and have time to read a newsletter. Others may be off and ignoring or deleting any emails that are not urgent.

If I send it after New Years (maybe Tuesday, Jan 6) people will be back at work, maybe with a lot to do. My wife thinks that means they will be procrastinating and maybe more interested in reading a newsletter. I think some people will delete all fluff emails when they are busy and there could be a lower chance of people reading it at all.

Any thoughts? Thanks!

posted by kdern to Work & Money (6 answers total)

I know it's not a direct answer to your question, but your newsletter is an optimum tool to answer the question you're asking. If it were an email with a link back to your content, you could check the server logs easily. Market research: sorted.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 9:08 AM on December 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

I've always gotten the best responses when sending stuff on Tuesday mornings.
posted by Jacqueline at 9:20 AM on December 28, 2014

Tuesday mornings are common but holiday periods will probably affect results. If your mailing list is big enough, you could send half this week and half next to test results. But that's not what I'd do because it's a holiday period that screws with everything. If your customers are consumers, I'd send it this Tuesday because even if they're working, things are slow and they're more likely to have time to read your newsletter. If you're a B2B company, I'd send it out the Tuesday or Wednesday after Jan 1 because people will be back at work and paying attention again. As much as they ever do. :-)
posted by Bella Donna at 9:35 AM on December 28, 2014

If you're sending the email to professionals of any sort, I'd wait until the second week in January. I personally will have hundreds of emails to wade through when I get back to work, and I'll trash any that look like sales pitches. But things will have normalized by my second week back, and I'll open any emails that look interesting.

This actually goes for my personal email as well, since it's been barraged with end-of-the-year pitches for weeks now.
posted by jenmakes at 10:25 AM on December 28, 2014 [3 favorites]

This week, I would send it on Tuesday.
posted by michaelh at 11:37 AM on December 28, 2014

Dec 30 and 31 are by far the highest email volume days for non-profits in the US. Might be relevant if your audience is the type to be getting emails from them. Just something to keep in mind as you make this decision.
posted by Ragini at 12:33 PM on December 28, 2014