The Best Time To Send an Email Marketing Campaign In 2025

When is the best time to send email marketing campaigns in 2025?

This question remains central to email marketing strategies as businesses look to connect with their audiences in the most effective way. Timing is essential for ensuring your subscribers not only see your emails but engage with them.

With busy schedules filled with work and personal commitments, it’s important to send emails when people are most likely to pay attention. Choosing the right time can significantly increase open rates, clicks, and overall campaign success.

But is there one "perfect time," or does it depend on your audience?

Let’s dive into key trends and insights to help you make the best decision for your email scheduling.

Why Email Timing Matters

Timing plays a crucial role in the success of any email campaign.

Even with great copy, attention-grabbing visuals, and compelling calls to action (CTAs), these elements won't make an impact if your audience doesn't receive them at the right time.

Sending emails at optimal moments increases the chances of reaching subscribers when they’re most likely to engage, boosting open rates, click-throughs, and conversions.

Without data-backed insights to guide your timing, even the best-crafted emails may go unnoticed. By strategically planning when to send your campaigns, you ensure your efforts align to achieve the best possible results.

What Conventional Wisdom Says About Email Timing

Understanding your audience’s routines and habits is a good starting point for finding the ideal time to send emails. Even without in-depth analytics, stepping into your audience's shoes can help you make educated guesses about their inbox behavior.

Here’s how email engagement often unfolds throughout the week:

Monday

Traditionally, Monday is considered a less effective day for email campaigns.

People are busy catching up from the weekend and setting their priorities for the workweek, leaving less attention for promotional emails. However, recent data indicates that Mondays are not always ineffective.

In some cases, emails sent early in the day can achieve solid open rates, particularly if they provide value or relate to work-related topics.

Midweek (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday)

People often consider the middle of the week as the ideal time for email marketing.In these days, people are settled into their routines and actively checking their inboxes, making it a prime window for engagement.

Emails sent midweek often align with a subscriber’s work rhythm, resulting in consistently strong open and click-through rates.

Friday

As the weekend approaches, priorities shift, and engagement with emails tends to wane.

However, Friday lunchtime can be surprisingly effective, as many people take a break from work and skim through their inboxes.

Later in the day, as the focus turns to weekend plans, email engagement typically drops.

The Weekend

Weekends pose a unique challenge for email marketers. Fewer emails are sent during this time, but subscriber behavior can vary widely depending on cultural norms and personal habits.

For example, audiences in regions like France or Italy may avoid work-related emails on weekends. In contrast, Sunday evenings in the US often provide a window of opportunity, as many people use this time to prepare for the week ahead.

So, what’s really the best time to send an email?

When it comes to email marketing, timing is everything.

Research consistently highlights that choosing the right day and time can significantly impact open rates and overall campaign success.

The Best Days for Email Engagement

Research indicates that Thursday is the most effective day for email engagement, boasting the highest average open rates, closely followed by Tuesday.

Conversely, Saturday tends to have the lowest engagement, making it less ideal for campaigns.

The Best Times of Day

Morning hours, particularly 8-9 am, are consistently cited as the most effective for email engagement.

This is when many people check their inboxes as part of their daily routine. A second peak often occurs around 1-2 pm, coinciding with lunch breaks when people have a moment to review emails.

After 6 pm, open rates generally decline as attention shifts away from work or personal tasks.

Tailoring Timing to Your Audience

While these trends provide a helpful starting point, understanding your specific audience is crucial.

For B2B audiences, workday inbox overload may affect open rates, requiring thoughtful scheduling.

Meanwhile, B2C businesses must account for diverse buyer behaviors, making testing and segmentation essential for success.

Don’t Forget Time Zones

If your campaigns target audiences in multiple time zones, consider using segmentation and marketing automation tools to deliver emails at the optimal time for each region.

For example, global campaigns spanning both the U.S. and Europe need to align with the local schedules of each audience group.

Refining Your Strategy

While trends suggest Thursday mornings as a strong default, the real key lies in analyzing your audience’s behavior.

Testing different times, segmenting your list, and leveraging data insights will help you pinpoint the best schedule for your campaigns.

But what is the worst time to send a campaign?

While pinpointing the ideal time for your email campaign depends on your audience and industry, knowing when not to send emails can be just as critical.

Certain timeframes consistently show poor performance, and avoiding them can save your efforts from going unnoticed.

Times to Avoid

Here’s what studies from email marketing experts reveal about low-performing timeframes:

• HubSpot: Emails sent from 6 PM to 5 AM tend to be ineffective.
• GetResponse: Steer clear of the 6 PM to 3 AM window.
• Wordstream: Emails sent between 4 PM and 4 AM see lower engagement.
• Moosend: Avoid sending emails between 7 PM and 5 AM.

The Common Answer: 6 PM to 5 AM

Across the board, research points to late evenings and overnight hours—specifically 6 PM to 5 AM—as the worst time to send email campaigns. Why?

• People disconnect after work. Subscribers typically shift focus to relaxation, personal activities, or social events, leaving little interest in checking emails.
• Emails get buried. Late-night emails are often pushed down by the influx of new messages arriving in the morning, drastically reducing their visibility.

How to Maximize Engagement

To ensure your emails don’t fall into the void of low-performing hours, focus on time slots when your audience is most active.

By steering clear of the late-night and post-work window, you increase the likelihood of your emails being noticed and acted upon.

Choosing optimal send times strengthens not just open rates but also the overall impact of your campaigns.

Wrap Up

While there isn’t a definitive magic hour for sending emails, understanding audience behavior and habits can guide you toward success.

Consistent scanning of email inboxes occurs throughout the week, making timing merely one aspect to consider. By focusing on delivering high-quality, relevant content, implementing personalization and automation tools, and crafting concise messages tailored to your target demographic, you can significantly improve your email open rates.

Thoughtful planning and strategy remain key to cutting through the noise and ensuring your messages resonate with your audience.