What is the Best Time to Send Marketing Emails?

Every day, 347 billion marketing emails compete for the same slice of attention. Some are read instantly, while others are ignored, unopened, or deleted within seconds. The deciding factor isn’t always content quality, but when that email lands in the inbox.

With rising inbox fatigue, cutting through the noise means hitting the right moment. If you send at a suboptimal time, even great content can go unopened. By contrast, well-timed sends can dramatically boost opens and clicks, turning a crowded inbox into a receptive one. 

In this blog, we’ll break down the data on the best days and times to send marketing emails, explore how timing varies by campaign type and audience behavior, and show you how to apply these insights 

Why You Should Know the Best Time to Send Marketing Emails

Timing can significantly impact your campaign’s success. Important email marketing metrics like open rates, click-through rates (CTR), and conversions can fluctuate dramatically based on when an email is sent, and understanding these shifts can be the difference between a campaign that underperforms and one that excels.

A HubSpot survey found that marketers reported their best engagement came from emails sent between 9 AM and 12 PM EST, followed by 12 PM and 3 PM EST. The worst time is between 1 AM and 3 AM EST. Psychology explains part of this fluctuation. Consumers check emails in predictable patterns, such as during their morning commute, before starting work, or when taking breaks. 

By the afternoon, inbox fatigue sets in, and attention shifts to other channels. Recognizing these behavioral rhythms ensures your campaigns are noticed when recipients are most receptive.

Why does knowing the best time to send marketing emails matter?

• Morning engagement: Many people check their inbox with coffee or during their commute, making it a prime window for visibility.
  
• Midday lull: Around lunch, most users temporarily disengage from email, reducing the impact of midday sends.
  
• Afternoon and early evening retrieval: As the workday winds down, people often clear their inbox, offering a valuable moment for visibility.
  
• Off-peak opportunity: Sending during times with less competition, such as late evening or early morning, can help your email stand out, even if open rates are traditionally lower during these times. 

Best Days to Send Marketing Emails

As a general rule of thumb, Wednesday emerged as the best day to send marketing emails, with an average open rate of 18.5%. However, in the B2C sector, Monday and Tuesday are the best days to send email campaigns.

The table below highlights the best days to send marketing emails and the reasons why. 

* While Monday overall shows high engagement rates, it’s also the most competitive day. This means results may vary by audience, as some brands see strong performance, while others see heavy inbox clutter reducing visibility.

Note: Some retail and e‑commerce marketers do see strong opens on Saturday mornings or Sunday evenings, as these are times when people browse deals at home.

Which days to avoid?

• Monday: Inbox competition is at its peak. Many users are clearing out work-related emails, so there’s a risk of B2C campaigns being deleted without attention.
  
• Friday afternoons and Sundays: Engagement rates dip as consumers mentally switch off for the weekend or prepare for the work week ahead. These times typically show the lowest conversions.

Best Times of Day to Send Marketing Emails 

Just as the day of the week impacts engagement, the time of day you hit send can determine whether your email is opened instantly or lost in the shuffle. Consumer inbox habits for B2C brands follow predictable daily rhythms, shaped by work schedules, commutes, and leisure time, making it crucial to align your campaigns with these behavioral windows. 

The patterns below will help you determine the best time of the day for email marketing campaigns.

Early Morning (6–9 AM): Ideal for trigger emails or people commuting, as many people check email first thing at home or on transit. In. Slack or banking alerts often hit this slot. Open rates can be high on Mondays at 7–8 AM as recipients browse new emails.

Mid-Morning (10–11 AM): This is a classic window as recipients have settled in and checked their overnight email. This time frame has the highest open rate of 25.5%

Afternoon (1–3 PM): Post-lunch, many handle emails. Neil Patel’s study also notes a midday spike in open rates, at about 25.3% for emails.

Evening (5–7 PM): Newer data show late afternoons or early evenings leading in the run for the best time of day for email marketing. People often clear out their inbox at day’s end, giving your email prime attention.

Looking for the right tool to power your email strategy? Read our guide on the Top 10 email marketing platforms.

What’s the Best Time to Send Email Newsletters? 

Newsletters perform differently from promos, often shaped by reader expectations. Friday afternoons work well for end-of-week digests, Mondays for weekly roundups, but the most common sweet spot is midweek, mid-morning.

Email newsletters achieve the best results on Tuesdays around 10–11 AM, just after the Monday rush, when people have time for longer reads. Overall, flexibility is key. If your newsletter is a weekly wrap-up, sending on Friday around lunchtime can catch subscribers winding down for the weekend. If it’s a Monday motivator, clearly Monday morning makes sense. 

The best time to send newsletters is when your readers expect them, so consider when your audience looks forward to your content. In practice, many successful publishers test a few slots, often Tuesday mornings or Friday afternoons, and let analytics guide the final choice.

Localized sending respects regional habits and scales personalization, making each campaign feel perfectly timed without adding complexity.

Global Audience? Consider Time Zones & Geolocation for the Best Time to Send Marketing Emails

If your audience spans regions or countries, timing by local time zones is non-negotiable. Sending one big blast at 9 AM PST might feel efficient, but it’s far from effective. That same campaign would hit inboxes at noon on the U.S. East Coast, 3 PM in Brazil, and late evening in Europe, when many subscribers are winding down and unlikely to engage.

A better approach is staggered delivery, ensuring each subscriber receives your email at the same convenient local hour, for instance, 9 AM their time. A modern email marketing platform like CleverTap makes this seamless by offering time zone–aware scheduling, eliminating the need to create duplicate campaigns for every region. Geo-optimized sends consistently outperform blanket blasts because they align with natural email-checking behaviors. 

CleverTap’s platform comes with behavioral segmentation and geolocation capabilities, which enable marketers to localize delivery for every user automatically. A striking example comes from ZEE5, a global streaming platform. By adopting CleverTap’s “best time to send” optimization, ZEE5 achieved a 60% uplift in click-through rates across its south asian content campaigns. That kind of result underscores how powerful geo-aware email timing can be when done right.

Best Time to Send Marketing Emails for Different Campaign Types

Not all email campaigns are created equal, and their purpose should shape the send timing. Align the best time to send marketing emails with intent and urgency. Urgent, action-driven emails can go slightly off-peak, when people have fewer emails to distract them, while regular newsletters benefit from routine windows. 

Test specific slots for each campaign type to see what resonates with your audience. Mentioned below are different email types and their preferred optimal send times.

• Flash Sales and Limited Offers: These types of emails rely on urgency. Marketers often send such emails in the evening or early morning to maximize sales. For instance, a global flash sale might go out at 7-11 PM, when inboxes are empty. In consumer categories, a Sunday evening, around 7 PM, is also popular for weekend sales, catching people planning purchases. The goal is to stand out.
  
• Lifecycle/ or Welcome Emails: Such emails should be sent immediately or as soon as the user enters the buyer journey. Welcome messages capitalize on the user’s initial interest, so delay only a few minutes after signup. On a broader level, engagement-triggered emails, e.g., onboarding tips and trial renewal notices, often work best in the morning when users first check their email. For example, fitness apps sending motivational content often schedule around 7–9 AM to tie in with morning routines.
  
• Promotional or Newsletter Blasts: These emails typically follow the general rules shared above, targeting midweek, midday, or late afternoons. Use the promotional cadence that fits your program.
  
• Cart Abandonment Emails: If a customer abandons a cart, the chance of return is highest shortly after. Studies and providers uniformly recommend sending the first reminder within an hour after abandonment. The universal rule is to schedule such emails 1–4 hours after the abandonment. In practice, many e‑commerce brands send a series of emails: one within 1 hour, another the next day, etc.

Mobile vs. Desktop Behavior and How it Impacts the Send Time of Marketing Emails

Today, the majority of email opens happen on mobile devices. Recent data show that around 47% of users use a mobile app to check emails, while 26.9% check on a desktop. Mobile dominates mornings, commutes, and evenings, while desktops see more action during work hours. This influences email send timing:

• Keep mornings and evenings for Mobile: Mobile opens spike early and late. For many, the first email check is on a phone at 7–8 AM or on the evening commute. Users also tend to check their phones after work, making 5-7 PM another ideal time frame to target mobile users.
  
• Midday (Desktop): Desktop usage tends to climb during work hours, especially during mid-morning and after lunch. If you’re targeting business users, these business hours on a weekday, when people are at desks, can be effective.

Adopt a mobile-first mindset. Build emails with large, readable fonts and buttons, as CleverTap’s mobile-friendly templates encourage, since a big portion of your audience will see them on a phone. 

Use A/B testing to see which device drives more opens at each time. CleverTap’s platform even supports responsive designs and can analyze opens by device, helping you identify if your audience skews mobile and whether evening sends beat mornings. Remember, an email sent at 6 PM may get far more mobile opens than the same content sent at 6 AM.

In practice, many companies now schedule two batches: one morning and one evening, optimizing for how users consume media on different devices. You should align your send times with how your specific audience behaves. CleverTap’s mobile-focused tools, like A/B testing and analytics, make that easier. For instance, if mobile opens dominate, ensure your content and timing cater to off-work hours.

What Marketers Are Saying

Marketers often share common frustrations when it comes to send-time optimization, such as:

• Low open rates despite strong content: Emails get buried under fresher messages if they land at the wrong time.
• Crowded inboxes: Even the best subject lines struggle when messages compete with dozens of others.
• Managing global audiences: One big blast means some recipients get emails at inconvenient hours.
• Unclear benchmarks: Industry reports show averages, but real audiences often behave differently.
• Mobile vs. desktop patterns: Mobile users tend to open early mornings or during breaks, while desktop users engage more during work hours.

These challenges explain why send-time optimization matters so much. Instead of guessing, marketers can use CleverTap, which offers:

• AI-powered send-time recommendations to predict when each user is most likely to engage.
• Time zone–aware scheduling that ensures global recipients get emails at relevant local times.
• Mobile-first templates and testing tools to align with the devices audiences actually use.

How to Find the Best Time for Your Audience?

Finding your optimal send time is a process and is highly audience-specific. Follow this step-by-step testing guide to find an optimal send time that works for your business:

1. Start with a Hypothesis: Use industry benchmarks and your own audience profile. If you’re B2B, maybe begin with mid-morning midweek. If you are a B2C company, try afternoons or weekends.
   
2. A/B Split Tests: Run your campaign on two different days or times and compare open rates, clicks, and conversions through A/B testing. For example, test open rates at 10 AM vs 6 PM. Make sure each variant has a large enough sample, at least hundreds of recipients, to be statistically significant.
   
3. Analyze the Metrics: Look beyond open rates. A high open rate at 8 PM won’t matter if click-throughs and purchases happen more for the 10 AM send. Track which send-time yields more of your key actions like click-through rates, sign-ups, and revenue generated. Continually refine your timing based on these results.

CleverTap’s dashboards and attribution reports make this easy. You can slice data by the time or day it was sent to see which segments respond when. More impressively, CleverTap’s AI-driven features can dynamically optimize timing. 

The CleverAI engine analyzes each user’s past behavior and engagement patterns. It then recommends the ideal send time for each segment or even each individual, scheduling emails at the moments users are most likely to check their inbox. In other words, you don’t have to manually pick one slot as CleverTap can auto-adjust sends to each recipient’s habits.

Remember: The best time for a fitness app’s morning digest likely differs from a streaming service’s entertainment newsletter. Keep testing, and let the data decide. Over time, your sending cadence becomes more personalized.

How CleverTap Can Help You Send Emails at the Right Time 

CleverTap’s email marketing platform is built for this exact challenge to turn send times in favor of email marketers. It combines AI, testing, and deep segmentation so you can stop wrestling with the indecision of the best time to send marketing emails and start just choosing what to send. 

CleverTap’s features do the heavy lifting of timing optimization and personalization, so every email lands at the moment most likely to convert.

• Smart Send-Time Recommendations: Using CleverAI, CleverTap analyzes your users’ historical open patterns and suggests the best times to send each campaign segment. This replaces guesswork with AI-driven timing.
  
• Time Zone-Aware Scheduling: You can simply enable delivery in user’s timezone to automatically stagger sends. Every subscriber gets the email at, say, 9 AM their local time, even if you scheduled it once at 9 AM IST. This eliminates the need to duplicate campaigns for multiple regions.
  
• Built-in A/B Testing: With one click, you can A/B test subject lines, content, or send times. CleverTap will send both versions to a sample, pick the winner, on the basis of open rates or click metrics, and then auto-send it to the rest.
  
• Advanced Segmentation: CleverTap allows targeting by any user attribute, including location or behavior. You can segment recipients by city or past activity and schedule each segment differently. That way, your promotions reach early risers at dawn and night owls after dinner. This precision targeting leads to higher relevance and engagement.
  
• Mobile-First Templates and Analytics: Recognizing that 47% of opens are on phones, CleverTap’s responsive email editor ensures your message looks great on any device. You can then analyze performance by device, mobile vs desktop, to fine-tune timing. For example, if mobile opens spike at night, you might favor evening sends.
  
• Real-time Analytics and Optimization: As each campaign runs, CleverTap’s dashboard shows open and click rates on different devices in real-time. The platform’s engagement scoring can even dynamically adjust send schedules in an automated journey. For instance, you can delay a re-send for a user until they are more likely to respond based on past use.

CleverAI: The Agentic Advantage

At the heart of these capabilities is CleverAI, an agentic AI system designed for real-time, personalized decision-making. It operates through four specialized agents:

• Strategy Agents set campaign goals, define actions, and optimize for outcomes like CLV or conversions.
• Decision Agents match products, offers, or workflows to each user, predicting intent and recommending the next best action.
• Creative Agents generate individualized copy, subject lines, and even emotional tones aligned to user preferences.
• Action Agents orchestrate delivery, self-learn from outcomes, and recalibrate journeys automatically.

This framework ensures every email is not only sent at the right time but also crafted and optimized for maximum impact.

Data & Trust at Scale

CleverAI is powered by Dataverse and TesseractDB, giving it the scale and intelligence to analyze millions of behavioral signals in real time. This makes personalization possible at enterprise scale — without compromising speed or compliance.

Trusted by 2,000+ global brands and powering over 2 million personalized WhatsApp and email campaigns each month, CleverTap has proven its ability to deliver results at scale.

Why CleverTap Wins on Timing

By combining predictive AI, time zone–aware scheduling, advanced segmentation, and continuous learning, CleverTap ensures every email lands when it matters most.

The result: higher opens, stronger click-throughs, and campaigns that convert because they respect both user behavior and business goals.

While email timing can seem complex, using data and smart platforms like CleverTap turns it from guesswork into science. By scheduling campaigns based on user behavior, time zones, and device patterns, you’ll see a meaningful lift in opens and clicks, and make sure your message gets read instead of buried in an overcrowded inbox.

Turn Timing Into a Competitive Advantage

Email marketing demands precision as much as creativity. Even the best design or segmentation won’t work if emails land at the wrong time. That’s why mastering the best time to send marketing emails should be viewed not as a tactical detail but as a strategic advantage.

Today’s consumers live in a fragmented, global marketplace, so technology becomes a force multiplier. Tools like localized send-time optimization and AI-driven scheduling allow marketers to deliver messages at the best moment for each individual subscriber, not just for the audience as a whole.

With consumer attention spans shrinking and inbox competition intensifying, those who master the when alongside the what and who will stand apart.