Many clients have asked me what the best day of the week is to send their email. According to the Retail Email Year-End Trends for 2008, a reportlet by Chad White and Smith Harmon, the most popular days for retailers to send email in 2008 was Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

That is great information to know, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are the right days for you to send. First of all, if everyone starts to send on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, that means that our inboxes will be overloaded on those days and the chances of your email being overlooked will be greater.

My second point is that even though these reports do have good information that we should all take into account, the data is pretty broad-based and doesn’t always reflect what happens in your business. At the end of the day, the only way you will really know what day is best for you to send is to do some testing. Why not segment your list into 7 parts and send the same email to one segment per day for one week?  After the week has passed, take a look at your reports and see which day had the best results. That is YOUR best day for email marketing.

Of course, if you are one of our clients you can take advantage of SilverPOP’s ability to send to each recipient based on their preferred time. This more personalized approach will send an email to a recipient based on past behaviors (or behavioral targeting). You can send a message to each recipient at a time of day and/or day of week defined within the list as the most popular day or time for that specific recipient.

So don’t forget that while all the industry reports and expert analysis out there is helpful, you really should look and listen to what your own customers are telling you and it’s pretty easy to get this info by doing some testing and segmentation of your email list.

Happy emailing!
Alison