There's no single best time to send marketing emails. MailerLite's study of 2,138,817 campaigns found weekday opens peak between 8 AM and 11 AM local time, but clicks peak between 8 PM and 9 PM. Omnisend's study of about 26 billion emails put Tuesday first for opens at 31.27%, with only about 1.6 points between the best and worst day. Test your own list.
Verdict: send for the click, not the open
Choose your send time by when people click, because a click is someone deciding to act. MailerLite makes the same call in its own write-up: aiming for the evening, when its audience is ready to click, is generally more effective than chasing the morning peak in opens.
That's a useful steer, but it isn't a universal rule. The two largest studies available disagree on the best day. MailerLite puts Friday on top, with the highest average open rate (49.72%) and the highest average click rate (8.09%). Omnisend puts Tuesday first for opens and clicks, and Friday first for conversions. Neither is wrong. Each one is measuring its own customers, and your list isn't either of them.
What both studies quietly agree on is that day of the week is a small lever. Omnisend reports the gap in open rate between its best and worst day is only about 1.6 percentage points. Your subject line and what's inside the email will usually move results more than that.
The two studies side by side
| MailerLite | Omnisend | |
|---|---|---|
| Sample | 2,138,817 campaigns sent from the US, UK, Australia and Canada | About 26 billion emails |
| Period | December 2024 to November 2025 | Not given in the figures used here |
| Best day for opens | Friday, 49.72% average open rate | Tuesday, 31.27% open rate |
| Clicks | Friday highest average click rate (8.09%); clicks peak 8 PM to 9 PM | Tuesday leads, 0.81% click-to-sent rate |
| Conversions | Not covered in the figures used here | Friday leads |
| Best hour for opens | 8 AM to 11 AM local time on most weekdays | Not covered in the figures used here |
Resist lining up the two open-rate rows as if they came from one experiment. MailerLite's 49.72% and Omnisend's 31.27% say more about who sends through each platform than about Fridays or Tuesdays. Inside MailerLite's customer base, Friday came top; inside Omnisend's, Tuesday did.
Campaign Monitor has a send-time page too, but it's built on an older dataset, so I'd treat its numbers as history. Its main point still stands, though: the content of your email matters even more than the send time.
Why the morning open peak is partly a mirage
Most send-time guides rank hours by open rate. The trouble is that opens have become a shaky measure. Apple's guide to Mail Privacy Protection says the feature prevents senders from seeing whether an email was opened. Anyone on your list reading in Apple Mail with it switched on is, for open tracking, a blur.
So when a study says opens peak between 8 AM and 11 AM, part of that pattern may be how opens get recorded rather than when people read. Clicks are harder to fake. Someone has to choose to tap a link. That's why the evening click peak in MailerLite's data, 8 PM to 9 PM, is the more useful finding for most small businesses, and why it's worth reading what pushes a newsletter open rate up before you blame the clock.
If your opens look fine but clicks are flat, check the plumbing as well. A quick run through your deliverability basics will tell you whether people are seeing the email in their main inbox at all.
Time zones: the setting that quietly moves your send
Clock times in these studies are local to the reader. Gmail works differently: Google's help page on scheduling explains that a scheduled message follows whichever timezone you're in when you set it, and delivery can slip by a few minutes. Harmless for a single note to a client. For a list scattered across Britain, America and Australia, an 8 AM London send lands while plenty of readers are asleep.
If your list is global, use a tool that sends in each subscriber's own time zone, or split the list by region. Setting up email automation is usually where that option lives. For one-off messages, here's how scheduling a single email in Gmail works step by step.
How to find the best send time for your own list
Here's a simple A/B test to copy. The numbers are invented.
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- Randomly split the list into two halves of 1,000.
- Send half A at 8 AM, recipient time.
- Send half B the identical email at 8 PM.
- After 48 hours, count clicks and ignore opens.
- Divide each half's clicks by the number sent.
- Repeat over 3 or 4 sends before switching.
Half A (8 AM): 12 clicks / 1,000 sent = 1.2%
Half B (8 PM): 18 clicks / 1,000 sent = 1.8%
In this made-up case the evening wins, yet a single round with a gap that narrow could be luck, which is why the repeat step matters. Hold the subject line, the copy and the segment steady between halves so the clock is the only variable you moved.
What send time won't do for you
- It won't turn a weak email into a strong one. A gap of about 1.6 points between days (Omnisend) is small next to the effect of a better subject line or offer.
- Vendor averages won't describe your list. Business and consumer audiences, local and global lists, all open at different hours.
- Open rates won't give you a clean read where subscribers use Apple Mail Privacy Protection.
- A sender-timezone schedule won't reach a global list at each person's morning unless the tool sends in recipient time.
With no history to go on, pit a morning send against an evening one and let clicks decide. After that, put your effort into what makes an email worth clicking, because a sharper subject line or offer will outweigh the clock.
Frequently asked questions
Is Tuesday the best day to send a newsletter?
Only in Omnisend's numbers. MailerLite's customers did best on a Friday. Treat Tuesday as one candidate to try against another weekday, and let your own results settle it.
Should I send emails in the morning or the evening?
MailerLite found weekday opens peak between 8 AM and 11 AM local time, while clicks peak between 8 PM and 9 PM. It recommends focusing on when people are ready to click. Run a simple morning against evening test and judge it on clicks.
Do open rates still tell me anything?
They tell you less than they used to. Apple says Mail Privacy Protection prevents senders from seeing whether an email was opened, so open data is blurred for those readers. Use opens as a rough signal and clicks as the real measure.
Does Gmail schedule send use my subscriber's time zone?
No, it uses yours. Whatever zone your account sits in when you press schedule is the one it follows, so an international list needs a platform that delivers by each subscriber's local clock.
How many test sends do I need before changing my send time?
Three or four at minimum. One round with a narrow difference can be luck; when the same slot wins again and again, you can trust it.
Is send time more important than the subject line?
Usually not. Omnisend reports only about 1.6 percentage points between its best and worst day for opens, and Campaign Monitor, writing from an older dataset, says content matters even more than send time.
