Your list is targeted, your message is engaging, and your call to action is clear. But none of that matters if the recipient doesn’t open and read your email. If your results are less than stellar, it could be a matter of timing. Knowing when to hit the send button on your email campaign may be one of the most important factors that impact your e-marketing strategy.

So what is the best time to send an email campaign? Finding the answer begins by researching your specific industry trends on email opens, clicks and transactions. More than likely, however, you will find disparate data, with one report indicating Saturdays and Thursdays are the best days, while another may suggest Tuesdays and Wednesdays will give you better results.

What does all this mean? Unfortunately, the answer is that there is no golden rule when it comes to email deployment times. The best time to send varies, based on the demographics of your audience, the content of the message and the desired action. So, what’s a marketer to do? Test. Test. Test.

Just like testing different creative and offers, you can test email time optimization. Start with data that supports an optimal day for your vertical market and segment your list — sending to one segment on that day, and choosing another day to send the same message to a different segment. Don’t forget to test time of day too. Is your audience more receptive to your message in the early morning hours, during the day, right after work or later at night? More and more people interact with business emails outside of traditional working hours, so testing time of day is important even for B2B email.

Most emails are opened within an hour of hitting the inbox, so hit send when your target audience is reading.

At Redi-Data, we’re here to help your turn the best data into better business. From healthcare professionals, business targets and consumers, whether your campaign is used alone or as part of an integrated multi-channel effort, we are experts at email lists and deployment.