Are you click-throughs and open rates declining? Are your recipients not responding to your emails? Many people are wondering what is the best day to send emails and if Monday is the wrong day to send them. While there are many studies showing that Monday emails are the worst, there are still people who feel that Monday is the best day to do so. So, why is Monday the worst day of the week to send emails?
Busy Start
As the first day of the work week, Monday is usually the busiest day for most people. This is usually the day when meetings for the week are scheduled, tasks delegated and reports regarding the past week come in. If you’re a supervisor, you need to wade through scheduling, reports, meetings and correspondence first thing so that your week can be productive. Sometimes, Monday emails get lost in the shuffle especially if the person wants to hit the ground running. This is especially true if the email is not headlined correctly. It can fall through the cracks and be forgotten. If you want your email to be opened, make the subject attractive and compelling to catch the recipient’s attention and to make them click your email open.
You and Everybody Else
Monday is the worst day to send emails because people who want to be noticed immediately usually send their emails during the weekend. This means that you and everybody else are vying for the recipient’s attention. For many people, Monday is usually the day where your mailbox is full especially if you tend to go off grid during the weekend. This means that when you open your email on the first working day of the week, it is full of messages from all kinds of people including those from the office, marketers, relatives and your boss. Monday is when you to compete with everybody else.
Urgent First
People like to schedule their work week on Mondays. This means prioritizing work that needs to be done immediately and delegating the less important tasks later in the week. The same is true with Monday emails. You need to open and answer the most important emails and then do the rest when you’re not too busy anymore. But you can’t control how your email is “important” to the recipient since they are the ones that decide what is and is not important to them. So if they feel that they can schedule to read your Monday emails later in the day or week, you have tough luck reaching the recipient unless they feel that you are important enough to be given first priority.
Weekend Hangover
If there are people who want to hit the ground running on Mondays, there are people who have weekend “hangovers”. They are sluggish during Monday and like to procrastinate in their work for later in the afternoon or on Tuesday (or when they want to). These people do not really feel the need to be rushed like other people on Monday so they like to take their time not only in opening emails but also in responding to them. Luckily, there aren’t many people who have weekend hangovers, unless they’re the boss of course.
Error Prone
According to a study conducted by software company Boomerang, people on Mondays tend to be error prone. The company analyzed 250,000 emails sent on Monday and they discovered that there are a lot of spelling errors and poor subject lines which resulted in low click and response rates on this day of the week. This may be because Monday is the most harrowing day of the week for most people (see above examples). They are rushed, busy, have a weekend hangover or are prioritizing emails and those with poor spelling and subject lines are usually the last to be opened.
Generally, there is really no best day or worst day to send emails. Many people dread Mondays and Tuesdays because these days are usually full of activities that need to be accomplished for the week. As the week winds down, people are generally more responsive to emails and will click and open them. The best way to get clicked on busy days is to construct an attractive subject line to entice the reader to click open and read the email.
