Is there really a good and bad time to send emails?

Many people maintain that it doesn't matter what day or time they send an email. They believe that the most important thing is that it has been sent. Why bother about the 'when and what time' you should send your email once it's sent?

This approach gives inconsistent results. Yes, it is better to send an email rather than not send it. However, there are good and bad times to send emails. To complicate matters further there are also good and bad seasons for sending emails. Knowing when and what time to send emails may be the difference between them being read or deleted. Use this model as a guide and you will see your results improve dramatically.

So what days of the week are best avoided?

The weekend is obviously a bad time to send emails as many people are relaxing and away from their offices. What's more, sending an email at the weekend runs of the risk of it being deleted first thing the following Monday morning. Unless you have good reason to send an email on a weekend day it is best to be avoided.

Monday is a terrible, if not the worst day, to send email. Many people are just recovering from their weekend exertions and the last thing they want to see is a pile of unread mail in their inbox. They are more likely to mass delete or hastily scan through mail than actually read your email. Therefore, your hard work runs a greater risk of being deleted before it is even read if you send it on this day.

Friday, if at all possible, should also be avoided as many people are gearing up for their weekend activities. With people's focus elsewhere your email runs the risk of not being read. What tends to happen is that the email remains unread until the following Monday morning. This means that once more it becomes at risk from the Monday morning email purge.

Thereby, by default, the ideal days are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. These days ensure that your email has the best chance of being read and is less likely to be deleted.

The optimum times for sending emails are between 10am and 11.30am and 1.30pm and 3pm. If you send it too early in the morning you run the risk that the person reading their emails will not fully be engaged or in a work mode. Send it too late and you run the risk that the person will be focused on other non-work related activities, namely going home.

Holiday periods such as June and July should also be avoided if possible. When people come back to work from holidays they often have a mountain of emails to read and many of these remain unread and deleted. So if you can take note of when a person is on holidays allow sufficient time for them to get back into the swing of things before you send them your emails.

With regard to the above, not sending an email is clearly no substitute for sending one. If you were to follow one piece of advice on sending mail send them on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Use the above as a guideline and soon you will see your email responses increasing exponentially.