Email Send Time Optimization: Beyond Tuesday/Thursday
Overview
The conventional wisdom that Tuesday and Thursday are the best days to send cold outreach emails has eroded. As more sales teams adopted this practice, inboxes on those days became saturated, diminishing the advantage. Testing non-traditional send days — particularly Monday, Friday, and Saturday — now offers a meaningful edge.
The Problem with Tuesday/Thursday
Tuesday/Thursday became the dominant send window because early data supported it. But widespread adoption created a self-defeating dynamic: everyone sends on the same days, so those inboxes are the most crowded and competitive. Standing out on a Tuesday is harder than it used to be.
Recommended Testing Windows
| Day | Rationale |
|---|---|
| Monday | Prospects who reviewed email over the weekend may be primed to act; Monday morning catches them before the week gets busy |
| Friday | Lower competition; some prospects are in a more relaxed, browsing mindset |
| Saturday | Many people casually review and triage email on weekends; a Saturday send can surface at the top of Monday's inbox |
"A lot of people clean up their emails over the weekend. So they'll kind of go through them and clean them up and they might see something when they're sitting in their lounge chair watching the Packers."
— Mark Hope, [1]
A/B Testing Approach
Rather than switching wholesale, treat send timing as an ongoing experiment:
- Split your send list — send a portion on a traditional day (e.g., Tuesday) and a portion on a test day (e.g., Monday or Saturday).
- Track open and click-through rates in HubSpot for each cohort.
- Iterate — once a pattern emerges, shift volume toward the higher-performing window.
- Re-test periodically — optimal windows shift as market behavior changes.
Decoupling Work Time from Send Time
You don't need to be working at the moment an email goes out. HubSpot's email scheduling feature lets you compose emails at any hour and queue them to send at a target time. Practical applications:
- Working early in the morning? Schedule sends for mid-morning.
- Working on Friday? Queue emails to go out the following Monday.
- Building a Saturday send batch? Compose during the week and schedule for Saturday morning.
This removes the constraint of real-time sending and makes it easy to test any send window without changing your working hours.
Related
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- [4]