Emails pile up silently in our inboxes, with many of us not having enough time or inclination to read them. As professionals seek out the best way to manage this essential tool of communication to avoid being overwhelmed, research has dug into the topic of timing.
US firm Axios HQ, a company that creates “AI-powered software that helps organisations of all sizes plan, write and send essential comms”, wanted to determine the best time of the week to send professional emails. To do so, it analysed the open rates of 8.7 million emails sent via its platform between January last year and this March.
Curiously, the company found that Sundays between 3pm and 6pm was the best window for sending business emails. This conclusion is particularly surprising given that Sunday is traditionally a day of rest, a time when people disconnect from their work.
Yet data compiled by Axios HQ shows that an internal business email sent on this day of the week is more likely to be opened and read by its recipient(s), with an average open rate of 54%.
Monday is also a popular day for the administrative task of dealing with email messages. It’s not uncommon for employees to take time out at the start of the week to sort out their professional inbox, after a weekend away from the computer screen (in theory).
According to a LiveCareer survey, this time-consuming task takes up the equivalent of three weeks, or even a month, each year.
On the other hand, don’t expect your colleagues or your supervisor to answer your emails on Saturdays. This is the day of the week with the lowest open rate (31%), far ahead of Thursday (47%) and Friday (49%).
And if you want to write really effective internal emails, it’s important to pay attention not only to the day, but also to the time of day you send them. The study found that the most favourable time slots for this activity in general during the workweek are between midnight and 3am (65% open rate), and between 3am and 6am (70% open rate).
However, there are a number of factors to take into account before checking your work email in the middle of the night – first, your relationship with sleep, as well as the size of your company.
If you work for a company with more than 10,000 employees, it’s wiser to send internal emails on Sundays between 6pm and 9pm, or on Tuesdays between 3am and 6am. On the other hand, if your company has fewer than 500 employees, it’s best to do so on Sundays between 3pm and 7pm.
In any case, putting into practice these conclusions should be done with caution, given the stress that dealing with email can generate. Working outside office hours can create a kind of constant state of wakefulness, which can have a detrimental effect on an individual’s ability to concentrate, increasing the risk of burnout.
On the other hand, replying to work emails over the weekend can promote extended availability and extended responsiveness on the part of the recipient(s) or person(s) copied. Those individuals in copy may feel obliged to adopt the same rhythm, for fear of missing out on an important piece of information or being seen as a slacker.
“My worry would be if people see this and think, ‘I’ll start sending these more routinely on a weekend.’ Because for some people, it’s fine… but there is a good proportion of people for whom this will add to that sense of a burden,” Matthew Davis, associate professor at Leeds University Business School, told The Times.
When in doubt, refrain from sending emails on the weekend. Your colleagues and probably even your boss will thank you.