Monday’s Best! No Wait! Tuesday’s Best!

Here’s the big lesson we took away from last week’s eROI study saying recipients of business-to-business e-mail say they prefer to get it on Mondays and Tuesdays: If you’re spending more than the tiniest fraction of your time trying to figure out the best day—or god help us, hour—to send e-mail, you’re focused on the wrong thing.

OK now, repeat after us: People’s self reported behavior and what they actually do are almost always two different things. The eROI study proved no exception to the rule.

Thirty six percent of respondents said they want their business e-mail on Tuesdays and 33% said they want it on Monday.

The least popular self-reported days for receiving b-to-b e-mail were Saturdays and Sundays, with 1% and 3% of respondents, respectively, saying they would prefer to receive their business e-mail on those days.

However, Saturday and Sunday lead the week in terms of open rates while Thursday and Saturday lead the way in terms of click rates, eROI reported. Saturday had the highest open rate at 38.3% and the highest click rate at 5.4%, according to the study. Also, actual behavior metrics were far more evenly distributed with the lowest open and click-through and open rates coming on Friday at 32.7% and 4.4%, respectively.

The key number in that whole study was why people unsubscribe: 65% said it is because the marketer isn’t sending relevant e-mails.

The lesson: If you are sending compelling content or offers, you can send it at 3 a.m. on Sunday and people will open it. Conversely, if people aren’t responding to your e-mail, it sure as hell isn’t because you’re sending it on the wrong day.