I get why this question annoys people.
You ask a simple thing, “What’s the best time to send a newsletter?”, and the internet gives you a million confident answers, most of them repeating the same line: “Tuesday at 10 AM.”
And yeah, it’s not totally wrong.
But it’s also not the full story, because “best time” depends on what you mean by best.
Opens, clicks, sales, replies, all of those behave a bit differently. And your readers are not robots.
What I’m saying is, some of them check email while making coffee, some check it while pretending to work, and some open everything at night on the couch while Netflix is running in the background.
All that stuff matters.
So in this post, I’m going to do two things.
First, I’ll show you a safe default option, the one that keeps appearing in large platform data, so you can stop overthinking and just hit send.
Then, I’ll show you 3 simple rules, so you can find your own best time without turning your newsletter into a science project.
No perfect “one hour for everyone” promise. I’m not going to lie like that.
What's Inside
The Safe Default Option That Works
If you want the safest starting point or a default option for a new newsletter and you’re living in the United States or your audience is there, do this:
- Start with Tuesday or Thursday
- Send in your subscribers’ local time zone
- Aim for 9:00 to 11:00 AM
That’s the “middle of the road” window that keeps repeating across big platform data.
Mailchimp’s data from its send-time optimization insights points to midweek (Tue to Thu) and around 10 AM in the recipient’s own time zone as a common peak, and they also remind you there’s no universal winner.
Litmus, another email marketing platform, shows that email opens in the US go up in the morning and peak around 10 AM, with many opens happening between 9 AM and noon.
MailerLite’s timing analysis also supports the same broad pattern, opens often peak in the morning, and clicks sometimes happen later, which matters if your newsletter is supposed to drive traffic to your site.
So yeah, if you ask me for a simple answer for the best time to send a newsletter, Tuesday or Thursday, 9 to 11 AM is a strong default.
But still, there’s a missing piece, which is that the best time is not always the same. It changes based on your goal and the type of newsletter you run.
What “Best Time” Actually Means?
When people ask “best time,” most of them think they are asking just one simple question.
But in reality, they are asking three different questions at once, and they mix all of them together into one.
Opens
Opens are useful, kind of.
But they are not as clean as they used to be, because privacy changes can inflate opens, and sometimes the “open” is basically a machine action and not a real person reading.
That doesn’t mean opens are useless; it just means you shouldn’t treat open rate as the final truth. But still, it’s a thing that we can’t just ignore.
So if you’re a beginner trying all of these, and your open rate goes up, cool, that’s actually a pretty good sign.
But don’t panic if it doesn’t, and don’t build your whole schedule based on opens alone.
Clicks
Next, we have clicks, and they are usually more real and give you a good sign of your work.
If your newsletter or the last email you have sent has links (blog post, product, free guide, a tool you recommend), clicks are the thing that tells you “people took action” and did something.
And this is where timing starts to feel a bit weird, because the time that gets a lot of opens is not always the same time that actually gets a lot of clicks.
Let’s say, for example, you send your email at 9 AM, and a lot of people open it while quickly checking emails in the morning, so your open rate goes up.
But they are busy getting into their day, so they don’t click anything and just move on.
Now compare that with 7 PM, where fewer people may open it, but they are more relaxed, read it properly, and are more likely to click your links or take action.
Even data from MailerLite, which came after they analyzed over 2 million email marketing campaigns, shows that clicks can peak later than opens, depending on the segment and day.
And Beehiiv’s newsletter data also shows that a day can get high opens but weaker CTR, which is a polite way of saying open winners are not always click winners.
Conversions
Conversions, or we can say, sales, sign-ups, or any action your audience makes, are the cleanest outcome.
But when you’re small, one or two actions can change everything.
What I’m saying here is, if you only get a few conversions a week, you can’t really “learn timing” from that in a stable way.
You’ll get one sale, you’ll feel like a genius, then the next send gets zero, and you’ll start doubting everything… and then you change your subject line, and your send time, and your format, and your offer, and now you’ve got no idea what did what.
So for beginners, I’d usually start with clicks (or click-to-open rate) if you can. Then watch conversions as a secondary signal.
Now, as I said earlier, the key insight that keeps coming back is this:
Morning gets better opens most of the time.
Later hours get better clicks.
And no, this doesn’t mean you have to send at night.
But test a later time at least once, or you’ll stay in the “open rate bubble” and not understand why people read but don’t do anything.
3 Rules to Pick Your Send Time (Without Overthinking)
You don’t need a long list of rules. And I’m not going to cover that kind of list here anyway. A few simple ones you can remember and use every day is more than enough.
1. Rule A: Start midweek
Start with Tuesday or Thursday.
I’m not saying Monday never works. I’m not saying Friday is dead as hell either. I’m just saying midweek keeps coming up again and again as a simple pattern across a lot of platforms.
Mailchimp shows Tuesday to Thursday as a common range where things perform better.
On the other hand, Beehiiv’s report also shows strong engagement on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
So instead of trying all seven days and confusing yourself, just pick Tuesday and Thursday and let them run long enough to see what really works.
Rule B: Use mid-morning as your baseline
Use mid-morning as your baseline (around 10 AM for each subscriber’s local time) as your starting point.
Think of it like your base, and it’s also not random, either. It shows up again and again in real data.
Mailchimp says that around 10 AM in the reader’s time zone works well.
Litmus also shows that 9 AM to noon is a strong time for opens in the US, and 10 AM is usually the highest point.
So if you don’t want to overthink it, just go with mid-morning on a weekday.
It’s a simple and safe choice that works for most cases.
Rule C: If you want clicks, test later hours
I already mentioned this before, but still, most people just skip this part without thinking much.
They send at 10 AM forever, they get decent opens, and then they wonder why nobody clicks their links.
MailerLite data shows clicks can happen more in later hours, sometimes in the evening, based on the type of audience.
Klaviyo also shows that the “best day” changes depending on what you care about: opens, clicks, or actual orders.
So first pick your goal, then test your timing around that.
And if your goal is traffic or sales, don’t just stick to mornings, test later hours too.
You don’t need to do it every single week. Just test it enough times to understand what your audience actually does.
The Time Zone Mistake That Ruins Your Best Time
This is the quiet thing that ruins your results without you noticing.
You schedule your email for 10 AM, and then you feel like you picked a smart time.
But your list is not in one place; it’s spread across the US and even other countries, too.
For example, 10 AM in New York turns into 7 AM in California and around 7:30 PM in India, which is a completely different time of day.
And just like that, your so-called best time is only working for a few people.
Mailchimp comes with a feature called Timewarp that sends emails based on each subscriber’s time zone, so this issue pretty much goes away once you use it.
But not everyone is a fan of Mailchimp, and it does not fit every business or creator either, so if your email marketing tool supports local time sending, use it.
If it doesn’t, the smartest move is to split your list by time zone and send in smaller groups.
Yeah, it’s a bit annoying to manage.
But at least now your tests actually mean something.
Tools That Can Make This Easier (Kit, Beehiiv, and Others)
I’m going to keep this short because I hate when posts become a full sales pitch halfway through.
But tools do matter more than we think, mostly because they make testing easier and also define the future of the plans you’re going to implement.
Here are the tools I’d recommend:
Kit (formerly ConvertKit)
Kit is a clean option for almost every type of newsletter, and this is the one I use for the TalkBitz Newsletter.
The free plan is more than enough because it allows you to have 10K subscribers, which is higher than many other beginner-friendly platforms offer.
If you’re a beginner and have never tried email marketing before, you usually want simple broadcasts, basic automations, tagging, and segmentation without a headache.
And yes, you can use Kit for free up to 10K subscribers, but some features are limited unless you move to a paid plan.
Beehiiv
If you’re building a creator-style newsletter, Beehiiv fits in naturally and feels easy to get used to.
It’s built more around writers and creators, so you can focus more on writing and sending instead of figuring out how everything works.
They also publish a big report on newsletter performance based on billions of email sends, which you don’t see often, and it actually helps you understand what is working and what is not.
So if newsletters are your main focus, this is worth checking out and testing for yourself.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is one of the most popular email platforms, and a lot of the timing data you see online is based on their reports.
They also support sending emails based on each subscriber’s time zone, which might matter more than you think, especially when your list is in different places.
So if you want something stable with a lot of real data behind it, this is a safe and reliable choice.
Klaviyo
If you’re doing ecommerce, Klaviyo is definitely worth mentioning here.
They focus more on revenue, orders, and what customers actually do, the action part, not just opens and clicks, so their data looks a bit different and also varies by industry.
But that is helpful if your goal is sales instead of just engagement.
The Simple Way To Think About It
So what’s the best time to send a newsletter?
If you want a simple and safe default to start with:
- Tuesday or Thursday
- 9 to 11 AM
- In your subscribers’ local time zone
If clicks matter more than opens, try a few later time slots and see how people respond.
And if you want to keep it easy, pick one tool, go with Tuesday or Thursday at 10 AM in subscribers’ local time, and test from there without overthinking it.
And one more quick thought before you leave; if your open rates are okay but clicks are low, it’s not always a timing problem.
Most of the time, it’s the email itself.
The call to action, where you place the link, the promise you make, and the reason you give people to click.
But yeah, that’s something we can talk about another time.
Anyway, happy email marketing!
