Introduction
When should you send cold outreach? The usual answer: Tuesday to Thursday, in the morning, never at the weekend. We analysed 37,375 messages by weekday and came to a different result.
The weekday
| Day | Sent | Replies | Reply rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sunday | 1,115 | 68 | 6.10 % |
| Tuesday | 7,276 | 370 | 5.09 % |
| Saturday | 1,636 | 78 | 4.77 % |
| Thursday | 6,394 | 290 | 4.54 % |
| Monday | 9,618 | 424 | 4.41 % |
| Wednesday | 6,799 | 292 | 4.29 % |
| Friday | 4,537 | 163 | 3.59 % |
The best day really is Sunday! The worst is Friday: on Sunday we see a statistical reply rate between 4.84 and 7.66 percent; on Friday between 3.09 and 4.17 percent.
Why Sunday works
Our reading: on Sunday evening people tidy up their inbox. Little comes in, so a single message stands out. On Monday morning everything arrives at once, and your message often ends up in 40th place.
Friday is the opposite. On Fridays nobody wants to read new messages; they want to finish for the week, not open up a new front.
What we do with this
Three things we have set as defaults for our users at SalesXMachina as a result:
- We send throughout the whole week, including the weekend, instead of everything at once on Monday.
- We send less on Fridays.
- We often send no more than 3 messages to the same contact, and when we do, they are spread well apart and use a different message.
Happy selling, Axel