Best time to send

The Best time to send section on the Analytics page shows, for each hour of each weekday, how often email you sent in that hour got a click or a reply. Once enough of your email has been engaged with, it names the time that did best, usually a two-hour window such as Tuesday from 9 to 11 AM.

How do I read the grid?

In the Best time to send grid, each row is a weekday, starting on Monday, and each column is an hour. A darker square means a bigger share of the email sent in that hour got a click or a reply. The legend says what rate the darkest square stands for. The recommended time has an outline, and its rate and number of sends are listed under the grid. A screen reader reads every square's rate and send count.

A square with diagonal stripes had fewer than 5 sends. With so few, one reply would swing the rate by 20 points or more, so the square isn't rated and can't be part of the best time.

The best time is normally two hours side by side on the same day, both with at least 5 sends, picked by their combined rate. An hour can also win on its own when the hours on either side of it are too thin to rate, which is what a weekly broadcast at 10 AM on a Tuesday looks like, or when it did more than twice as well as the hours beside it, so a busy but quiet neighbour doesn't drag it down. When two candidates tie, the earlier one in the week wins.

The grid follows the date range picker at the top of the page.

A sequence's send window can keep it out of the hours the grid recommends. New sequences send Monday to Friday, 8 AM to 6 PM, in your account's time zone, so if the best time falls outside that, change the sequence's window in the builder (building sequences explains how).

Why doesn't it recommend a time yet?

The Best time to send section waits for 100 engaged sends: 100 emails in the date range, sent through SEMAOS or from a connected Outlook mailbox, that got a click or a reply. Gmail sends don't count toward the 100 (see below). Below that, a pattern is more likely luck than habit, so the section tells you how far along you are ("40 of 100 engaged sends") and gives the general advice from industry research instead, which is to send on weekday mornings. That advice isn't drawn from your contacts, and the page labels it as research. Until then the grid only marks which hours you sent in, all in one color, without rates.

If you have sent plenty but still see this, widen the date range so it takes in more of your sends. If every send in the range went through Gmail, the section says it has nothing it can rate, because more Gmail sends won't change that.

Why aren't my latest sends counted?

People often click or reply a day or two after an email arrives. An email sent this morning hasn't had that chance yet, and counting it would make the most recent hours look worse than they are. So the section leaves out anything sent in the last 3 days and says which day it counts up to. If your whole date range is that recent, it says so instead of drawing an empty grid.

Which time zone are the hours in?

Your workspace time zone, the one set in Settings → Profile. The hours are when the email was sent, in that zone, and the section names the zone next to the recommendation. The daily chart higher up the page uses UTC days, so the two can disagree about where a day starts.

If the workspace time zone can't be used, the hours are shown in UTC and the section says so, with a link to your settings.

Why don't opens count?

Some mail apps open every email on their own. Apple Mail with its privacy protection is the biggest one: Apple's Mail Privacy Protection downloads an email's images in the background when the message arrives, and those opens happen whether or not a person ever reads the email (why open rates are approximate explains it). Clicks and replies come from people, so they are the only things this section counts. An email that got several clicks and a reply still counts once.

Why aren't my Gmail sends counted?

SEMAOS can't see replies to email sent from a connected Gmail mailbox, and it sees clicks on those emails only when mailbox click tracking is turned on. A Gmail connection grants only the permission to send; reading replies needs one of the scopes Google's Gmail API documentation lists as restricted, which SEMAOS doesn't request. Without either, a Gmail send can't show engagement even when the person did respond, so counting those sends would make the hours you sent them in look worse than they were. The rate leaves Gmail sends out and says how many. Gmail email that had no way to show a click or a reply at all is included in the count of emails left out for that reason (see below).

Email sent through SEMAOS's own sending, and from a connected Outlook mailbox, is counted when it could show a click or a reply. An email sent through SEMAOS can be clicked only if it has a link, and a reply to it is seen in two cases: it was a sequence step with reply detection turned on (it is off unless you turn it on), or it was a sequence step or one-off email whose replies go to the sender's connected Outlook inbox. Replies to broadcasts are never seen. SEMAOS checks a connected Outlook inbox for replies, so every Outlook send counts. An email with no link and no way to catch a reply is left out. The section says how many emails it left out this way, and when nothing in the range could show a click or a reply, it says so instead of counting toward 100.

Email sent before SEMAOS started recording this is counted the way it always was, including email that had no way to show a click or a reply, so rates for those weeks can read a little low.

Does Mine show only my sends?

No. The section always covers everyone's sends in the workspace, and says so when Mine is selected.