What’s your go-to time to sit down and browse through your inbox?
Drawing a blank? Even if you don’t have a daily routine and you’re constantly checking your email, there’s actually a specific time of day that most people are likely to read your messages.
According to a study done by Boomerang for Gmail on over 100 million messages, most people like to read emails early in the morning. Therefore, they recommend sending them at 6 AM. This clashes with the fact that, in the same study, most people say they schedule most of their emails to go out at 9 AM.
This makes a lot of sense when you think about it. We spend 1/3 of our day checking email, and for the most part, we can all agree we’re less productive as a result.
So, many of us choose to dig into it when we’re not doing deep work—which is usually before or after office hours. Plus, we all have that one boss or co-worker who loves to clog up our inboxes when we’re home relaxing (if it’s getting out of hand though, use this template to make it stop).
What does this mean for you? That while you think shooting that message over to a client first thing when they walk into the office is a good idea, it’s actually smarter to send it first thing in the morning. That way, you know for a fact they’ll see it.
Of course, timing isn’t everything. You have to make sure your message includes a clear call-to-action, has a killer subject line, and feels thoughtful in both tone and a lack of typos.
But hey, hacking the system a bit doesn’t hurt!