WHEN IS THE BEST TIME To send a follow up email

John O'Shea

Timing is everything. Well, perhaps not everything, but it’s certainly a challenge when it comes to following up cold emails.

When is the best time to send a follow-up? How do you keep your leads warm without becoming pushy? And we’ve all experienced the frustration of receiving a positive response, only for the lead to dry up after the follow-up. What’s the reason for this?

Could it be the day of the week on which you send the email?

Conversion… by day of the week

At Growthonics, we have carried out research to identify conversion rate patterns of cold email follow-ups across each day of the week.

We analysed over 10,000 email follow-ups sent during March and April 2021. The following graph shows the number of meetings booked by our SDR teams against the day on which the email was sent.

As you can see, Mondays and Fridays show the lowest conversion rates.

This is not surprising. On Mondays, inboxes are flooded with emails collected over the previous few days. When people sit down to work after the weekend, what’s the first thing they do? Delete emails. On Fridays, they are often out of the office or working half days.

Conclusion: Wednesdays are the best day to send a cold email follow-up.

Contact forward follow-ups

Next, we looked at contact forwards – a referral or introduction to another person at the company. Many of our clients have trouble converting contact forwards. However, when lead generation is done correctly, we find they lead to a large number of meetings and deals.

As before, we compared the number of meetings booked against the days on which the follow-up email was sent.

Monday and Friday show low conversion rates for follow-ups – but again, this shouldn’t be surprising. After all, referrals have exactly the same patterns of working behaviour as everyone else.

Conclusion: Thursdays are the best day to send a cold email follow-up to a contact forward

Next steps

At Growthonics, we want to continue achieving the best conversion rates for our clients, which is why we constantly research and analyse the efficacy of cold emails and follow-ups. It’s often the small details that make a difference between success and failure.

For example, as you know, there’s a fine balance between maintaining a warm lead and annoying them with too much contact.

It’s important to get that balance right. Hence, our next topic:

What is the ideal gap between a cold email and a follow-up?

Watch this space for the results of our research.

Discover how Growthonics can grow your B2B activity by booking a call today.