• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, October 16, 2013

Timing is everything. Hitting the target means knowing the perfect time to reach the consumer with the most relevant message. I'll get email promotions and read them first thing in the morning before starting work, but I take no action. By the end of my day, I've completely forgotten about the sale. Apparently others follow the same path to purchase, according to recent stats.

Santa Monica, Calif.-based Retention Science will release a study Thursday that suggests marketers should send promotional offers to consumers later in the day, rather than in the morning, because 65% of consumers shop online in the afternoon and at night. And instead of sending email campaigns Sundays and Mondays, marketers should send them on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Tuesdays are the best days to send email offers, while Saturdays are the worst, per the study. Tuesday typically produced a 28% conversion rate; Friday, 27%. Weekend conversion rates remain considerably lower, at 3% for Saturday and 6% for Sunday.

SwayChic, a women's fashion retailer with six physical stores, switched to Tuesday evening promotional emails three months ago and experienced a 300% rise in revenue.

Free shipping offers convert at rates between .22% and 1.9%, making them twice as effective as price reduction offers, which covert at rates between .1% and .8%.

The study suggests that 89% of conversions based on subscription email newsletters occurs during the first 14 days of the subscription period. The first and third days of subscription deliver the highest conversion rates, with 23% and 11%, respectively.

The data was based on more than 100 million transactions, 20 million user profiles and 100 email campaigns.