As a survey tool, our users often ask us for the best time to send out survey email invitations. Which is the best day? Is there a specific time (morning, afternoon, evening) that is better? Is there a difference between B2B and B2C? Many interesting questions… There were plenty of opinions here around the office, but since we have much data on the subject, and our users send a lot of survey email invitations, we decided to let the data do the talking. As it turns out, Monday is D-Day for B2B businesses. B2C better avoid Thursdays and Sundays.

What does previous research tell us?

There is a lot of research already available on this topic. Unfortunately, most of the research is for marketing emails, not survey invitations. There is little consensus on this topic: some research indicates that Wednesday is the ideal day to send out a survey and another indicates that Monday is better. Some of the research is old and with more and more mobile respondents, things may have changed. The available research also doesn’t split the data by target audience (B2B, B2C) or any other useful indicator (like survey length). We could do better.

Our own research: data and approach

To find out the best time to send out surveys we used a sample of 1,500 surveys conducted with the CheckMarket Survey Tool with the following parameters.

• Audience type
  • Business To Consumer (B2C) surveys.
  • Business To Business (B2B) surveys.
• Length of interview (LOI)
  • Short surveys (<15 min)
  • Long surveys (>15 min)
• Additional requirements
  • Recent data
  • Survey email invitations sent by our survey platform.
  • No reminders sent

We analyzed the relationship between the moment email invitations were sent out – both day and time – and the % of completed surveys. This data was further split up by type of survey (B2B/B2C) and survey length (≤15 minutes and > 15 minutes). As our clients often use reminder emails to increase the completion rate, we only included surveys completed before reminders were sent, in order to avoid biased results. Below you can find a summary table of the data we used.

What’s the best day to send email invites?

* Data for B2B was removed due to too few email invitations

For B2B surveys, Monday is clearly the best day to get the highest amount of completes. For B2C there is not a single best day to send out: Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays all lead to a relative high response rates and Thursdays and Sundays can better be avoided.

Size does matter

We also split this data by length of interview (≤ 15 minutes vs.> 15 minutes) to gain some additional insights. Let’s first take a look at B2B surveys:

Total amount of invites is lower than overall chart as for some surveys the average length wasn’t available
* Data for B2B was removed due to too few email invitations

The chart shows us that for short surveys Monday remains the best day. However, for longer surveys there is not one clear day that stands out: these can be sent on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and even Sunday with little difference in completion rates.

We did the same exercise for B2C surveys:

Total amount of invites is lower than overall chart because for some surveys the average length was unknown
* Data for B2B was removed due to too few email invitations

Splitting the B2C data by survey length leads to some really interesting insights. Whereas Tuesday is the best day for short B2C surveys, Wednesday and Friday are the best days for long surveys. Obviously, people need to take more time for longer surveys and Wednesdays and Fridays are usually typical days for part-time employees to be off and thus lead to higher availability to fill out extended surveys.

What’s the best time to send a survey email invite?

* Saturday, Sunday, 18:00 – 20:59, 21:00-23:59 removed because of too few email invitations

We already saw earlier that Monday is the best day to send email invitations for B2B surveys. Our data shows that Monday morning or later in the afternoon between 3 and 6 o’clock is a good moment to send out email invitations. Sending out on Monday between 12:00 – 14:59 should ideally be avoided. Possibly people are too occupied with work obligations around this time and are more likely to ignore the email (the Click Through Ratio is also much lower for this time).

Furthermore, sending out on Thursday and Friday between 15:00 and 17:59 is favorable, although we have to be careful here with drawing conclusions as the amount of invites are relatively low.

* Some data points were removed because of too few email invitations

For B2C surveys sending out between 18:00 and 20:59 generally works best, with Mondays being the exception. In the weekend, inviting people on Saturday between 15:00 and 17:59 and on Sunday between 21:00 – 23:59 also leads to a high completion rate.

Overview of the results

Some final remarks

It is important to keep in mind that the time you send out your survey is one among many factors that determine the response rate of your survey. The response rate also strongly depends on other factors like the email invitation (subject line, from name and body), and the first page of your survey (branding, incentive, first question). Also the quality of your contact list is crucial for the success of your survey. If this is a targeted audience that is engaged with the survey topic, the response rate will be much higher!

The results of our research gives a good indication on when to send out your survey. However, keep in mind that these results are based on the general population and what works for this population may not always work for your target audience. If using these general indications don’t lead to the desired response, we advise you to experiment with other timings using A/B testing. This can be done easily in the CheckMarket Survey Tool.

Please share your thoughts with us. Do these outcomes resonate with your experiences?