(Warning, this blogpost may contain sarcasm)

I get asked the question “what's the best time to send email?” on a regular basis. I’m happy to report there is finally a clear-cut answer:

5pm on Tuesday.

Yes. According to Inc. Magazine after analyzing 1.5 billion emails,

The origin of email goes back to 1971 when even the smallest computers required a wheelbarrow to transport. In the early days, computers were a tool used for a limited set of tasks, they were part of a job for some, but it was the introduction of the Blackberry, iPhone and Android in the 2000’s that brought our inboxes to our pockets.

Sure, send time optimization sounds cool. What's not to love about taking advantage of the data you have on each of your contacts (when they open, click, and convert, by time of day and day of week), and scheduling your emails to send to each contact at the time when each is most likely to engage with your email?

Every salesperson and marketer wants to know, "When is the best time to send email?" We spend hours crafting our email campaigns and sales emails, creating copy and messages that we know will get a response—if they're seen. We need our recipients to open our emails in order to engage.

But so many emails go unseen, thanks to the sheer number of emails individuals receive daily. On any given day, our prospects are dealing with 100+ messages in their inboxes.