Timing is everything when it comes to getting a response to your email – and sending a response on a Sunday afternoon seems more likely to get a response from your team.
That depends Recent research Which I found that the best time to send internal emails is on Sunday between 3pm and 6pm
After studying 8.7 million emails, communications software company Axios HQ found that those sent during that time frame had a 94% chance of being opened, compared to a typical 50 to 76% chance of being opened during the rest of the week.
Meanwhile, the second most effective time to reach your team is Sunday from 6pm to 9pm, the researchers said, when the open rate for emails is 86%.
Messages sent during these times benefit from “reduced competition” because they are not struggling to capture workers’ attention with Monday morning meetings and the constant stream of emails that follow.
But don’t confuse employee responsiveness with happiness: Although emails sent on a Sunday afternoon have a better response rate than a busy workday, they’re less likely to yield a positive reaction.
Previous research warns that weekend emails are the worst, if you care about employees’ mental health
Technology is becoming increasingly intrusive into people’s lives outside of work, and previous research has shown that workers are struggling to… Off And anxiety on Sunday night because they can always be contacted.
Dr Matthew Davies, Associate Professor at the University of Leeds Business School, calls this recent phenomenon a “technological invasion”.
He said the Times (UK) It is “associated with people feeling more stressed, less satisfied with their work and work-life balance.”
He added: “What worries me is that if people see this and think, ‘I will start sending these messages more routinely on the weekend.’ “Because for some people, it’s OK…but there’s a large percentage of people (for whom) this will add to that feeling of burden.”
Dr. Laura George, assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Behavioral Sciences at the London School of Economics, echoed this in her 2021 book Report emails outside business hours They are likely to make workers feel like they have to work around the clock.
“Senders underestimate how stressful off-hours emails are for recipients,” she wrote. “In other words, when we look at our inboxes as senders, we seem to underestimate the impact that our out-of-hours behavior can have on the well-being of others.”
But it’s clear from the Axios research that people probably already know that sending an email on a Sunday evening won’t please employees or their peers because data shows they generally avoid doing so except in emergency situations.
Despite the rapid response rate, the weekend is the least popular time to send emails: researchers found that emails sent on Saturday and Sunday are typically “essential communications” and represent a measly 2% of emails sent on That week.
There is a difference between being opened and being read
The report also highlighted that there is a risk of an email being opened, but then being ignored due to employees being annoyed by the timing of the memo.
“Sending windows do not always mean reading windows,” the researchers acknowledged, adding that the proportion of employees who opened an email does not reflect whether it was read or responded to correctly.
Ultimately, managers who really need to respond to an urgent email should take Georg’s advice and state this clearly in the subject line of their email. “To help others protect their safety, it is important that we clearly define the time frames for our requests,” she stressed.
Likewise, those who send non-urgent emails on Sunday should clearly state this to take advantage of the fast open rate without hampering workers’ well-being.
A version of this story was originally published on Fortune.com on August 4, 2023.