Data: The best time to send an internal communication email

We analyzed the average open rates of 8.7 million email deliveries — sent through Axios HQ between January 2022 and March 2023 — to find the best time to send an internal workplace email.

• Why it matters: More than 70% of employees have said they’d prefer leaders to send vital internal updates by email, so learning to optimize the way you use that channel can mean the difference between an informed and aligned workforce and one that frays.

We looked at open rate data through different lenses:

• Best overall send day
• Best overall send time
• Best send day and send time
• Best send day and time by org size

Our data spans industry sectors and organization sizes — from teams with fewer than 50 employees to global enterprises — reaching mostly knowledge workers at 215 organizations. To ensure our insights were significant, we removed send windows with fewer than two editions or fewer than 350 deliveries.

The best day and time to send an internal email

Start with what you know about inbox competition: There’s a lot, and it’s mostly noise  — like marketing and other nonessential outreach that rolls in — with most employees receiving hundreds of messages on channels that aren’t effective for them. You're playing a volume game.

While you can’t control when external organizations will send corporate email or marketing-style outreach, you can understand it and use it to your advantage. Here’s a look at the best overall send windows that emerged in our data:

• Best: Sunday sends 3pm – 6pm have an average open rate of 94%. 
• Next best: Sunday sends 6pm – 9pm have an average open rate of 86%. 
• Worst: Saturday sends 6am – 12pm have an average open rate of 21%.

Remember: Send windows do not always equate to reading windows. Take all the daily distractions, work obligations, and metrics into account, and you can find the best overall day and time to send essential internal communications and get the best employee engagement possible.

In our full report, we break down send windows by organization size — small, medium, large, and enterprise — to showcase how organization size and send window impact open rates and highlight how you compare to competitors.

Tips to improve your internal email strategy 

Successful sends come from studying your audience. Structure your personalized communications cadence informed by clueing into what’s connecting. 

Your quick checklist:

• Take stock. Audit your existing content, cadence, and success rate. See what’s connecting with your audience and build on it. Become their go-to source for trustworthy insight.
• Collect feedback. With employees scattered across different teams and time zones, you need to zero in on the topics they want — and need — to hear most. Poll employees and adjust your content strategy accordingly.
• Measure and modify. Build a better baseline by looking beyond only basic email metrics. Focus on engagement rates, retention rates, and other quantitative ways to measure the success of your internal communications.

The bottom line: Your unique cadence and send time will depend on your employees and work week, but the data in our full report will give you benchmarks for where to start. And once you find your stride, you'll see improvements across the board that keep your organization aligned. 

Go deeper: Read the full "Best time to send an internal communication email" report