When to Send an Email

We have a panel of over 75,000 developers in 85 countries around the world, and we regularly send them email invitations to do surveys online. Thus we're always trying to figure out what the best time to send them an email is. We know that they're more likely to respond if the email actually arrives while they're at their desks and so we set the mail program to send different groups at different times - but what about the day?

Until recently our rule of thumb was to have the email arrive on Tuesday or Wednesday - but never on Saturday or Sunday. Then we published our Indian Developer Marketing survey report last Summer - all exclusively conducted in India, and one of the things we asked the Indian developers was what day of the week they were most likely to read an unsolicited email. It was a BIG surprise when more of them said Sunday than any other day ( in North America the best day IS Tuesday).

But there's a reason for that and it has to do with fundamental cultural differences. In North America - South America too, the dominant religion is Christian and the "Sabbath" is Sunday - thus not a day for working - it's part of the weekend. In Israel, however the Sabbath is Saturday and for Muslims all over the world Friday is the celebrated day and thus part of the weekend. In India, the predominant religion is Hindu and Hindus don't really have a particular day of the week for religious celebration - thus emailing on Sunday works fine.

The thing to take away from this is that to market globally to developers you can't just do the same thing as you'd do in North America except bigger and expect it to work. It's important to understand your audience and when it's global there's a lot more to understand.