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Most email marketers focus on various factors to improve open rates—subject lines, content, and even design. Many also recognize that sending time matters. An email sent at 3 AM is less likely to perform as well as one sent during business hours.
However, one critical factor is often overlooked—sending time doesn’t just impact open rates; it directly affects email deliverability.
While hitting send doesn't mean your email is delivered immediately (as emails can be scheduled for later, and bulk emails are sent in batches), the exact moment it's sent can still affect whether your email reaches the inbox or gets blocked entirely.
Here’s a statistic that might make you pause before hitting that send button: 70% of global email volume is sent within the first 10 minutes of each hour (Validity, 2023 Email Deliverability Benchmark Report: It’s Not Just You—Email Deliverability is Getting Harder! - Validity).
Think about it. The majority of marketing emails are scheduled to deploy right on the hour: creating a massive traffic jam that affects both technical deliverability and the recipients’ attention.
This congestion can trigger two major issues:
1. Technical Deliverability Issues
When thousands of marketers schedule emails during peak hours, say 9:00 AM sharp, email service providers and mailbox providers face an overwhelming surge in traffic. This leads to:
2. Reduced Recipient Attention
Even if your email successfully lands in the inbox, its visibility suffers if sent at peak hours. Why? Because your recipients’ inboxes are already flooded with other marketing emails.
As a result, your intended recipients are likely to:
The lower your engagement, the worse your sender reputation becomes, further hurting your future deliverability.
To avoid these problems, stop scheduling emails on the hour. Instead of sending at 9:00 AM sharp like every other email marketer, experiment with non-standard times like 9:17 AM or 10:23 AM. By doing this, you:
Your goal should be to deliberately schedule your emails outside the common send times when most marketing emails are deployed, avoiding those first 10 minutes of each hour when 70% of global email volume is concentrated. (What is the Best Time to Send eCommerce Emails (2025 Update)
However, before you start scheduling all your emails to be sent during non-standard times, let’s keep things in perspective.
Timing is helpful, but your sender reputation remains the most critical factor for email deliverability.
A strong email reputation - built through consistent engagement, low spam complaints, high-quality content, and good domain and IP reputation - will ultimately determine whether your emails reach the inbox.
The key is having the right balance. Consider offsetting send time as a fine-tuning tool, but reputation is still the engine of email deliverability.
The connection between sending time and deliverability is more complex than most marketers realize. While open rates provide immediate feedback, long-term sender reputation and inbox placement matter more.
So, the next time you schedule an email campaign on the hour, remember that you're joining thousands of email marketers all fighting for the same inbox space and attention. With the global average inbox placement rates at only 84.8% every advantage matters.
Sometimes, the smallest tactical changes lead to bigger results. By making the simple adjustment of offsetting your send times, you can improve both technical deliverability and subscriber engagement—giving your carefully crafted emails the best possible chance to perform.
The easiest way to get responses to your cold emails.
