Day-of-week send-time guide

Best time to send email on Saturday (2026 data)

Across the ten industry profiles in this study, the strongest Saturday band is 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM in the recipient local time, followed by 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. 2 published send windows name Saturday directly, and 8 industry profiles flag it as a weak day. Every band below prints the datasets and sample sizes it rests on.

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Saturday hour bands, ranked across every industry

The day is split into twelve two-hour bands. Each band is scored by averaging the modelled hourly engagement profile of all ten industries for Saturday, on a 0 to 100 index. Under every band you get the published windows that name Saturday, the audiences the band belongs to, and the source datasets with their sample sizes.

  1. 1

    4:00 PM to 6:00 PM

    Index 58 / 100

    Published windows in this band

    No industry in this study publishes a named window in this band on Saturday. The score is modelled from the hourly engagement profiles only, so the audiences listed here are the ones whose profile is strongest in the band.

    Also strong here: B2B SaaS, Ecommerce (B2C), B2B services, Real estate, Fintech, Edtech, Healthcare, Media and publishing, Non-profit, Recruiting and staffing

    Datasets behind this band

  2. 2

    6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

    Index 58 / 100

    Published windows in this band

    No industry in this study publishes a named window in this band on Saturday. The score is modelled from the hourly engagement profiles only, so the audiences listed here are the ones whose profile is strongest in the band.

    Also strong here: Ecommerce (B2C), Real estate, Edtech, Media and publishing, Non-profit

    Datasets behind this band

  3. 3

    8:00 PM to 10:00 PM

    Index 56 / 100

    Published windows in this band

    No industry in this study publishes a named window in this band on Saturday. The score is modelled from the hourly engagement profiles only, so the audiences listed here are the ones whose profile is strongest in the band.

    Also strong here: Ecommerce (B2C), Real estate, Edtech, Media and publishing, Non-profit

    Datasets behind this band

  4. 4

    10:00 AM to 12:00 PM

    Index 53 / 100

    Published windows in this band

    • Real estate clicks, 9:00 AM to 11:00 AMWeekend morning clicks rise for open-house and tour scheduling links.
    • Ecommerce (B2C) clicks, 10:00 AM to 12:00 PMSaturday mid-morning works for deal-driven browsing and product discovery.

    Also strong here: B2B SaaS, B2B services, Fintech, Healthcare, Recruiting and staffing

    Datasets behind this band

  5. 5

    2:00 PM to 4:00 PM

    Index 48 / 100

    Published windows in this band

    No industry in this study publishes a named window in this band on Saturday. The score is modelled from the hourly engagement profiles only, so the audiences listed here are the ones whose profile is strongest in the band.

    Also strong here: B2B SaaS, B2B services, Fintech, Healthcare, Recruiting and staffing

    Datasets behind this band

  6. 6

    8:00 AM to 10:00 AM

    Index 44 / 100

    Published windows in this band

    • Real estate clicks, 9:00 AM to 11:00 AMWeekend morning clicks rise for open-house and tour scheduling links.

    Datasets behind this band

  7. 7

    12:00 PM to 2:00 PM

    Index 44 / 100

    Published windows in this band

    No industry in this study publishes a named window in this band on Saturday. The score is modelled from the hourly engagement profiles only, so the audiences listed here are the ones whose profile is strongest in the band.

    Also strong here: Real estate, Ecommerce (B2C), Edtech

    Datasets behind this band

  8. 8

    10:00 PM to 11:00 PM

    Index 37 / 100

    Published windows in this band

    No industry in this study publishes a named window in this band on Saturday. The score is modelled from the hourly engagement profiles only, so the audiences listed here are the ones whose profile is strongest in the band.

    Also strong here: Ecommerce (B2C), Real estate, Edtech

    Datasets behind this band

  9. 9

    6:00 AM to 8:00 AM

    Index 23 / 100

    Published windows in this band

    No industry in this study publishes a named window in this band on Saturday. The score is modelled from the hourly engagement profiles only, so the audiences listed here are the ones whose profile is strongest in the band.

    Also strong here: Ecommerce (B2C), Media and publishing, Real estate

    Datasets behind this band

  10. 10

    12:00 AM to 2:00 AM

    Index 15 / 100

    Published windows in this band

    No industry in this study publishes a named window in this band on Saturday. The score is modelled from the hourly engagement profiles only, so the audiences listed here are the ones whose profile is strongest in the band.

    Also strong here: Ecommerce (B2C), Real estate, Media and publishing

    Datasets behind this band

  11. 11

    2:00 AM to 4:00 AM

    Index 12 / 100

    Published windows in this band

    No industry in this study publishes a named window in this band on Saturday. The score is modelled from the hourly engagement profiles only, so the audiences listed here are the ones whose profile is strongest in the band.

    Also strong here: Ecommerce (B2C), Real estate, Edtech

    Datasets behind this band

  12. 12

    4:00 AM to 6:00 AM

    Index 11 / 100

    Published windows in this band

    No industry in this study publishes a named window in this band on Saturday. The score is modelled from the hourly engagement profiles only, so the audiences listed here are the ones whose profile is strongest in the band.

    Also strong here: Ecommerce (B2C), Real estate, Media and publishing

    Datasets behind this band

Saturday hour by hour, industry by industry

Each row is one industry profile on Saturday, hour 0 through hour 23 in recipient local time. The bottom row is the cross-industry mean used to rank the bands above. Darker means higher modelled engagement.

0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
Ecommerce (B2C)
27
24
20
18
16
18
27
37
48
57
63
59
53
50
54
62
71
78
90
97
100
98
72
52
Real estate
22
19
17
14
13
16
22
31
42
57
64
62
58
52
56
62
70
75
80
84
88
83
64
47
Edtech
19
17
15
14
13
15
22
32
44
56
62
60
54
50
54
60
66
71
75
79
83
81
64
47
Non-profit
20
18
16
14
13
15
22
32
45
56
61
59
52
49
51
57
64
68
71
75
80
77
60
43
Healthcare
14
12
11
10
9
11
16
25
39
49
54
52
46
43
44
49
54
56
50
44
39
35
28
22
Recruiting and staffing
11
9
8
7
7
8
13
21
33
44
48
46
39
36
37
42
47
48
41
34
30
28
21
16
Fintech
9
7
6
6
5
6
10
17
28
39
44
42
36
33
35
39
44
45
37
29
26
24
18
14
B2B SaaS
8
7
6
5
5
6
10
17
28
38
43
41
34
31
33
37
42
44
36
28
26
24
17
13
B2B services
10
8
7
5
5
6
10
17
28
38
42
40
34
31
32
37
41
43
35
27
24
22
17
13
Media and publishing
21
19
16
14
13
16
26
37
48
56
60
58
51
47
50
57
62
65
67
70
73
72
58
42
All industries (mean)
16
14
12
11
10
12
18
27
38
49
54
52
46
42
45
50
56
59
58
57
57
54
42
31
IndustrySaturday rank for this audienceDay indexBest band on Saturday
Ecommerce (B2C)Best day of the week54 / 1008:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Real estateRank 2 of 750 / 1008:00 PM to 10:00 PM
EdtechRank 2 of 748 / 1008:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Non-profitRank 2 of 747 / 1008:00 PM to 10:00 PM
HealthcareRank 6 of 734 / 1004:00 PM to 6:00 PM
Recruiting and staffingRank 6 of 728 / 1004:00 PM to 6:00 PM
FintechRank 6 of 725 / 1004:00 PM to 6:00 PM
B2B SaaSRank 6 of 724 / 1004:00 PM to 6:00 PM
B2B servicesRank 6 of 724 / 1004:00 PM to 6:00 PM
Media and publishingRank 7 of 746 / 1008:00 PM to 10:00 PM

Which industries peak on Saturday

Saturday is the strongest day of the week for the following audiences, measured by the mean of their modelled 24-hour profile.

Ecommerce (B2C)

Best band on Saturday: 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM

Saturday mid-morning works for deal-driven browsing and product discovery.

Saturday lands in the top three days for these audiences

Worst-window notes that name Saturday

8 of the ten industry profiles list Saturdayin their worst-window notes. Read the reason before you act: "weak" means different things for a weekday backlog than it does for a weekend audience gap.

B2B SaaS

Weekend B2B audience reach is limited unless your product has on-call users.

Ecommerce (B2C)

Saturday late night has weak intent for checkout-heavy campaigns.

Real estate

Saturday night has low attention for property detail-heavy emails.

Fintech

Weekend sends can underperform for regulated account-action messages.

Edtech

Saturday late night performs poorly for enrollment and payment prompts.

Media and publishing

Saturday late-night sends usually miss core reading sessions.

Non-profit

Saturday late-night messaging generally misses mission-focused intent windows.

Recruiting and staffing

Saturday late night delivers low response for high-intent recruiting flows.

Every published Saturday window in the dataset

WindowIndustryGoalWhy
9:00 AM to 11:00 AMReal estateclicksWeekend morning clicks rise for open-house and tour scheduling links.
10:00 AM to 12:00 PMEcommerce (B2C)clicksSaturday mid-morning works for deal-driven browsing and product discovery.

How to test Saturday on your own list

  1. Take the top-ranked Saturday band, 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM, as your control slot and the second band, 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM, as the challenger.
  2. Keep subject line, offer, audience, and creative constant so the only moving variable is send hour.
  3. Send in recipient local time where you have it, and tag unknown time zones into a separate bucket rather than folding them into the result.
  4. Run at least two full cycles before you call a winner. One campaign is a story, two matching cycles is a signal.
  5. Score the test on the downstream metric that matters for the campaign family, not on opens alone.
  6. Feed the winning slot back into the send-time optimizer so the next challenger is picked from your own data.

Sources behind this page

Every industry profile in this study carries its own citation list. These are the source datasets those profiles draw on, with the sample size each publisher reports. Where a publisher does not state a sample size, this page says so rather than inventing one.

ActiveCampaign send-time benchmark guide

Published 2024 · Sample size: not published

HubSpot best time to send email report

Published 2024 · Sample size: not published

Salesforce State of Marketing

Published 2025 · Sample size: not published

Omnisend ecommerce timing benchmarks

Published 2025 · Sample size: billions of ecommerce emails

Klaviyo timing and revenue benchmarks

Published 2025 · Sample size: commerce benchmark sample

Attentive messaging trends report

Published 2024 · Sample size: 25B messages

Campaign Monitor best-time guide

Published 2024 · Sample size: not published

MailerLite 2.1M-campaign study

Published 2024 · Sample size: 2.1M campaigns

GetResponse email marketing benchmarks

Published 2025 · Sample size: not published

Litmus State of Email

Published 2024 · Sample size: not published

Saturday send-time FAQ

What time should I send email on Saturday?

Ranked across all ten industry profiles in this study, the strongest two-hour bands on Saturday are 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM, 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM, 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM, measured in each recipient's local time. 2 published send windows in the dataset name Saturday explicitly, so treat the top band as your control slot and the second band as your first challenger.

Is Saturday a good day to send email?

Saturday is the single strongest day for Ecommerce (B2C), and it lands inside the top three days for Ecommerce (B2C), Real estate, Edtech, Non-profit. That makes it a safe default for those audiences and a reasonable challenger slot for everyone else.

Which audiences should avoid Saturday?

8 industry profiles list Saturday as a weak day: B2B SaaS, Ecommerce (B2C), Real estate, Fintech, Edtech, Media and publishing, Non-profit, Recruiting and staffing. The reasons differ by audience, so read the specific rationale before you drop the day entirely.

How do I confirm Saturday works for my own list?

Hold your creative, offer, and audience constant, then run the top-ranked Saturday band against your current control slot for at least two full send cycles. Judge the result on the downstream metric you actually care about, not opens alone. The send-time optimizer will shortlist the candidate slots for you.