1. Best Day For Email Sending Is Neither Black Nor White
According to a new study from Yesmail, with data from almost 7 billion s deployed in Q to identify the best day for sends, marketers need to consider a number of factors including industry, conversion rates, engagement metrics and more. But, says the report, determining THE day of the week for major deployments is not as black-and-white as many marketers think.
There are numerous theories on which day of the week generates the highest performance for marketers, says the report.  In recent years, answering this question has become the Holy Grail for many brands who are constantly looking to tweak their strategies and deliver optimal results.
Some key  Yesmail findings from Q spanning day of the week, overall engagement, mobile performance and purchase behavior:
In Q2 2016, s sent on Thursdays generated the highest  engagement; their open rates were 14% higher than the Q2 average, their unique click rates were 41% higher, and their CTO rates were 24% above average
In terms of conversion (the percentage of clicks that led to purchase), Saturdays performed best, generating 60% higher than average conversion rates
While overall open rates have remained fairly consistent over the last year, unique click rates have fallen by 18% and CTO rates – by 16% year-over-year (YoY)
Despite the overall drop in clicks and CTO, active subscribers (those who opened/clicked within 90 days) continued to be engaged: the number of opens per opener increased by 9% YoY as the number of s sent to active subscribers grew by 11%
While mobile CTO has dropped YoY, the proportion of mobile clicks to desktop clicks has grown by 15% since 2015
Similarly, -driven revenue from mobile has jumped by 32% YoY and -driven orders from mobile have grown by 26%
Identifying the best-performing day of the week for deployments has been a long-standing item on many marketers’ ‘to do’ lists. And while it might be easier to say that, according to the study, Thursdays are the best day for deployment, the reality is that the answer is a little less straight-forward.
In Q Thursday was, indeed, the day of the week that generated highest engagement across all standard metrics – opens, unique clicks and click-to-opens (CTO). In addition, Thursday was also the most popular day for marketers to deploy campaigns – 20% of all s in Q2 were sent on a Thursday. An important note though, says the report, is that day of the week performance varies based on a brand’s industry.
At first glance, it seems that brands got the day of the week right; Thursdays generated a 14% higher open rate than the Q2 average, 41% higher unique click rate, and 24% higher click-to-open rate; a great performance across the board, notes the report.

2. Concern on Thursday deployments