Enough!  How many statistically insignificant studies does it take to drive a press release?  Quite a few, apparently.

There has been a lot of recent research aimed at discovering the best day of the week to deploy an email marketing campaign.  Marketers, please don't waste another minute reading these studies.  They don't pertain to you.  Perhaps I can interest you in the results of three other tidbits:  "The Best Day of the Week to Change a Tire," "The Best Hour of the Day to Call Your Mom," and "The Best Minute of the Hour to See a UFO."  I'll sell all four studies to you for a low all-inclusive price.

Thus far, macromarketing research on a matter such as the best day of the week to send an email campaign is completely irrelevant to your business.  If you're a travel retailer, should you be basing your decisions on studies that include publication subscriptions and educational institutions?  If you are segmenting your market by online behavior, should you be benchmarking with companies who segment by age or geography?  If you are a software company that offers short trial periods, is there really ever a bad day to send a campaign?

Furthermore, which metrics are important for your organization to consider?  Is the best day to send email the one with the highest open-rates?  The best click-through rates?  The best conversion rates?  Are you looking to drive direct (first visit from the campaign) conversions, or are deferred (future visit still credited to the campaign) conversions just as worthwhile?  If so, then perhaps that Thursday email campaign had a low same-day click-through rate, but it eventually drove a high deferred conversion rate during the weekend.  In my opinion, that would make Thursday a fine day to send email.  I'm certainly not a mathematician, but sometimes online marketing voodoo can be laughable. 

The recently released MarketingSherpa Email Benchmark Guide helps debunk some of these myths.  Without quoting the whole report verbatim (I recommend that you purchase a copy...it's a great guide), I will highlight the fact that MarketingSherpa presents various conflicting studies to show that there is "no magic bullet," that the "best day of the week will change from time to time," and that response rates would be affected by over-mailing if there truly was a universal "best day."  I would imagine that deliverability would be eventually become another relevant dimension of this discussion.

So, I'll leave you with three parting thoughts.  First, if you're going to place any importance in benchmarking, find one that is relevant to you.  Unless you are comparing your business to an organization which has a similar market, segmentation strategy or set of challenges, be wary of the "insight" that you might be considering.  Second, try to limit yourself to research that is actionable for your team.  Before placing much importance in a particular study, ask yourself: "If there is something conclusive in here, what are we going to do about it?  Do we have the resources, internal political leverage, energy, need, etc to change our course based on the results?"  Lastly, the answer to the original question is this:  "Today is the best day to send an email campaign."  The ROI of email marketing is proven.  If you are doing the right things to grow your list, segment your market, personalize your message and test your promotions, I'm sure there is someone in your audience who would love to hear from you today.