The Best Time to Send a Survey, According to 5 Studies

I think surveys are a fantastic tool to gauge how your market feels about your brand, its products, and its services. Even a simple, brief survey can elicit customer feedback that can continuously improve your company. But to get the responses you need, it’s important to find the best time to send a survey.

I know finding that perfect moment in the customer‘s day is key to optimizing your survey’s completion rate. Unfortunately, there's no universal rule for when to send out a survey. It depends on your target audience and what part of the customer experience you plan to trigger it at.

However, some organizations have conducted studies to determine the best time to deliver a survey. In this post, I’ll share a few of those studies with you to determine the optimal time for sending your surveys.

Jump ahead to the studies:

• CheckMarket
• SurveyMonkey
• GetResponse
• Zendesk
• Omnisend

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When Is the Best Time to Send a Survey?

1. CheckMarket

I find the CheckMarket study super insightful because it divided its study by two factors. First, the type of audience, either B2B or B2C. And second, the length of the survey — “short” being less than or equal to 15 minutes and “long” being longer than 15 minutes. Within both these segments, CheckMarket determined the best days and times to send surveys.

I believe this more granular data will provide you with more information on how to reach your particular audience.

Here’s the summary of their findings:

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This study highlights how the length of the survey can drastically influence the day of the week that it should be triggered. For instance, a short survey is best done on Tuesdays for B2C customers, whereas long surveys are better on Wednesdays or Fridays.

To me, this reveals that customer attention spans differ from day to day and can affect their ability to complete a survey. That‘s also why it’s best to avoid disrupting customers during the weekend.

The survey's timing is also based on its length and the type of audience. For example, B2B audiences are best contacted in the mornings before noon, or between 3 PM and 6 PM. I think these times make sense, since they are when businesses are least busy and employees have time to complete surveys.

2. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey took a different approach than CheckMarket and analyzed its results based on two types of surveys: customer surveys and internal employee surveys.

To get the most significant results, SurveyMonkey excluded four holiday weeks that differentiate data, only included surveys sent out between Monday to Friday from 5 AM to 4 PM PST, and limited its analysis to surveys with 50 to 500 responses.

They found that:

• For customers, it's best to send surveys on Mondays with about 10% more responses than average.
• For employees, it's also best on Mondays with about 13% more responses than average.

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With this data, we can infer that on Mondays people aren't overwhelmed with work and are more likely to set aside time in their day to complete a survey. And although Monday is the favored day, SurveyMonkey also found that 78% of surveys are completed during the workweek while only 22% on the weekends.

Regarding timing for all weekdays, surveys get the most responses between 7 AM and 10 AM, and then after 2 PM until the end of the workday. So I suggest you aim to send your surveys in the morning or early afternoon of weekdays.

3. GetResponse

GetResponse offers a slightly different perspective, with broad data on the best time and day to send emails to customers — including, but not limited to, surveys. I appreciate that this study has such a large data set: It analyzed 4.4 billion emails sent from its U.S. accounts in 2023.

In sum:

• Early morning sends between 4 AM and 6 AM are best.
• Evenings between 5 PM and 7 PM are second best.

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• Tuesdays have slightly higher response rates than other weekdays, but not substantially higher compared to other weekdays for open and click-through rates.

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So according to this study, slipping into your audience’s inbox first thing in the morning or last thing in the evening increases the chances of your email being opened and read. To me, this makes sense because people are more likely to be busy in the middle of the day — and so will their inboxes.

4. Zendesk

Zendesk analyzed global survey response rates based on the day of the week and time of day. What I find interesting is that they discovered that the day of the week didn't make a huge impact in terms of survey results. As you can see in the first graph, the response rate was highest on Mondays, but the rest of the days were only slightly behind.

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The second graph below depicts the response rates based on the time of day. Interestingly, the response rates were highest when surveys were sent between 1 AM and 7 AM, with responses peaking at 4 AM. The response rates then drastically dropped when the emails were sent during working hours, likely because they got lost with other work emails.

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So, according to this data, the prime time to send a survey would be Mondays at 4 AM when there's little opportunity for the email to go unnoticed.

However, note that while the response rate is higher at 4 AM, the highest absolute number of responses is in the middle of the day, between 10 AM and 2 PM.

5. Omnisend

Omnisend found interesting data on when to send your email by comparing open, click-through, and conversion rates. I found this extra layer of insight to be helpful.

Overall, the study found:

• Tuesdays and Fridays are the best days to send emails.
• 2 PM, 5 PM, and 8 PM are the best times to send emails.

Although Tuesdays have the highest open rates, it’s only slightly ahead of Wednesdays and Thursdays, so any midweek day should perform about the same.

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However, Friday received the other honorable mention since it has the highest click-through and conversion rates.

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In sum, Omnisend reveals that you should send email surveys any day Tuesday through Friday. But I think the important thing this study highlights are the particular send times — 2 PM, 5 PM, and 8 PM — that will lead to the highest levels of engagement.

The Bottom Line: Keep Your Audience in Mind

While there is some variation in the results of the different studies I've presented here, the bottom line is it's best to send a survey on a weekday during a low-peak time of day for professionals — early mornings, lunchtime, late afternoons, and post-work evenings. That way, the survey doesn't get lost with other work-related emails and users will have more time on their hands to complete it.

Each of these studies highlights a different ideal time, based on the length of the survey, content, audience, and more. Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays have all been listed as the best days of the week to send surveys, while the time of day differs in each study.

I would give more weight to the CheckMarket, Zendesk, and SurveyMonkey findings since they are specifically about sending surveys, while the other two are about marketing emails more generally. Those three favor Monday mornings for optimized survey response. You can also pay attention to the nuances of the data in these studies, such as best days/times for B2B, B2C, or employees.

But as always, keep in mind that your specific audience is not necessarily the same as the general audience, so I’d encourage you to keep track of your survey open and response rates to find the sweet spot for reaching your customers.

Editor's note: This article was originally published in August 2019 and has since been updated for comprehensiveness.

5 Free Customer Satisfaction Survey Templates

Easily measure customer satisfaction and begin to improve your customer experience.

• Net Promoter Score
• CSAT Score
• Customer Effort Score
• And more!

Download for free Learn more

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