Recent studies have me thinking about best practices for email. (Again.)

A piece released today said that according to data from email marketer Mailchimp — data based on subscriber behavior from the 200-300 millions emails sent daily — people are most likely to read and respond to email sent around 2:00 p.m.

Rather than just post this as law, I decided to check another source. The folks at Constant Contact state: “Because the volume of email sent is highest between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., your emails may have a greater chance of landing at the top of your contacts’ inboxes from 8:00 – 10:00 a.m. or 4:00 – 6:00 p.m.”

Hmm. While these two statements do not contradict each other, they’re not exactly stating the same thing. So I looked to one more source, Campaign Monitor. Here’s what they had to say:

What is the best time to send? Endless theories have been proposed and tested about the perfect time to send an email campaign. Studies have been unhelpful, because the mystical perfect day and time seems to shift unpredictably from one study to the next. Consider your content and your audience; some types of content will lend themselves to a Monday morning arrival, others to a lazy Sunday afternoon. The only really useful answer to this question is to try a few different times and see what works best for you.

We’re going to figure out what works best for you. Take 300 seconds and look at your most recent email analytics. Does anything jump out at you? Do any patterns emerge? You don’t have to do much with them at this point. Just gather them and have them ready, because we’re going to continue this topic throughout the week and probably into next. We’re going to help you measure your results in terms of day and time sent -> open rates, subject lines, calls to action, and A/B tests.

It’s going to be fun.