# Tuesday most popular day for direct mail delivery

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2004/10/04/tuesday-most-popular-day-direct-mail-delivery/
- Published: 2004-10-04T23:00:00+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

Research by Pitney Bowes suggests that direct marketers across many industries prefer
their direct mail to arrive on a Tuesday.
Pitney Bowes questioned marketers from
the top 1,000 UK companies and found that 51% of them believed that Tuesday was 
the most effective day on which their direct mail should arrive. The next most popular
arrival day was Wednesday at 17%. Thursday and Saturday were equal third with 9%,
and Monday and Friday in joint last place with 7%.

The survey respondents represented many different industry sectors, including financial,
retail, utilities, and travel, although not the charity/fundraising sector.

Malcolm Bruce, director for national posts at Pitney Bowes, offered some suggestions
as to why there was such a strong concensus on choosing Tuesday. Monday is too early
in the week because people are still dealing with their in-tray and gearing up for
work after the weekend. Friday is too late because it is nearly the weekend, so 
it is easy to put off opening direct mail, and so on.

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Interestingly, anecdotal evidence suggests that e-mail newsletters achieve a higher
open and response rate if they are delivered on Tuesdays. For this reason, apart
from some occasional testing of other days of the week, UK Fundraising News, our
free fortnightly e-mail newsletter, has always been published on a Tuesday.

If you want to get really clever, you can test and discover the best time of day
on a Tuesday for an e-mail campaign to arrive. With paper-based direct mail, there
isn’t of course that option.

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