When is the Best Time to Send Emails in PR? (A Study of 4.5M Emails)

• 8–9 AM local time sees the highest journalist email engagement across most major media domains.
• Monday is the top-performing day for both opens and replies, especially among freelancers and UK-based journalists.
• Freelancers show broader engagement throughout the week but still peak around 8 AM.
• US journalists engage most between 9–11 AM; UK journalists between 7–9 AM local time.
• Best send times vary by publication and domain—most still favor 8 AM local time.
• Personalization beats timing: use bios, publish times, and social media to tailor outreach per journalist.

Of all the questions PR pros ask, the best time to send consistently ranks near the top.

And since PR professionals send millions of emails through BuzzStream, we have a pretty good sense of when recipients (i.e., journalists) are active.

I dug into the data to really get to the bottom of the best times to send emails, broken down by a few factors: time, domain, and freelancers.

Quick Note on Methodology

For this study, we analyzed both open rates and engagement shares. Although we’ve omitted opens from Apple’s MPP, open rates can still be less reliable. So, we are using reply rate more as an additional confidence metric that journalists are indeed active around that time.

To get the actual open time, first, the user’s send time is marked. Then we track the seconds until the first open. This lets us track open rates in each hour.

First, we broke this down by open and reply rates, but as you can imagine, we end up with skewed data when certain hours of the day have lower send volume.

So, we went with engagement share.

• If an hour has a high send count but a low open share, the audience is not engaging at that time.
• If an hour has a high open share, it means a meaningful portion of all opens occurred during that hour — even after accounting for volume.

So, about 36% of our opens came from messages sent at 8 AM, making it not just effective; it’s when recipients are actually active.

Best Time to Send PR Emails by Hour

The best time to send PR emails is between 8 and 9 AM local time for the publication.

Here’s what that looks like as a chart:

Not all that earth-shattering, right?

When I spoke with Rosie Taylor, UK-based freelance journalist and author of Get Featured Substack, she confirmed my suspicions:

“I check my emails pretty constantly through the day, but later emails tend to arrive when I’m in the middle of working on something else, so it’s easy for me to forget about these. Anything that’s already in my inbox when I get to my desk at 9am is most likely to be read and potentially acted on – but I will pause what I’m doing later in the day for a very strong story.”

I highly recommend checking out her guide on press deadlines.

As you can see, the highest engagement rates occur between 8 AM and 9 AM.

Next, I wanted to confirm the days of the week to see if those had any fluctuation.

Best Time to Send PR Emails by Day of the Week

The best day to send PR emails is Monday.

Here’s what it looks like as a table:

Journalist activity is virtually non-existent on the weekend.

Last, I wanted to see if freelancers differed much from the in-house journalists.

Best Time to Email Freelancers

The best time to email freelancers is Monday at ~8 AM.

I calculated this by assuming that all Gmail, Yahoo, and other non-media-publisher email domains were freelancers.

This may not always be the case, of course, but for this study, it is the closest approximation at scale.

What we saw is that Monday is still the best day, but there was fairly consistent engagement throughout the week, minus Friday.

Here is the table version of this:

I’ve gotten a lot of feedback that freelance journalists are night owls or work irregular hours.

And while this may be true, the majority of them seem to work hours that align with the daily news cycle:

Here is the table breakdown for timing:

Since we don’t know where these domains are based, we need to rely on the data.

We are just using open engagement share because replies are less reliable at a smaller scale, but as you can see, the peaks correspond to 8 AM in both the UK and ET time zones.

So, again, the early time frames appear to be the best time for engaging with a journalist.

The next check I wanted to do is the US vs UK timezones.

Best Time to Send PR Emails for US vs UK Journalists

The best time to send emails to UK journalists is 7-9 AM, while US-based journalists 9-11 AM.

Here is the table for US vs UK timing:

We do see a difference here in engagements. I’m not 100% sure why, and this stumped most journalists I asked as well.

It appears that UK-based journalists are early risers.

When comparing the days of the week, there was no difference.

Here is the table for UK vs US day of the week:

Monday is still the day that gets the most engagement from journalists based on opens engagement share.

To help understand a little more of the UK vs US fluctuations, we can actually look at the domain level.

Best Time to Contact Journalists Based on Domain

The best time to send for each domain still appears to be 8 AM.

To determine the most reliable “best send times” for major publishers, we analyzed the top 50 most-contacted domains and measured their engagement behavior at every UTC hour.

For each domain, we calculated the number of sends, opens, open rates, and open shares.

Here is the table for the best times to contact journalists based on the domain:

To ensure the results reflected real signals rather than noise, we further applied two reliability filters: each domain-hour needed at least 10 opens and a confidence score ≥ 0.40, based on the relative volume of sends at that hour.

As you can see, again, pretty much consistently ~8 AM.

With that out of the way, I can now explain that most of what you just read should be taken with a HUGE grain of salt.

Tips for Identifying the Best Time to Send Emails

You can pretty much ignore all of this at the individual journalist level.

Why?

Because there is SO much variation between journalists, industries, and the publications they write for.

As Rosie told me, “the best day (and best time for that matter) changes depending on which publication and journalist you’re pitching to!

The key thing to take away is there is no magic rule that will work for everyone – you need to get to know the publications and journalists you’re pitching to and work out when is the best time to email them.”

Some journalists live and work in different areas, living in one time zone and writing for another.

Some may be night owls.

With that in mind, here are some tips for the best time to send your PR emails.

Research Job Titles

Biographies and job titles can be telling.

For instance, here is Daisy Maldonado from Good Housekeeping. She’s writing about a fashion topic.

But, only when you click on her name to read her bio do you see that she is the weekend editor.

If you email on a Monday morning, your hot story on Oprah-approved Amazon makeup bags may get easily lost.

Read their biographies

Not all reporters live in the same area that their publication is based either. Biographies can sometimes help get you that information.

For instance, Ruth Graham, writes for The New York Times, but is based in Dallas:

In our webinar on hyper-relevance in outreach, I showed a screenshot from Colin Czarnecki of digital PR agency, Noble, who breaks up his outreach into timezones, which he’s said works wonders for his campaigns.

This is why it pays to research each journalist individually.

Check Publish Dates

Another tip is to dig into publish dates. Sometimes these can give you some intel.

Say I was trying to reach out to Matt Meyer, one of the authors of this story on the Trump government shutdown, from CNN.

When I go to his author page, I can clearly see that all of these previous posts were posted on the weekend.

Although publishing times are solely up to the editor, the publisher, and the publication itself, they may give some insight into the journalist’s publishing cadence.

Some journalists publish only once or twice per month (usually when they are freelance contributors), so that may change your pitching strategy.

Instead of a one-off pitch, these kinds of journalists are the ones you may consider trying to build a long-term relationship with.

Check their Social Media

Sometimes, you’ll get lucky and it’s listed in their bio.

In other situations, it might be a little more nebulous. For instance, Eleanor Pringle writes for Fortune covering news, the economy, and personal finance.

Though there are some hints of previous UK work experience, her bio doesn’t say where she lives.

Digging into her recent articles doesn’t help either, as they appear to cover US-related topics.

It’s only when I look into her LinkedIn profile that I see she actually lives in the United Kingdom.

This is the way to get your emails in front of the right journalist at the right time.

When to Email For Breaking News

For most breaking news, most of this data goes out the door.

In those cases, you want to be first in line at any time of day. There is no need to wait, because it gets crowded—especially for high-visibility breaking news.

As Mark Rofe explained in our podcast on reactive PR, topics with high media interest (such as a celebrity engagement or an interest rates announcement) will likely be the most competitive.

For more help with this, check out our guide on reactive PR.

How ListIQ Can Help Determine the Best Time to Send

Say I’m searching for journalists talking about mortgage rates:

I want to make sure that I select job title, bio, recent articles, author page, LinkedIn, and location.

Then, it spits out a Google Sheet with information and links out to quick checks to drastically speed up the qualification method.

For instance, here I know that Kim is a Utah-based reporter, which puts her in the MST time zone.

Then, there’s a PBS reporter covering the U.S. housing market, but based in Los Angeles.

If I email him, I’m going to ensure it hits his inbox around 9AM PST.

Every Journalist is Different

Although we have the data, the takeaway here should be that you can use it directionally.

Email is getting crowded, so it’s important to lean on relationships that you build up over time.

Engage with journalists on other platforms, like social media or Substack.

Vince Nero

Vince is the Director of Content Marketing at Buzzstream. He thinks content marketers should solve for users, not just Google. He also loves finding creative content online. His previous work includes content marketing agency Siege Media for six years, Homebuyer.com, and The Grit Group. Outside of work, you can catch Vince running, playing with his 2 kids, enjoying some video games, or watching Phillies baseball.

More Posts by Vince Nero
Website: https://www.buzzstream.com