What Day of the Week is Best for Mail to Arrive?

The topic of the best day for mail to arrive is one that comes up a lot in direct mail. Across all fields of marketing, the global answer is that no set day is better across the board. However, that doesn’t mean that for specific industries and offers, there isn’t an ideal day. It all depends on your target prospect, your message, your call-to-action, and several other factors. Since we do so much mail in real estate, I want to talk about real estate investing, and which day of the week is best.

There are three main areas that we need to discuss when talking about the ideal day for mail delivery:

1. Your schedule
2. Which day works best for your demographic?
3. How much control do you have with the postal system?

Let’s first deal with the issue of your availability. Why? Because in real estate investing, you’re talking about people’s homes. People will tend to call any day of the week, and any hour of the day. It’s also true that when people first receive a piece of mail, there is usually an initial influx of responses within the first two or three days of them getting it. But that does not mean everyone will call you when the mail arrives. They might call you a few days, a week, or months later.

Given that, even if you don’t want to get calls on the weekend, there is no way you’re going to build a magic system to prevent that from happening. What you need to do is create systems to handle calls when you cannot answer. That is true no matter what your marketing plan is.

Now let’s look at what works best for your demographic.

In the real estate investing space, there is only one demographic that stands out. That is people who are over 60. A high percentage of flipped houses happen from this demographic. But, even within that demographic, your prospects are going to be from all different walks of life. They will be males, females, and from all different socioeconomic categories. Some will have retired and some will still be working.

Because the demographics are so diverse, people’s lifestyles will also be different. Some people like to check their mail and read it every day. Some people may check the mail every day, but put it in a big pile and get to it on the weekends. Some people look at their mail during the week and then ignore it on weekends. And remember, there are still people under that age of 60 who sell houses to investors, and their demographics are equally diverse.

Because of these diversities, my feeling is the same as how I view using different marketing approaches for different people. We teach that you need to use different mail pieces and marketing mediums. Not everyone will respond to the same approach. It’s no different when it comes to the timing of mail arrival. People respond on various days. We have not found any trend in the real estate investing industry that I can say is a steadfast rule for arrival on a certain day.

Now let’s look at the third factor, which is controlling the actual delivery date through the post office.

Even if you desire to have your mail arrive on a particular day every week, the postal system makes that very difficult. It is true that we have more control over delivery times when we pay for first-class mail. But, first-class mail is more expensive. It is generally much cheaper to use standard (also called marketing mail).

The problem is, with marketing mail, the post office has a much wider range of delivery times. These can range anywhere from about three days to three weeks, depending on how far the mail has to travel. They will not commit to a specific schedule.

Because of this, it is impossible to time marketing mail. It’s easier with first-class, but it is never an exact science.

Add it all up, and you can see that trying to time the mail is a complicated and imperfect science. Moreover, I can’t give you any specific benefits across the board for having mail arrive on a particular day.

In conclusion, don’t worry about what day the mail will arrive. The best solution is to mail consistently using different types of mailers, and hit the same list three to six times. This strategy will ensure you a consistent flow of leads no matter how the prospect chooses to review their mail.