If there’s one thing every email marketer wants to know, its how can I be sure I get effective email marketing and the answer to this question: When is the best time to send an email? By the time you finish this article, you’ll finally know the answer.

The thing is, its pretty darn obvious why this question is asked all the time. If all of us email marketers know when our readers are using their computers, then there’s a much better likelihood that they’ll look at it. And of course if they do look at it, they’ll probably open it, and go to our sites, use their credit cards and buy our stuff.

And so email marketers try to find the sweet spot: That point when the recipients email inbox is fairly empty, so your email will be easy to spot. Maybe you want to find a time of the day when the recipient has a few minutes to spare. Perhaps you look for a day of the week when its likely our subscribers are sitting at their computers.

But for the most part, its guesswork. And just guessing the best time to send an email doesn’t put money in your bank accounts.

I follow a simple two step system that helps me to be more certain as to exactly what is the best time to send email.

Step #1: Find out when most of your readers are online.

Whatever you do don’t guess! Rather, check your traffic logs. Learn when your website is the most busy. And certainly, learn when most of the people on your list joined. If you can notice if they joined on a particular day and approximate time range, then you have probably found the best time to send an email.

TIP: If your audience is worldwide, then people who sign up for your list on their lunch break in Mumbai is a completely different time then those who are joining during lunch time in Chicago. If you use a service like GetResponce, you can list by region, which allows you to actually send emails to a worldwide audience.

After you have figured out the most likely time when most of your recipients are online, you can go ahead and begin sending mail out. But remember for really effective email marketing, to also use Step #2

Quite simply step #2 is: Track and test your results!

Because your traffic logs and autoresponder statistics might suggest that lots of folks joined during their lunch break doesn’t mean that twelve noon will be the best time to send emails. Rather, you should find that your readers are most responsive later in the evening, when they have come home and the family has retired. You may find that they are more responsive to your offers in the morning.

The point to remember is finding out when your readers are online serves as a starting point only. Ultimately however, you will need to test your list to find out when they’re most profitable. That means you need to start creating identical emails, splitting your list, and broadcasting your emails at different times of the day (and also different days).

Finally your subscribers will ultimately vote with their wallets. The only way to very effective email marketing and to know for sure when your list is the most eager to respond to your offer is tracking and testing.