Tuesday, on our data — and the gap is bigger than we expected. Across 1,931 pitches sent to journalists between December 2025 and July 2026, with automated out-of-office replies stripped out, Tuesday drew a 17.0% human reply rate against 5.8% on Thursday. That is a three-to-one spread. But Tuesday is also our smallest sample, our sends cluster into a narrow part of the day, and the honest summary is that who you send to still moves the number far more than when. Here is the whole dataset, including the parts that do not support a recommendation.
Reply rate by day
Every day below carries at least 100 sends. Auto-replies are excluded — Woodpecker classifies them separately, so they are removable rather than a matter of judgement.
| Day sent | Pitches | Human replies | Reply rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tuesday | 100 | 17 | 17.0% |
| Wednesday | 128 | 14 | 10.9% |
| Friday | 479 | 37 | 7.7% |
| Monday | 706 | 50 | 7.1% |
| Thursday | 518 | 30 | 5.8% |
Tuesday outperforms Thursday by nearly three times, and Tuesday and Wednesday are the only two days above the overall average.
The caveats, stated plainly. Tuesday rests on 100 sends and 17 replies — the smallest sample in the table, and the one carrying the strongest claim. A handful of replies either way moves it several points. Monday and Friday carry the volume, at 706 and 479 sends, and both land close to the overall rate, which is the more reliable part of this table.
Send day and campaign quality are also confounded. We did not randomise which campaign went out on which day. Some of what looks like a Tuesday effect may be that better-targeted campaigns happened to go out on Tuesdays. We cannot separate the two from this data, and anyone publishing a day-of-week chart without acknowledging that is overselling it.
Reply rate by hour, and why we are not recommending an hour
This is the part most guides get most confident about. Our data does not support confidence, and it is worth showing why.
| Hour (UTC) | Approx. US Eastern | Pitches | Human replies | Reply rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18:00 | ~1–2pm | 153 | 13 | 8.5% |
| 16:00 | ~11am–noon | 844 | 66 | 7.8% |
| 15:00 | ~10–11am | 233 | 17 | 7.3% |
| 17:00 | ~noon–1pm | 262 | 15 | 5.7% |
Those are the only four hours with 100 or more sends, and they span just 5.7% to 8.5% — a narrow band around our overall rate.
The reason is that our sends are concentrated. Roughly three-quarters go out between 15:00 and 18:00 UTC, which is late morning to early afternoon US Eastern. We have not tested early morning or evening at meaningful volume, so we cannot tell you whether they are better. Individual hours outside that band show rates from 0% to 38%, all on samples between 1 and 95 sends. Those are noise, and publishing them as a finding would be dishonest.
If you see an article recommending a specific hour, ask how many sends sit behind it.
What actually moves the number more
Across all our outreach between December 2025 and August 2026 we recorded zero unsubscribes and a 1.0% bounce rate. Two factors move reply rates further than any day or hour.
Which email in the sequence
| Sequence step | Delivered | Open rate | Reply rate | Replies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First email | 2,063 | 47.6% | 6.0% | 124 |
| Follow-up 1 | 1,576 | 37.4% | 3.7% | 59 |
| Follow-up 2 | 69 | 40.6% | 4.3% | 3 |
Two-thirds of every reply came from the first email.
"Two-thirds of our replies came from the first email, not the follow-up. Everyone sells you a five-step sequence. On a journalist list the first email does the work and the rest is mostly noise you're adding to someone's inbox."
Justin Mauldin, Founder, Salient PR
Who receives it
"Most of what people call a PR failure is a targeting failure. The pitch went to someone who stopped covering that beat 18 months ago. That's not bad luck, that's nobody checking."
Justin Mauldin, Founder, Salient PR
"Before anything goes out I check whether the reporter has written about the category in the last 90 days. If they haven't, they come off the list. That one rule kills more pitches than any editing pass."
Lindsey Ranger, Account Lead, Salient PR
A Tuesday send to the wrong reporter loses to a Thursday send to the right one, every time.
Timing that matters more than the clock
Embargo lead time. Three weeks lets a reporter plan and write something considered. A day's notice is not an embargo, it is a countdown.
Whether a bigger story is landing in your category. A launch published the morning a competitor announces a funding round disappears.
The news window for reactive comment. Legal, financial and security stories are filed within hours. Fast beats well-timed.
Quarter and holiday effects. Late December, mid-August and the days around major public holidays are genuinely thin — a far bigger effect than any hour of the day.
Your own approval speed.
"The slowest part of most programmes isn't the agency. It's how long it takes to get a quote approved internally. Companies that can turn a quote in a day get into stories that companies who take a week never see."
Lindsey Ranger, Account Lead, Salient PR
The short version
- Tuesday, on our data: 17.0% against 5.8% on Thursday across 1,931 pitches with auto-replies excluded.
- Tuesday is also the smallest sample in the set, and send day is confounded with campaign quality. Treat it as a real signal, not a law.
- We will not recommend an hour. Three-quarters of our sends fall in a four-hour band and the rates inside it range only 5.7% to 8.5%.
- Two-thirds of replies come from the first email, not the follow-up.
- Targeting beats timing.
- Embargo lead time, a clear news window and your own approval speed all matter more than the clock.
Salient PR runs earned media programmes for technology companies. Timing figures are recomputed from our reconciled outreach export: 1,931 deliverable pitches carrying a send timestamp between 4 December 2025 and 31 July 2026, with automated replies excluded. Overall programme figures cover December 2025 to August 2026.
Sources
- Salient PR outreach database, 1,931 timestamped deliverable pitches, Dec 2025 – Jul 2026
- Salient PR outreach database, Dec 2025 – Aug 2026
If you want this handled by people who track it — Salient PR is a technology PR agency working with technology companies. See how we work or start a conversation.
We also publish what a yes actually turns into — nine pitches traced from the reporter's reply to the published piece, with the dates.
Related reading
About Salient PR
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Reply rates by day from 1,931 pitches to journalists, auto-replies excluded. Tuesday beats Thursday three to one — with the caveats that number needs.
