What is the best time to schedule call time?
This article focuses on progressive fundraising data collected throughout Q3 of 2019. Please note that we have created an updated version of this article looking specifically at call time performance since March 2020 and the beginning of lockdowns stemming from the pandemic. You can read that article by following this link.
The most precious resource any campaign has is time. There is never nearly enough of it, and the most successful campaigns are laser-focused on using candidate, staff, and volunteer time as wisely as possible. This is especially true when considering how to generate the campaign’s second most important resource: money.
CallTime.AI is all about making the most of your fundraising time — from automated donor research and phone number lookups, to lightning-fast follow up emails and texts, to a built-in power dialer. Now we’re digging into the data to help you make even smarter decisions about who to reach out to, how, and when. In this article, we’re taking a look at a perennial call time question: when’s the best time to call?
Armed with this data, you can more confidently determine when is the best time to schedule call time.
What is “best”?
In analyzing over 50,000 calls we categorized them based upon call outcome. Each call was coded as one of the following:
- Declined (2% of all calls)
- Wrong number (0.5%)
- No Answer (23%)
- Left message or voicemail (43%)
- Asked (4%)
- Pledged (3%)
- Contributed (11%)
- Other (14%)
Securing a contribution over the phone is clearly the “best” possible call time outcome, with a pledge-to-give the second-place winner. However, so much of fundraising is about relationship-building and persistence, that just being able to connect with the person you are reaching out to should be considered a huge win.
Which days should you call?
If you’re able to schedule 5 days of call time each week, the data suggest you’re probably best opting for a Sunday through Thursday schedule. While Sunday is a bit slow (~20% connect rate), it outperforms both Friday and Saturday (~16% and ~11%, respectively). In terms of successfully connecting with someone on the phone, Monday is the big winner with a connect rate of 24%.
The best- and worst- times of day to call
Call time is typically scheduled for a single, big chunk of time in a day. The data indicate that spreading it out a bit more might yield better results — in addition to serving the candidate’s sanity.
Connect rates generally cycle throughout the day, with some obvious peaks, often followed by valleys. For example, reaching people in the 8:00am hour is often the high-water mark of the day, with calls successfully reaching a person a little over half of the time. But that number gets cut by more than half in just the next hour, presumably as people get settled into work. Connections are back up again by the 10:00am hour.
Overall, 1–6pm is a pretty lousy time to make fundraising calls, but things pick up in the evening, especially between 7 and 9pm, before dropping off again.
One of the values of a highly efficient, digital call time software, like CallTime.AI, is that it makes a more flexible, data-driven call time schedule feasible. It reduces time wasted on transitions, and the mobile and web apps make picking up where you left off- no matter when, or where- much easier.
When you should definitely be calling each week
We separated each day of the week by hour to identify the top “must fundraise” blocks of the week. Here they are:
- Sundays, from 5–7pm
- Mondays, from 8–9pm
- Wednesdays, from 8–10am
- Thursdays, from 7–9pm
And the best times to avoid?
Getting a “No Answer” or “Wrong Number” are arguably the worst outcomes of call time. You took the time to place the call and you didn’t even get to leave a message demonstrating that you had — it robs you of a touch entirely. While keeping your “Wrong Number” tally low can be helped through data enrichment services, like those provided by CallTime.AI, “No Answers” can be reduced by not calling during these “must avoid” blocks:
- Sundays, 12–3pm
- Mondays, 3–5pm
- Thursdays, 9–10am
- Fridays, 7–9pm
- Saturdays, 8–10am
