When Should You Send Your Text-to-Buy Drops?

"When should I send my drop?"

It's the question we hear more than any other from merchants on AudienceTap. What day of the week? What time? How often?

We're going to answer all of those questions. But first, we need to talk about the two things that matter even more than timing — because no amount of schedule optimization will save a drop that misses on the fundamentals.

Factor #1: The Right Offer for the Right Audience

Before you spend a single minute debating Tuesday vs. Wednesday, ask yourself this: does what you're selling match what your subscribers signed up for?

This sounds obvious, but it's the single biggest driver of whether a drop succeeds or falls flat. Your subscribers joined your list because they're interested in a specific category — coffee, wine, hot sauce, cigars, whatever your thing is. They're expecting products in that world, at a price point that feels right for them.

No timing trick will overcome a mismatch here. If your audience signed up for curated craft coffee and you start dropping $200 brewing equipment, you'll see it in the numbers immediately.

Price point matters too — but not in the way you might think. This isn't about discounting. It's about alignment of expectations. If you position your program as a premium coffee offering but your list is full of deal seekers, that mismatch will hurt your conversion rate. They're looking for bargains, and your $28 single-origin bag feels overpriced to them — even if it's a great value for what it is.

The opposite is equally true. If you're positioning your program around deep deals but your list is made up of discerning coffee aficionados, they'll view those offers as cheap. Not "good deal" cheap — "I don't trust the quality" cheap. That kills conversion just as fast.

The takeaway: know your audience and make sure your offer matches what they signed up expecting. Get that alignment right, and you've already done the hardest part. Everything else is optimization on top of a strong foundation.

Factor #2: Consistency

Here's something that might surprise you: brands that send on a predictable cadence consistently outperform those that drop sporadically.

Why? Because consistency turns your drops into a routine. When subscribers know to expect something from you every Tuesday, they start to anticipate it. They look forward to it. It becomes part of their week — and that anticipation is a powerful driver of conversion.

Weekly or every other week is the sweet spot. This cadence works especially well for consumable categories like coffee, wine, hot sauce, snacks, cosmetics, and specialty foods. These verticals thrive with frequent drops because people naturally reorder from them on a regular basis. Your drops become a discovery engine — subscribers get to try new products within a vertical they already love, delivered on a rhythm they can count on.

Think about it from the subscriber's perspective. If you're a wine lover and every other week you get a curated bottle recommendation you can buy with a single text reply, that's not annoying — that's a service.

Once a month is the absolute minimum we'd recommend. Any less frequently than that, and you start to lose the routine. Subscribers forget they signed up. The anticipation fades. When a drop finally shows up after a long gap, it feels random instead of expected — and random texts don't convert the way anticipated ones do.

Factor #3: Timing

OK, now for the part you actually came here for. Let's talk days and times.

Best days of the week

Based on what we've seen across our merchant base, the early-to-mid week window performs best:

• Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are the most popular drop days and also tend to produce the highest conversion rates
• Thursday performs well too — still solidly in the productive zone
• Friday through Sunday is where we generally see a dip

Why do weekdays win? People are in their regular routine. They're at their desk or on a break, phone in hand, mentally in a mode where a quick impulse purchase feels natural. A curated product offer lands, they like it, they reply — done.

Weekends are different. People are out doing things, socializing, running errands. Their attention is fragmented. A drop that arrives on Saturday afternoon is competing with a lot more real-world activity.

That said, this isn't a hard rule. We have merchants who drop on Fridays or Saturdays and do great. If your audience is weekend hobbyists or your product ties into weekend activities (think wine for a Saturday dinner), the pattern might look different for you. These are strong trends, not laws of physics.

Best time of day

First, the non-negotiable: all SMS sends must stay within quiet hours to remain compliant. That means no texts before 8 AM or after 9 PM in the recipient's time zone. AudienceTap handles this automatically, but it's worth understanding why certain windows work better.

Within those compliant hours, late morning through early afternoon tends to perform best — roughly 10 AM to 2 PM.

Here's the logic: by mid-morning, people are settled into their day. The morning rush is over. They're in a headspace where checking a text and making a quick purchase decision feels easy. It's low friction. Compare that to early morning (too hectic) or late evening (winding down, less impulsive).

Midday also hits a sweet spot where people often take a break — a lunch scroll, a quick mental reset. That's a great moment for a well-curated product offer to land.

The quick-hit recommendation

If you're just getting started and want a solid default, here it is:

• Day: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday
• Time: Late morning to early afternoon
• Cadence: Weekly or every other week
• And above all: Make sure your products match what your audience signed up for

But remember the hierarchy. The right offer for the right audience matters most. Consistency comes second. And timing — while genuinely important — is the layer you optimize once you've nailed the first two.

Get the foundation right, show up on a rhythm your subscribers can count on, and pick a sensible day and time. Do those three things and your drops program is set up to succeed.

---

AudienceTap is a text-to-buy platform that lets customers purchase products by replying to a text message — no links, no carts, no checkout pages.

With reply-to-buy purchasing, AI-timed replenishment drops, abandoned cart recovery, and list growth tools, AudienceTap turns SMS from a traffic channel into a sales channel. Brands on the platform average $2.01 in revenue per message and 5.5% conversion rates on drops.

Talk to a text-to-buy expert to see how it can transform your SMS marketing program.