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Wednesday was the best day of the week in the third quarter of 2007 to send e-mail in terms of click and open rates, according to the most recent study by e-marketing services firm eROI.

Average e-mail open rates—or the percentage of e-mails in which graphics were displayed either in the message or the recipient’s preview pane—on Wednesdays for Q3 were 25.4%, according to eROI’s latest benchmark study. Average click rates for Wednesdays were 3.9%, second only to Saturday, which clocked in average click rates of 5% on open rates of a comparatively low18.7%, according to eROI.

The second best-performing day was Monday, with average open rates of 24.7% and click rates of 3.1%.

Also according to the study: average open rates on Tuesdays were 22.6% and clicks were 3.2%; open rates on Thursdays were 23.6% while click rates were 3.7%; open rates on Friday were 23.1% and clicks were 3.1%; and open rates on Sunday were 20.7% while clicks were 2.4%.

As for time of day, open and click rates tend to build throughout the workday and then drop and then spike in late evening, according to eROI.

Message to readers: Yes, this means you might consider testing Wednesdays to see if you get a boost. But if someone waves this newsletter or eROI’s study in your face to make a point about when you should mail, you have my permission to pick up the nearest big-city phone book and repeatedly deliver two-handed, concussion-inducing blows to back of their head with it.

It’s perfectly fine to use eROI’s findings as a reason to test Wednesday mailings to see if they get a boost, but if you create compelling e-mails that people want to receive in the first place, you won’t have to have the day-of-week, time-of-day discussion at all and, as a result, will be able focus on more important things—like creating compelling e-mail campaigns that people want.

Why do I feel like I just stated the obvious?