Dr. James Oldroyd, visiting research fellow at MIT and David Elkington, CEO of InsideSales.com, researched three years of data across many companies that respond to online-generated leads. The data included 15,000 unique leads and 100,000 call attempts, which the researchers scoured to determine how companies should respond to their online leads for the best possible results.

The results were broken out into four areas and reveal the best days to make contact, best times, response time and persistence. Here’s what they found — and what you can use to guide your sales team in responding to online leads:

1. Best days to make contact and qualify leads.

Two days stand out as the best for making contact with online leads: Wednesday and Thursdays. In fact, there was almost a 50% bump for calls made on Thursdays vs. calls made on Tuesdays:

2. Best times to make contact.

The best time to call leads is between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. The second best time is between 7:30 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. Prospects are more willing to talk to you either before they start their day or at the end of the day:

3. Best time to respond to an online lead.

The best time to respond to an online lead is within five minutes. There is a 10% decrease after the first five minutes, and a 400% decrease after only 10 minutes:

4. Number of call attempts.

The research showed that the optimal number of attempts you should make to contact an online lead is at least six. Just making one or two attempts will net you next to nothing; if you don’t connect, you have to be persistent in continuing to call:

Being smart about the best times to contact online leads and being persistent about reaching them can make a tangible difference in your bottom line.