Optimal send time
Determining Optimal Send Times with AI
Sending the right message at the right time can significantly increase engagement with your marketing campaigns. AI-powered Send Time Optimization (STO) takes the guesswork out of deciding when to reach your audience by analyzing behavioral patterns and predicting the best time to send messages to each individual recipient.
This guide explains how AI-based send time determination works and how to leverage it to improve your campaign performance.
What Is Send Time Optimization (STO)?
Send Time Optimization is an AI-driven feature that analyzes historical engagement data (such as opens or clicks) to predict when each recipient is most likely to engage with your content. It helps you:
Increase open and click-through rates
Avoid inbox fatigue
Personalize delivery without manual effort
How does it work
How to use optimal send time in campaigns
You can follow these steps to apply optimal send time to your campaigns
Under the Schedule section, select Sending type as Optimal send time
Once you select Optimal send time, you can define the following options:
Date on which you would like to send
Fallback time for recipients who do not have sufficient past engagement data (clicks or opens) to determine optimal time for them
Timezone is fixed to be recipient's local timezone
Select what you would like to do if the timezone for a recipient has already passed on the selected date
Select what you would like to do if timezone is missing from the recipient
Best Practices
Not recommended for time-sensitive campaigns: Optimal send time will send based on the best time for each recipient in their local timezone which may extend the campaign sending time over all timezone depending upon the recipient timezone differences (may take upto 48 hours to cover all timezones of the world). Hence, for sending any time-sensitive campaigns like announcements or limited time offers you can use fixed send time or send immediately
Segment Smartly: STO works best when combined with audience segmentation for relevance.
Measure Results: Compare STO campaigns with fixed-time sends to evaluate performance gains.
Use Fallbacks: For users with insufficient data, AI will use global or segment-level trends.
FAQ
Will STO send messages at different times for each recipient?
Yes. Each recipient receives the message at their predicted optimal time within your defined date in their local timezone.
Can STO work across channels?
We train the data individually for each channel like Email, SMS, WhatsApp as the engagement behaviours for same recipient may differ across channels
What if a user has no prior engagement history?
The AI uses a fallback time that you can define
What happens if the optimal time for a user is within the Quiet Hours?
If the determined optimal time falls within Quiet Hours, we find the nearest edge of the Quiet Hours and schedule the message for the next allowable hour after Quiet Hours. The message is enqueued to send at the closest boundary of Quiet Hours relative to the optimal time.
