Send time optimisation helps you send communications out at the most optimal time of day. This ensures that recipients who prefer to read their emails in the morning will receive them first thing.
You shouldn't confuse send time optimisation with time zone, which executes dependent on a specific time of day in each time zone. You can learn more about creating a time zone controlled Flow here.
In this article, you will find information about:
- Apple's privacy update impact on Send Time Optimisation
- Setting Up Send Time Optimisation
- How to Test Send Time Optimisation
Apple’s privacy update impact on Send Time Optimisation
In autumn 2021 Apple will introduce changes to the Mail application to increase users’ control over their privacy. You can read more about what is being updated and what it means here.
Send Time Optimisation, which is calculated with timestamps for opens and clicks, will be impacted by the update, since emails will be marked as read as soon as the inbox is loaded. Therefore, it should be noted that if you choose to follow this guide on Setting up send time optimisation, you will not be able to fully rely on the open rate data after the update.
Setting Up Send Time Optimisation
How to Create the Person Data
So that you can specify which hour each recipient prefers, you will need an associated Person Data field. We recommend you to do the following:
- Create a new 'Number' Person Data and name it 'OPTIMISED_SEND_HOUR'.
- Add restrictions to only allow values between 0-23.
By creating this Person Data field and adding the restriction, you can store data on when the optimal time to send outbound communications to your recipients is.
How to Create Outbound Communications
Next, you must design the content you need to send to your recipients at the optimised hour.
- Create your outbound communication, such as an email.
- Add Content Blocks and design the content in your email.
How to Create the Send Time Optimised Flow
Importantly, you need to create the Flow which will send out your communication at the optimal time.
- Create a new Flow.
- Add an email Step and select your email to send.
- Add a Loop Condition for the Step:
- Compare 'OPTIMISED_SEND_HOUR' is equals to 'HOUR'
- Try again in '1 hour'
- Max retries: '24 times'
- After max retries: 'Execute step anyway'
- Click 'Save'.
A Flow set up to send an email at the optimised hour for each recipient
How to Import the Send Time Optimisation Data
Agillic doesn't have a standard feature to calculate the optimised hour for each recipient. Therefore, we recommend that you use an external analytics program to calculate the optimised hour based on multiple open timestamps for each recipient.
Your calculation should result in a number between 0-23 to define the optimal hour of sending. This hour is based on the timezone of your Agillic instance.
- Calculate the optimised send hour externally.
- Import the optimised send hour as Person Data for the recipients into Agillic.
The configuration is now complete and you're ready to test.
How to Test Send Time Optimisation
Testing a send time optimisation is an important step before pushing your Flow live. Before you get started, make sure you've created a test recipient.
- Set the OPTIMISED_SEND_HOUR Person Data to a set hour value fora test recipient on Staging.
- Publish to Staging.
- Manually execute the created Flow on Staging for the test recipient and the redirect it to your own inbox.
- Verify that you received the email at the expected time for your test recipient.
Now, you've tested a Flow with send time optimisation. If the email looks as intended, you can now push the Flow live. You do this by changing the Flow to use the correct production Target Group, schedule the Flow, and publish it to Production.
Please note that the check in the loop Condition runs every hour based on when the recipient enters the Step. If the recipient enters the Step at 12.41 and the OPTIMISED_SEND_HOUR is '14', you should expect to receive the outbound communication at 14.41.
Suggested Next Steps