Smart Sending! Find the Best Time to Send Your Messages and Emails

So, you try again. Maybe the day of the week made a difference, or was it the time? You spend the next several weeks trying to recreate the magic of your first email only to end up frustrated and no further along than before. It doesn’t have to be this difficult. Our ESP, Klaviyo, has a new Smart Send Time feature that provides a 10 percent, on average, lift in open rates.

Timing is everything, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

If you could perfectly time everything in your life, you would never waste a moment. Everything would get done in an effective and efficient manner. Life would be easy. Unfortunately, that is not the way of the world. Perfect timing is rare and usually happens by chance.

What if you had the insight to apply perfect timing to your messages and email marketing efforts? Imagine being able to peer into the lives of the people on your email list and determine the best time to send them a message – one they would open, read, and act upon. That ability exists through a process called send-time optimization.

Does send time matter?

You wouldn’t send a holiday-themed message in February, and you wouldn’t run a back-to-school promotion in November. If timing applies on a larger scale, it stands to reason that it matters on a micro level as well. By honing in on the optimal send time for your audience, you can maximize your open rates.

Customers and prospects cannot act on your email unless they first open it. Whether you are trying to close a deal or build customer loyalty, send time impacts the number of eyes on your message. It is the difference between an email that is read and one that is deleted. In order to get the most out of your messages and email marketing campaigns, you have to optimize your send time.

What does it mean to optimize your send time?

People are busy, and everyone follows a different schedule and routine. Some people prefer to work out in the morning while others hit the gym after work. You may enjoy a late lunch while your coworker eats at 11 am on the dot. With so many personal preferences, how can you hope to land on the best time for sending emails?

In the past, optimizing your send time involved a very long and thorough process, with mixed results. Attempting to manually optimize send times meant designing countless tests, collecting data, iterating as you went, and analyzing the results. The process was time-consuming and largely ineffective.

Thankfully, advances in technology now enable us to automate this once arduous process. With programs like Smart Send Time from Klaviyo, you can now send emails optimized for send time with just one click.

Does optimizing your send time really make a difference?

Klaviyo partnered with thirty-five brands to develop a one-of-a-kind algorithm that optimizes send time. Essentially, they have done the massive amounts of testing, iterating, and analyzing for you with product development and data science experts.

Once they created the Smart Send Time algorithm, Klaviyo conducted a private beta test with 15 customers. These ten brands saw an increase in email open rates of 10% on average. Overall, Smart Send Time performed four times better than other optimization techniques for send time.

The brands that participated in the study and beta test covered a range of industries. From home and garden to fashion and apparel, health and fitness, and everything in between, brands saw a significant improvement in their open rates.

How does Smart Send Time work?

If you have ever used your email service provider’s built-in send time optimizer, you were probably disappointed. Traditional ESPs often promise optimal results and the best time for emails, but they do not share their methods. When you go back and conduct your own A/B tests, the data does not seem to hold up.

The problem with most ESPs when it comes to email send time optimization is the usage of a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, Klaviyo developed an algorithm that conducts an initial test over a 24-hour period to check the optimal send times for your specific audience.

Smart Send Time learns about your open rates and uses that data to maximize your email engagement. And the learning continues well beyond the initial test. With each email sent, Smart Send Time gets smarter, narrowing the optimal send time window and focusing your messages.

You have full visibility into your email test and optimal send rates with each campaign. You can even find the optimal send times for each of your segmented customer lists as Smart Send Time learns about their unique behavior. Data is continuously collected, and the send time is evaluated as either optimal or needing adjustment.

The A/B test method Klaviyo uses compares send times directly. With head-to-head comparisons, you can conduct continuous experiments to home in on your optimal send time. Smart Send Time is unique in the level of transparency it provides. The algorithm and process are on full display, and you own all of your data.

What else can Smart Send Time do?

In addition to determining the best time for emails, this powerful tool can help manage flow emails. Marketing automation can greatly improve your open and click-through rates, offering an impressive ROI. Smart Sending provides a checks and balances system for your email marketing automation.

With the Smart Sending feature, you can ensure a subscriber does not receive too many emails at once. You likely have multiple flows and campaigns set up at any given time, which can lead to overlap and a barrage of emails on some poor, unsuspecting person. If an individual has already received an email from you within a recent timeframe, they will be skipped from your current email batch.

Start optimizing your send time today!

If you have ever wondered about the best time for emails, your question has been answered. The truth is, there is no one perfect time or day of the week to send emails and get optimal results. With Smart Send Time from Klaviyo, you can find the unique optimal send time for your business and your audience.

The transparent algorithm gives you unprecedented insights into your email marketing results and ensures you have the best chance at success with your campaigns. Marketers who understand the value of optimizing send time can now benefit from years of research and testing with just one click, thanks to Klaviyo.