Thus, sending at optimal times can drive more effective and successful email campaigns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) is your ESP of choice, its Einstein AI engine will help you calculate the best times to send marketing emails and capture all its benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This article will decode the secrets!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is the \u201cBest\u201d Time to Send Marketing Emails?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nThere\u2019s no single answer to this question. One reason is that your audiences may have different behaviors when it comes to email opens. Some may have more opens over the weekend than on weekdays, while others may have more opens on weekdays than over the weekend. Similarly, some may have higher opens in the morning hours compared to other times of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With SFMC, you can pinpoint these behaviors and pick the day and time with the highest opens to send your emails. However, such simple audience-level aggregation ignores subscribers\u2019 unique individual behaviors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What if Subscriber A is more likely to open your email newsletter at 4 PM on the second Saturday <\/em>even though they are part of Audience X whose average best time to open the newsletter is 10 AM on the first Tuesday<\/em>? This can happen with your emails and audiences, which is why the best time to send emails is both individualized and dynamic. <\/p>\n\n\n\nWith the Salesforce email platform and its Einstein AI engine, you can go beyond broad audience-level <\/em>results and drill down into more granular subscriber-level results to figure out a personalized \u201cbest\u201d send time and send more effective email marketing campaigns.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHow to Determine the <\/strong>Best Time for Email Campaigns<\/strong>: 3 Important Factors to Keep in Mind<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nYour marketing cloud email specialists know how to send an email in Salesforce and how to make the most of Salesforce email templates<\/a>. But they should also know the three key data points that can help personalize the best time to send emails to a target audience:<\/p>\n\n\n\ni. Personal engagement data<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThree important metrics act as proxies for subscriber engagement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Opens<\/li>
- Clicks<\/li>
- Unsubscribes<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
SFMC captures all these metrics so you can understand which subscribers are most and least engaged with your content, and then leverage this understanding to guide your send times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ii. Customer-specific characters<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn most cases, a majority of subscribers engage with marketing emails at only a few distinct hours. For this reason, relying only on individual engagement data is not a good idea. Instead, look at personal behaviors and customer-level engagement patterns to create your personalized send time optimization model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
iii. Check the lag from send time to open time<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nNot all subscribers open emails immediately on receiving them. Measure the average open lag and determine if you need to shift the send time ahead<\/em> to allow for it. It\u2019s easy to make such determinations and derive the optimal send time for users that consistently show relatively stable open lag. It\u2019s slightly tricky to determine the optimal send time for subscribers whose lags are harder to predict. In this case, the external marketing cloud email specialists<\/a> like Email Uplers can help.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat is Einstein Send Time Optimization?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nAs we have seen, it\u2019s not enough to simply know how to send good emails in SFMC<\/a>. It\u2019s equally more important to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n- Monitor subscribers\u2019 behaviors<\/li>
- Adaptively adjust your email marketing strategy based on these behaviors<\/li>
- Determine optimal send times to improve email engagement over time<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Einstein Send Time Optimization (STO) can help you do all of the above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Einstein STO is a Machine Learning (ML)-based feature in SFMC Journey Builder. It uses ML and 90 days of engagement data to determine the optimal send times within a 24-hour period, i.e., the time when a subscriber is most likely to engage with your message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"Einstein](\"https:\/\/email.uplers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Einstein-STO-.png\")
Image source<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nHow Einstein STO Works<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nEach week, Einstein uses each contact\u2019s latest engagement data for sends and then recreates its sending model with that data. This data is captured for 20 factors, such as the:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Number of emails sent to a contact<\/li>
- Number of emails the contact opened<\/li>
- Day of the week the email is opened<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Einstein then uses ML to assign a weight to each factor according to its influence on predicting future engagement. It then analyzes all this weighted data and assigns a likelihood score to each of the 168 hours in a week for each contact. Finally, it uses this score to recommend send times that are most likely to lead to opens for your Salesforce marketing cloud email campaigns<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nEinstein STO provides a visual dashboard where you can visualize optimal predicted send times by the day or hour for all email addresses in your contacts list. On the dashboard, you can see:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- When subscribers are most likely to engage with your messages<\/li>
- When Einstein recommends sending emails<\/li>
- Assigned personalized send times for each subscriber<\/li>
- Your data quality, which fuels Einstein\u2019s predictions<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Use this information to predict future message engagement and choose the best time for batch sends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With the Salesforce email platform and its Einstein AI engine, you can go beyond broad audience-level <\/em>results and drill down into more granular subscriber-level results to figure out a personalized \u201cbest\u201d send time and send more effective email marketing campaigns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your marketing cloud email specialists know how to send an email in Salesforce and how to make the most of Salesforce email templates<\/a>. But they should also know the three key data points that can help personalize the best time to send emails to a target audience:<\/p>\n\n\n\n i. Personal engagement data<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Three important metrics act as proxies for subscriber engagement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n SFMC captures all these metrics so you can understand which subscribers are most and least engaged with your content, and then leverage this understanding to guide your send times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ii. Customer-specific characters<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In most cases, a majority of subscribers engage with marketing emails at only a few distinct hours. For this reason, relying only on individual engagement data is not a good idea. Instead, look at personal behaviors and customer-level engagement patterns to create your personalized send time optimization model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n iii. Check the lag from send time to open time<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Not all subscribers open emails immediately on receiving them. Measure the average open lag and determine if you need to shift the send time ahead<\/em> to allow for it. It\u2019s easy to make such determinations and derive the optimal send time for users that consistently show relatively stable open lag. It\u2019s slightly tricky to determine the optimal send time for subscribers whose lags are harder to predict. In this case, the external marketing cloud email specialists<\/a> like Email Uplers can help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As we have seen, it\u2019s not enough to simply know how to send good emails in SFMC<\/a>. It\u2019s equally more important to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Einstein Send Time Optimization (STO) can help you do all of the above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Einstein STO is a Machine Learning (ML)-based feature in SFMC Journey Builder. It uses ML and 90 days of engagement data to determine the optimal send times within a 24-hour period, i.e., the time when a subscriber is most likely to engage with your message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Each week, Einstein uses each contact\u2019s latest engagement data for sends and then recreates its sending model with that data. This data is captured for 20 factors, such as the:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Einstein then uses ML to assign a weight to each factor according to its influence on predicting future engagement. It then analyzes all this weighted data and assigns a likelihood score to each of the 168 hours in a week for each contact. Finally, it uses this score to recommend send times that are most likely to lead to opens for your Salesforce marketing cloud email campaigns<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Einstein STO provides a visual dashboard where you can visualize optimal predicted send times by the day or hour for all email addresses in your contacts list. On the dashboard, you can see:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Use this information to predict future message engagement and choose the best time for batch sends.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHow to Determine the <\/strong>Best Time for Email Campaigns<\/strong>: 3 Important Factors to Keep in Mind<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What is Einstein Send Time Optimization?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
How Einstein STO Works<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"visual](\"https:\/\/email.uplers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/visual_dashboard-.png\")
![\"Let](\"https:\/\/email.uplers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/journeys-in-SFMC-1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n