What is the Best Time to Send

Best Time to Send (BTS) provides a prescriptive time slot to send a campaign to the user to increase the chance of interaction or user response is higher.  Following are the features of BTS:

• BTS is defined within MoEngage at a user level.
• Marketers send campaigns or communication to users at a time where the user response is higher.
• Marketers leverage advanced intelligence and personally target each user at the most preferred time slot instead of sending a communication to all users at a fixed time.

How does it work

BTS uses advanced data analysis to analyze historical user interactions with the campaigns. The analysis is done separately for Push, Email, and SMS and the corresponding best time is determined. The best time value for each channel is an hourly bucket between 0-24 hours and is available for individual users. If there is no best time value for email or SMS, then the push best time value is used as the default for the other channels. 

For calculating the BTS for each channel, the following events are considered:

• Push activity events: All events performed by the user
• Email activity events: Opens, Clicks, Viewed in browser
• SMS activity events: Clicks

Configure campaigns to target users at their best time

You can configure the best time option in a One time or Periodic campaign for Push, SMS and Email channels. 

To set BTS,

1. Navigate to step 3 of the campaign creation flow - Schedule and goals.
2. Select one of the options: At specific date and time or Periodic.
3. Select Best time for user.

For more information, refer to

• Create Push
• Create Marketing Email
• Create SMS

Example

If you select the Start time as 6:58 PM and you want to send a message based on the best time till 9:58 PM then this defines your BTS window. All the users in the segment whose best time lies between 7 PM and 10 PM will get the campaign at their respective best time as explained below:

Assume that there were 100 users in the segment and distributed as explained in the following table:

Total users in Segment: 100
Of 100 users, the users whose BTS is available: 75	Number of users whose best time is within BTS window (6:58 PM to 9:58 PM): 50 25 users have the best time as 7 PM The campaign will be sent at 7 PM 15 users have the best time as 8 PM The campaign will be sent at 8 PM 10 users have the best time as 9 PM The campaign will be sent at 9 PM
	Number of users whose best time lies outside BTS window (6:58 PM to 9:58 PM): 25 Depending on the option you choose under "If user’s best time is outside this time window"  If you choose "Send message at start time or end time" and let us assume 15 users have the best time before 7 PM The campaign will be sent at 6:58 PM (start time) 10 users have the best time after 10 PM The campaign will be sent at 9:58 PM (end time)   If you choose "Do not send message" then these 25 users will not be targeted
Of 100 users, the users whose BTS is not available: 25	Depending on the option chosen under "if user's best time is not available" The campaign will be sent either at campaign start time 6:58 PM At app's best time. App's best time is explained in detail below Do not send a message

Filtering users based on their best time

You can also segment the users based on their best time value. The BTS attribute is available in the User Property dropdown, under the Predictive Insights (Sherpa) section.

 

 

How is BTS calculated

Best time to Send is calculated for each channel by:

• Aggregating all specified user events in the last 60 days. MoEngage Intelligence (Sherpa) automatically aggregates the user events by day of the week and the hour within a day to determine the most active time of a user.
• Weightage is given to the most recent user events and activities than the ones performed earlier. 
• User best time is computed by considering both the user intraday activity and the days on which the user was active. Also, all users who have not performed any email or SMS activity will be populated with push best time by default for the channel best time.

 

Time period for BTS calculation

• Best Time to Send value will be generated for any user who has performed an activity in the last 60 days
• BTS values are updated for all users once a week.

Apps most active time

The time when all users of the app are most active. App most active time is captured for different channels.

• Push app best hour: Hour with max no of users performing activity irrespective of the channel.
• Email app best hour/ SMS app best hour: Hour with max no of users performing channel level activity, that is activity related to Email or SMS. For emails and SMS, if there is no channel level activity in the past 60 days, the push app best hour will be shown by default.

How are Apps most active time calculated?

App most active time is calculated by aggregating the hour in a day where maximum users are performing activities. 

Limitation

BTS is not applicable for a triggered campaign because the sending for a triggered campaign is governed by when does the user performs the campaign trigger event and the delay between the trigger event and campaign sending time, set by you.