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. The 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 when the chances for users to respond and interact are 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 and channels. 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. 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

For a user who does not have any activity events for the Email & SMS channels, all the events performed by the user will be used to obtain the BTS hence it will be the same as the best time value for the Push channel. Hence for some users, you may not be using Email/SMS channels, but MoEngage still calculates Email/SMS BTS, which will be the same as Push Best time.

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,

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

For more information, refer to

Example

If you select the Start time as 6:58 PM and 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 the 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 the 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", 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 the campaign start time of 6:58 PM
At the 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?

The 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's 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.

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's 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 when the maximum number of users perform activities.

Limitation

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

Best Time to Send is available by default for accounts with the enterprise plan. Please contact your account manager or email support@moengage.com if you wish to enable this for your account.