Einstein Send Time Optimization Use Cases

Optimize the Send Time of Each Message in a Journey

To increase overall engagement for a journey, add the Einstein Send Time Optimization (STO) activity before each email and push notification activity. The STO activity assigns the best hour to send based on individualized analysis. Each message is sent to each contact in the journey at the hour within the next 24 hours that when the contact is most likely to engage with it.

For example, a marketer named Alex sets up a journey with one email message containing a coupon offer for new customers. When customers make an online purchase and opt in to receive offers from Alex’s company, completing the transaction enters each customer in Alex’s journey.

The first customer enters the journey Monday evening at 8:34 PM after purchasing and opting in. Einstein Send Time Optimization’s analysis determines that the customer is most likely to engage with email messages from 4:00–4:59 PM. So, the journey sends this customer Alex’s coupon offer email at 4:00 PM on Tuesday, the day after the customer opted in.

A second customer enters the journey at 10:07 PM on Monday night. Einstein STO determines that the customer is most likely to engage with email messages from 10:00–10:59 PM. Because the customer reached the activity during the same hour Einstein identifies as best for sending, Einstein chooses the next best hour to send to this customer. STO analysis shows the next best hour as 7:00 AM. Thus, the journey sends the coupon to this customer at 7:00 AM on Tuesday morning.

A third customer enters the journey at 10:12 PM on Monday night. Einstein STO analysis shows that this customer is most likely to engage with push notifications from 11:00–11:59 PM. So, the journey sends the coupon offer to this customer via push message at 11:00 PM the same night. Einstein doesn’t send the message at 11:12 PM--exactly one hour after the contact entered the journey-- because Einstein STO sends always occur at the beginning of the best scoring hour for each customer.

Add a Random Split Activity to Measure Impact

To measure the impact of send time optimization, add the Einstein Send Time Optimization (STO) activity after a random split activity in a journey. Send more contacts down the Einstein-optimized path in your next journey, or in a subsequent version of this journey. For example, the split in a marketer’s journey directs half the contacts in the journey to a path where a wait activity precedes an email activity. The split directs the other half to a branch where the Einstein STO activity precedes an email activity. The marketer later checks the engagement rate for each email activity and compares them.

Combine with a Wait Activity

To optimize send times when there’s a minimum one-day wait between email messages in a customer journey, combine a wait activity and the Einstein STO activity.

Northern Trails Outfitters (NTO) marketing manager, Lisa, wants to optimize customer engagement for a welcome campaign. After customers subscribe to the NTO newsletter, they receive a series of three emails that set expectations and highlight the benefits of subscribing. Before the second and third messages, Lisa has included a wait activity that instructs the system to wait two days before sending the next message. To ensure that an email is sent to each subscriber when that subscriber is most likely to engage with it, Lisa adds the Einstein STO activity between the wait activity and email activity for the second and third messages.

A customer named Alice and a customer named Bjorn both subscribe to the newsletter on a Tuesday. They each receive the initial welcome message within a few minutes. Remember, the journey doesn’t include an Einstein STO activity before this message. So the message sends when Alice and Bjorn reach the first email activity in the journey. The second message is scheduled to send on Thursday. Based on Alice’s individual subscriber engagement behavior over the past 90 days, the journey sends the second message to Alice at 11:00 AM. Based on Bjorn’s engagement history, the journey sends the message to Bjorn at 7:00 PM.