Send Time Optimization: Campaign use cases
Important: Send Time Optimization (STO) is an add-on feature that must be ordered for your account. Please contact your account manager or Oracle sales.
In this topic, you'll learn different patterns for using Send Time Optimization effectively in your campaigns:
Basic STO campaign design
Creating a basic Send Time Optimization (STO) campaign is easy. Simply add the Send Time Optimization stage after the starting Event stage. In the example above, it’s a Segment stage. From the Send Time Optimization stage, you must create two paths: a “With STO Data” path to an Email stage, and a second “Without STO Data” path, which can be routed to any stage. In the example, the path routes to a Timer stage that is set to a default launch time. From the Timer stage, a path is created to another Email stage and then an End stage.
Note: Both Email stages can reference the same email message. For reporting purposes, we recommend that the names of the two stages be unique.
Preventing send period delays
As previously mentioned, a large audience size may cause the send period to be delayed, causing the desired start time (of the send period) to be pushed back by an hour. You can reduce the possibility of that happening by entering the audience members into the Send Time Optimization stage before the desired start time.
As an alternative solution, you can enter the audience members at the desired start time. However, instead of routing them directly to the Send Time Optimization stage, you would route them to a Condition Switch stage first. The Condition Switch stage will have a path to a segment that looks for audience members with the optimal send time that matches the desired start time. So, for example, if the send period is Monday, 9:00 am through Tuesday, 8:00 am, then the desired start time is 9:00 am (9) on Monday. You will create a segment that looks for the value of 9 in the MONDAY field. Audience members that match this condition should be routed to a Timer stage that is set to the move them to the Email stage on Monday at 9:00 am. The remaining audience members who don’t match the condition will be routed directly to the Send Time Optimization stage.
Working around Do Not Send periods
Some companies may choose not to send emails during certain hours of the day. We refer to these hours of the day as the Do Not Send period.
Let’s say a company wants to send an email to their audience at the most optimal time using a STO campaign starting on Monday at 9:00 am. The marketer designs a basic STO campaign that enters the audience on Monday, 9:00 am. This means the send period is from Monday, 9:00 am through Tuesday, 8:00 am. The company has a Do Not Send period everyday between 8:00 pm to 8:00 am. Taking that into consideration, this means the send period is really from Monday, 9:00 am through 7:00 pm and Tuesday at 8:00 am. The marketer wants audience members with optimal send times that fall within the Do Not Send period to be sent the email campaign at the default launch time.
To achieve this, the marketer simply needs to add a Condition Switch stage between the starting Event stage and the Send Time Optimization stage in a basic STO campaign. From the Condition Switch stage, they should create a “In SEND period” path that routes to the Send Time Optimization stage. This path will have the following segment that looks for audience members with optimal send times that is greater than or equal to 9 (9:00 am) and less than or equal to 19 (7:00 pm) on MONDAY or equal to 8 (8:00 am) on TUESDAY:
Audience members who don’t meet this filter condition will be directed to the default “In DO NOT SEND period” path that leads them to the Timer with the default launch time.
Sending at best day and time
For some marketers, they may want to take advantage of the BESTDAY and BESTHOURFORBESTDAY data in their Send Time Optimization attribute group and send the email message to audience members at the most optimal day and time of the week.
To achieve this, the marketer should create a basic STO campaign and incorporate a Condition Switch stage and a series of Timers into the design. The Condition Switch stage will follow the starting Event stage and have 8 paths. Seven of the paths will route to Timers, each configured to move the audience to the next stage on a specific day of the week. For example, for the Timer representing Sunday, the properties should be configured to be “Weekly” on “Su” (Sunday) at 12:00 am.
To direct audience members from the Condition Switch stage to the appropriate Timer, a segment needs to be created. For example, the segment to retrieve audience members with the optimal send day of Sunday will look something like this:
Those who don’t have an optimal send day will be directed to the original Timer in the basic STO campaign along the “Without STO Data” path and be sent the email message at the default launch time.
Next steps
Send Time Optimization: Important usage information
How Send Time Optimization works
Send Time Optimization attribute group
Managing your Send Time Optimization add-on feature