You will learn
Learn how to create Smart Send Time tests in Klaviyo and use the Smart Send Time reporting page to understand your results.
By carrying out a Smart Send Time test, you can gain insight into your audience to improve the performance of your campaigns. If your brand has 2 or more distinct audiences, the best time to send to one group might not be the best for another. For this reason, you can either run one or multiple Smart Send Time tests in Klaviyo.
This feature is currently available only for email; it cannot be used for SMS campaigns.
Create a Smart Send Time test
You can create as many Smart Send Time tests as you want as well as reset the results so that the test starts from scratch. There are 2 ways to create a Smart Send Time test in Klaviyo: on the Smart Send Time reporting page or as you create and send a campaign.
To create your first Smart Send Time test:
- Navigate to Campaigns > Options > View Smart Send Time report.
- In the upper right-hand corner, click Create New Test.
- Name the experiment and add notes as needed.
If you have multiple tests set up, you can select an existing test or create a new test through the Campaign Wizard:
- Create a campaign as normal.
- Before sending it, choose Smart Send Time from the Choose time or strategy dropdown.
- Choose an existing test or select Create test to create a new test.
- If creating a new test, input a name and any notes you want.
- Click Send.
Smart Send Time phases
You must complete 3 phases for each Smart Send Time test:
| Phase | Description |
|---|---|
| Exploratory |
Send a campaign to at least 12,000 recipients and select Smart Send Time > Exploratory as the sending strategy. Depending on your audience size, you may need to sent multiple exploratory sends. The campaign will send out over a 24-hour period. Recipients are randomly assigned an hour and receive the email in their local time. |
| Focused |
Once your exploratory send(s) are complete, send a campaign and select Smart Send Time > Focused as the sending strategy. Based on your exploratory send results, emails are sent at the best time based on your exploratory send, as well as 2 hours before and 2 hours after. This validates the data and identifies your optimal send time. |
| Optimal |
Once the optimal time is determined, choose Smart Send Time > Optimal to send messages at the ideal time for your audience, according to each recipient's local timezone. Sending future campaigns at the optimal time doesn’t impact the optimal send time for that test. |
You must complete the exploratory step before you can run a focused send, which must finish before the optimal send.
However, during the focused and optimal phases, you can continue to run the earlier step(s) in order to gather more information for the Smart Send Time model. For instance, when an optimal send time has been reached, you can run either an exploratory or focused send.
For more information on these phases, check out our guide to understanding Smart Send Time in Klaviyo.
Smart Send Time reportingSmart Send Time reporting
View the aggregate data gathered by the Smart Send Time test by navigating to Campaigns > Options > View Smart Send Time report.
If you have multiple tests, use the dropdown under Test Name on the left-hand side to find the one you want.
Click the Options dropdown menu to edit details about the experiment or delete it entirely.
Below this, view the overall open rate by hour for all campaigns in this Smart Send Time test.
Select one of the campaigns in this test from either the Smart Send Time reporting page or the reporting page from the Campaigns tab. Clicking into a campaign will show you:
- How each email campaign performed (based on the time it was sent)
- The associated click and conversion rates
- If a campaign was sent as part of an exploratory, focused, or optimal send