How to perform and analyze smart send time tests

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Learn how to create Smart Sent 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. However, if your brand has two 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 a Smart Send Time test from the reporting page:

  1. Navigate to Campaigns > Options > Smart Send Time Report.
  2. In the upper right-hand corner, click Create New Test.
  3. Name the experiment and add notes as needed.

Creating a new Smart Send Time test

If you have multiple tests set up, you can also create a Smart Send Time test through the Campaign Wizard:

  1. Create a campaign as normal.
  2. Before sending it, choose Smart Send Time from the Choose time or strategy dropdown.
  3. Choose an existing test or select Create new test.
  4. Input a name and any notes you want.
  5. Click Send.
    Sending a Smart Send Time test.

Smart Send Time phases

There are 3 phases for Smart Send Time:

Phase Description
Exploratory The email is sent out over a 24-hour period. Customers are randomly assigned an hour and receive the email in their local time.
Focused A focused send time (i.e., a proposed optimal send time) is determined. Emails are sent at that time, two hours before, and two hours after.
Optimal

The optimal time is determined and emails are sent out only at this time. Recipients receive the message according to their local timezone. Sending at the optimal time doesn’t impact the Smart 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 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 Understanding Smart Send Time in Klaviyo.

Smart Send Time reporting

View the aggregate data gathered by the Smart Send Time test by navigating to Campaigns > Options > 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.

Reviewing the results of a Smart Send Time test.

Click the Options dropdown menu to edit details about the experiment or delete it entirely.

A Smart Send Time Options menu

Below this, you can view the overall open rate by hour for all campaigns in this Smart Send Time test.

Viewing the open rate by hour.

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

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