Send Time Optimization (STO) is an Eloqua feature that leverages AI technology and historical data to determine the optimal delivery time for each individual contact, ensuring that emails reach them precisely when they’re most likely to engage. Oracle reports that click rates typically double while our experiments with this feature have shown that it has a psoitive impact on both open and click rates.
The optimal time to contact someone is when they are most likely to open an email based on the historical data of their email open times. When Send Time Optimization is enabled for a Campaign, the email will send in the hour around that contact's optimal time. The email is sent within a week of email initiation.
Example
A marketer designs a nurture campaign for her contacts, aiming to prevent her email from getting lost among the flood of other messages in their inboxes. To achieve this, she enables Send Times Optimization ensuring that each contact receives the email at their optimal time. For instance, if a contact frequently checks email on Wednesdays at 6 p.m., the email will be sent around that time. Similarly, contacts who tend to open emails on Mondays at 2 p.m. will receive the email at that specific hour. By doing so, her message is more likely to appear near the top of their inbox when they check their email.
New recipients, lacking historical data, will receive emails with Send Time Optimization immediately after the campaign is activated. Subsequent emails will adapt their send times based on data collected from that initial email.
Send Time Optimization is specifically designed to determine optimal delivery times for individual users. As a result, alternative scheduling modes are not compatible with this feature. While you cannot choose specific days and times for email deployment, you can still schedule your emails using the current process.
For Batch & Blast and Nurture emails, STO will optimize based on Day of Week and Time of Day.
For Webinar/Event emails with start dates within three weeks, STO will optimize only on Time of Day. The send date will be as defined by the marketer.
Due to the Send Time Optimization process, post-campaign reporting will be available 8-10 days after the initial email send. This allows sufficient time for the email to reach all recipients, which may take up to 7 days.
If you have any further questions regarding Send Time Optimization please feel free to Contact Us.