AI Scheduling Assistant – SmartPush

Overview

AI Scheduling Assistant is a new AI-powered tool launched by SmartPush, aiming to pinpoint and determine the optimal sending time for email campaigns by analyzing the preferences of each contact, thereby increasing both email open and conversion rates. The “optimal sending time” refers to the time when contacts are more likely to open emails.

This article will cover the following:

1. Why send emails by customer’s time zone

Are your carefully crafted marketing emails not yielding the customer response you expected? Perhaps it’s because the timing when you send the email is not ideal for your contacts in their respective locations to open it.

When sent at an inappropriate time, emails are more likely to get buried under a pile of other emails, resulting in recipients overlooking them.

If you use “Send by customer’s time zone”, then regardless of where the customers are, they will all receive the email in their local time (If the store is not bound, the “Send by customer’s time zone” feature is currently not supported).

2. Why use AI Scheduling Assistant

By solely following general trends and scheduling email marketing campaigns around the popular send times, you may encounter failures due to diverse email consumption habits among specific markets and audiences. In light of this, AI Scheduling Assistant is here to help predict the ideal time for each recipient, ensuring precise delivery.

Increase open rates and click-through rates: By analyzing the historical behavioral data of each customer and predicting the times they are most likely to open emails, AI Scheduling Assistant will surely enhance email engagement and conversions. It is estimated that the email open rate will increase by 5% to 10%.
Meet customer needs: Sending emails during periods when customers are accustomed to receiving marketing emails can, to some extent, reduce message intrusion and enhance customer satisfaction.

3. Application scenarios of AI Scheduling Assistant

In general, AI Scheduling Assistant can send emails to contacts within the Customer Group in 12 different time slots within 24 hours of the scheduled start time. However, if the optimal sending time for some contacts in their time zone has already passed, emails will be sent again at the optimal sending time node on the next day (i.e. within a maximum of 47 hours following the scheduled start time).

Note that due to the prolonged duration of AI-scheduled tasks (emails), it is recommended that you avoid using this feature under circumstances such as specific holidays, customers’ birthdays, and other time-sensitive events.

4. How to set up “Send by customer’s time zone/ AI Scheduling Assistant” for delivery in the email editor

If you want customers to receive emails at a locally specified time regardless of their locations (the "Send by customer’s time zone" feature is currently not supported for stores that are not yet bound):

1. In send time settings, select 'Scheduled sending'
2. For the time zone, select 'Customer's time zone', and set the send date and time of the email
3. If the send time you set has already passed in your selected customer's time zone, you can either select 'Send now', or send the next day.

If you want customers to receive emails at the optimal time predicted by AI Scheduling Assistant:

1. In send time settings, select 'AI Scheduling Assistant'
2. Set the date, time, and time zone you want AI Scheduling Assistant to start the sending task

5. How to view and interpret the data of AI Scheduling Assistant

In the marketing campaign list, you can filter tasks that apply AI Scheduling Assistant by type and get a general overview of email open rates. However, due to differences in variables such as email subject, content, sending groups, etc., there is a lack of a unique variable for an effective comparison.

Therefore, in the activity data using AI Scheduling Assistant, you can view the open rates of contacts who received emails using this feature and compare the changes with the open rates of the same contacts who did not have this feature applied. The data are updated daily.

It's worth noting that if the open count for an AI-scheduled task (email) is too low, the open rate comparison data may lack reference value. Therefore, it only supports viewing emails with open counts exceeding 1,000. As the number of emails sent through the AI Scheduling Assistant increases, the predictions for the optimal time will become more accurate.

Data Report - The reports on the AI Scheduling Assistant page allow you to view the average open and click counts for all marketing campaigns at different times within the last 30 days. This chart can provide a better understanding of the behavioral preferences of users across the entire site.

Meanwhile, you can also examine the changes in open rates and click-through rates for site-wide users before and after applying AI Scheduling Assistant. Slightly different from the datapath of individual task dimensions, this chart will only display data for contacts who have received emails through both "AI Scheduling Assistant" and “non-AI Scheduling Assistant”.

For example, if you use AI Scheduling Assistant to send emails to 10,000 contacts, and 8,000 of them also received emails through the non-AI Scheduling Assistant options, the chart will only compare the open rates and click-through rates for those 8,000 contacts before and after applying this feature.

Metrics	Interpretation
Average Open Rate without AI Scheduling Assistant	8,000 contacts. (The total number of opens for non-AI-scheduled emails/ the total number of non-AI-scheduled emails sent.)
Average Click-through Rate without AI Scheduling Assistant	8,000 contacts. (The total number of clicks for non-AI-scheduled emails / the total number of non-AI-scheduled emails sent.)
Open Rate with AI Scheduling Assistant	8,000 contacts. (The total number of opens for AI-scheduled emails / the total number of AI-scheduled emails sent.)
Click-through Rate with AI Scheduling Assistant	8,000 contacts. (The total number of clicks for AI-scheduled emails / the total number of AI-scheduled emails sent.)

Therefore, when you are not using AI Scheduling Assistant to send emails, or when using AI Scheduling Assistant to send emails to a group of new customers who have never received emails before, this chart is inapplicable.

If the sample size of comparable contacts is too small, although the results will be displayed, the data effectiveness may not be significant.

When frequently using the AI Scheduling Assistant predictive capability for sending to the same customer group or sending emails to a group at fixed times, you will obtain more sample data, thus achieving more accurate comparative results.

How to enable AI Scheduling Assistant

To ensure the access to AI Scheduling Assistant , you need to activate the script for SmartPush or enable the theme embedding toggle. For specific operational procedures, please refer to Enable the SmartPush app in the Admin