Time Zone Sending Explained
Timezone sending looks at the contact IP and historic events (Campaign opens, unsubscribes, link clicks, etc) over the last 90-day period to determine the timezone an audience member is located within.
This means if your campaign is set to send out at 11am, it will send out to those where it is currently 11am in their timezone over a 24 hour period. So it will only send out to contacts where the timezone hour matches that of the start date.
Please Note: Timezone sending does not work alongside split testing, campaign series or workflow campaigns.
To explain...
I have a campaign starting on today's date at 15:00 GMT. This means it will send the email campaign to us in the UK at 15:00.
With timezone sending turned on, if a contact in the audience is located in Jamaica for example, then they would receive the campaign when it is 15:00 their time (they are 6 hours behind UK GMT time).
If the checkbox to 'send to contacts whose current hour has passed' is ticked, it would send straight away to a contact where 15:00 had passed in their timezone that day.
Using France as an example, as they are 1 hour ahead of the UK, it would be 16:00 their time when it is 15:00 in the UK.
So 15:00 in France will have already passed, so therefore, they would get the campaign at 15:00 UK time (GMT).
Without timezone sending enabled, the campaign would send out at 15:00 GMT time for all contacts and would be received whenever the email reaches their inbox; using Jamaica as an example again, they would likely receive the email at 9:00am.
Why use it?
Turning timezone sending on can be beneficial as it means contacts will receive the email at a time that where they are more likely to engage. If you have set your campaign to send at 15:00 GMT, it may be that a contact in another country receives this much later in the evening which may mean the best engagement time is missed.
By using timezone sending you can Increase the likelihood of engagement by placing it in the inbox at the appropriate time for contacts in different timezones.
How is it enabled?
You need to request this feature from your Account Manager or [email protected] is because we have to enable this functionality for you.
Once enabled it needs to be set up using the Wizard by yourself which can be found under Tools -> System Defaults where you will find a section called 'TimeZone Sending Defaults' which will have a ‘Configure Time Zone Sending’ button.
Once configured you will then have the option to tick the box below to enable timezone sending to all the campaigns in your instance by default and whether to enable emails to 'send immediately when the hour in time zone has passed' as per above if desired.
If either of these are left unticked then it will be turned off for campaigns by default, but you will have the option in each individual campaign to turn timezone sending on in the advanced settings shown below.
