How are Smart Timezone Sending and Send Time Optimization different?

HubSpot recently released a new feature in beta called Smart Timezone Sending - something that several email marketing software providers (like MailChimp) have available, and many customers were starting to ask for. Since the release, I've gotten a lot of questions, centering around, "How is timezone sending different from what Seventh Sense does for HubSpot customers?" While totally different technologies, they can easily be confused, and understandably so.

Here are the answers to some of those questions.

How Smart Timezone Sending for HubSpot Works & It's Value

For contacts that have previously opened or clicked on one of your emails, HubSpot stores the IP location information as contact properties (IP Country & IP Country Code). In a perfect world (see limitations below), with Smart Timezone Sending, everyone on your list will receive your email at the time that you want your email delivered in his or her timezone. The question you should ask is … what if the majority of your recipients don't check their email at the time you're sending? Your email is going to be buried under a pile of other emails when the recipient sits down to go through his or her inbox and may never see or engage with it.

If you're an organization with a diverse timezone audience, you should absolutely take advantage of this as a first step, as it will have an impact.

Limitations - VPN's and Proxy Servers can cause havoc on understanding where a contact resides! For example, if you're located in London but your proxy server is located in California, then the Smart Timezone Sending will send based on a California time zone (only a difference of 7 hours, but who's counting). Furthermore, you have to send to contacts that you have no data on at a default time (see Einstein's commentary on doing the "same thing over and over again and expecting a different result …").

How Send Time Optimization for HubSpot Works & Its Value

On the other hand, Send Time Optimization, works quite differently. Seventh Sense not only analyzes and learns each contact's behavior on when they open, click and convert by time of day and day of week, but it also allows you to deliver your emails through HubSpot to each recipient at his or her most optimal time.

The elephant in the room, though, is what to do with contacts that you have zero data on?

We actually took Einstein's advice, and Seventh Sense randomly picks a time for each campaign to send to each individual trying to wake them up or get them to engage. So this week's send time will be different than next week's for each individual. This has statistically proven to get your new contacts to engage, and will help in the future with Send Time Optimization.

So what does this all mean from a numbers perspective?

• Increased open, click, and conversion rates (on average an 8-12% open rate increase and between a 16-22% click rate increase - some customers have experienced significantly higher, more than 98%).
• Decreased unsubscribes (on average 8%)
• Waking up dormant contacts - contacts that previously engaged, but stopped more than 90 days ago (on average 1-3% on the first send)
• Deliverability (on average a decrease in soft bounces by 200%)
• Randomizing vs. batch delivery for new contacts (on average a 18% engagement increase)

Is Send Time Optimization right for You?

With Send Time Optimization, Seventh Sense's software learns who opens and engages when, and creates a send schedule based on the best time to reach each individual. So if Ms. CEO most often engages with her email at 7:00 am Eastern, then she will get your email at 7:00 am Eastern. If Mr. CMO most often engages with his email at 8:00 pm Central, he will get your email at 8:00 pm Central.

Smart Timezone Sending is better than just blasting out all your emails at the same time, however it doesn't provide the personalization that send time optimization does. Because of this ability to pinpoint send times specific to the individual, Send Time Optimization brings significant value above and beyond Smart Timezone Sending.