Use Send Time Optimization

If you wonder about the best time of day or night to send emails, Send Time Optimization can take out the guesswork. Send Time Optimization uses data science to determine when your contacts are most likely to open your email within 24 hours of the date you select.

In this article, you’ll learn how to use Send Time Optimization.

Before you start

Here are some things to know before you begin this process.

• This feature is included with the Standard plan or higher.
• This feature can be used if there is enough data from your sent emails for us to calculate an optimal send time, and if there are more than five hours left in the day in the time zone set for the account.
• Send Time Optimization can be used with Mailchimp's regular, plain-text, A/B testing, and multivariate emails. This feature is not available in automated emails.
• Mailchimp’s Campaign Manager offers Optimize dates for email touchpoints. To learn more, check out About Campaign Manager.

How Send Time Optimization works

Mailchimp customers send a lot of email to a lot of people, which gives us data about individual engagement patterns. When you create an email and turn on Send Time Optimization, we’ll use this data to find an ideal time within 24 hours of your send date, when recipients are most likely to open your email.

Learn about the science of Send Time Optimization.

Turn on Send Time Optimization

To use Send Time Optimization for your email, follow these steps.

1. In the email checklist, click Add send time or Edit send time.
2. In the Delivery date field, enter a send date that’s at least 48 hours in advance. Use the calendar or enter your own date using the yyyy-mm-dd format.
3. Click the radio button next to Send when recipients are most likely to open. Allow Mailchimp a few minutes to find an optimal time for your selected delivery date.
   
4. Click Save.
   
   If there's not enough data for Mailchimp to find an optimal time, click Cancel and choose another option.