Many articles promise one perfect hour to send push notifications. There is not one. The best time depends on your readers or shoppers, where they live and what you are sending. Here is a practical way to find your own.
Start with what you already know
- When your visitors are on your site. Your analytics show the days and hours with the most traffic. A notification that arrives near those times meets people while they are already online.
- Where they live. The Subscribers tab shows each subscriber’s country, so you can see where your audience really is.
- What you are sending. A lunchtime offer belongs before lunch. A weekend sale belongs on Thursday or Friday.
Schedule instead of sending live
Pick a date and time in your site’s timezone, up to a year ahead. A scheduled campaign waits in the Campaigns tab, where you can edit it, send it early or cancel it.
Repeat what works
For a regular message, such as a weekly roundup, repeat the campaign every day, week or month, with an optional end date. If a run is missed, it is skipped rather than sent late in a burst. Repeat runs do not count against your notification limit.
Send at local time with segments
If your readers are spread across countries, one send time will be wrong for some of them. Create a segment for each country, name it, for example “India mobile users”, and schedule one campaign per segment. A live counter shows how many people each segment reaches before you send.
Measure, then adjust
- Send similar notifications at different times for a few weeks.
- Open the Campaigns tab and compare the clicks for each one.
- If you use action buttons, check how many times each button was pressed.
- Keep the times that win and drop the ones that do not.
Common sense rules
- Avoid late nights and very early mornings in your audience’s time zone.
- Do not send more than you would want to receive yourself.
- Keep sales and deadlines close to the moment they matter.
More on keeping subscribers happy is in 10 push notification mistakes. Ready to try it? Download the free plugin, or read the documentation for scheduling and segments.