Here's a truth most SMS marketers already know: timing matters. A perfectly written message sent at the wrong moment gets ignored—or worse, triggers an opt-out. But here's the harder question: what is the "right" moment for each individual subscriber?
Starting today, you don't have to guess. We're rolling out Smart Send Time Optimization to all Shymo Growth and Enterprise plans—an AI-powered feature that automatically delivers each message at the optimal time for every subscriber on your list.
What Smart Send Time Actually Does
When you schedule a campaign or automation with Smart Send Time enabled, Shymo doesn't blast the message to everyone at once. Instead, it delivers each message within a window you define (say, 9 AM to 8 PM) at the specific time each subscriber is most likely to engage.
Subscriber A might get the message at 10:14 AM because that's when she consistently opens texts. Subscriber B might get the same message at 3:47 PM because his engagement peaks in the afternoon. Same campaign, personalized delivery, no extra work for you.
How the AI Works
Smart Send Time builds an engagement profile for each subscriber based on historical interaction data—opens, clicks, purchases, and the times they occurred. The model considers day of week, time of day, time zone, and recency weighting (recent behavior matters more than behavior from months ago). For new subscribers without enough data, the system uses cohort-level patterns from similar subscribers in your account.
The Problem We're Solving
Most brands pick a send time based on general best practices or gut feel. "Tuesday at 2 PM works for us." And that's fine—it's better than random. But it means you're optimizing for the average subscriber, not for any individual.
Our data across the Shymo network shows that optimal send times vary by up to 8 hours between subscribers in the same list. A single send time can only be "right" for a fraction of your audience. The rest are getting your message during commutes, meetings, sleep, or other low-attention moments.
Those are aggregate results from our 90-day beta with 48 brands across ecommerce, food & beverage, and wellness verticals. The opt-out reduction is particularly meaningful—it suggests that a big chunk of unsubscribes aren't about message content at all. They're about message timing.
How to Enable It
Smart Send Time is available now for all Growth and Enterprise customers. Here's how to turn it on:
- For campaigns: When scheduling a campaign, toggle "Smart Send Time" in the delivery settings. Set your delivery window (the hours during which messages can be sent). Hit schedule. That's it.
- For automations: In any flow step that sends a message, open the step settings and enable "Optimize send time." The system will hold each message until the subscriber's optimal window within the same day.
- Account-wide default: Go to Settings → Sending → Smart Send Time to enable it as the default for all new campaigns and flows.
There's no setup, no configuration, no training period to wait for. The model starts working with whatever historical data exists in your account. It improves continuously as it collects more engagement signals.
Use Cases Where It Shines
Promotional campaigns: This is the most obvious use case and where we've seen the biggest impact. Instead of blasting your entire list at 2 PM and watching engagement trail off, Smart Send Time distributes delivery across the day for maximum aggregate performance.
Weekly digests and newsletters: If you send a regular content message, personalized timing ensures it arrives when each subscriber actually has time to read it—not when it'll get buried under a flood of morning notifications.
Re-engagement flows: Timing is especially critical for win-back campaigns. Reaching a dormant subscriber at their historically engaged time gives you the best shot at reactivation.
Cross-time-zone audiences: If your customer base spans multiple time zones (or countries), Smart Send Time handles the complexity automatically. No more creating duplicate campaigns for East Coast vs. West Coast.
— Beta customer, DTC apparel brand
What It Doesn't Do
Transparency matters to us, so let's be clear about the boundaries:
- It doesn't override urgency. If you're running a flash sale that ends at midnight, you probably don't want staggered delivery. Use the "Send immediately" option for time-sensitive campaigns.
- It doesn't optimize message content. Smart Send Time focuses purely on delivery timing. For copy optimization, check out our A/B testing features.
- It needs data to work well. For brand-new accounts with zero engagement history, the model relies on cohort-level patterns. Results improve significantly after 2–4 weeks of data collection.
What's Next
Smart Send Time is the first in a series of AI-powered optimization features we're building into the Shymo platform. Coming later this quarter:
- Smart Frequency: Automatically adjust how often each subscriber receives messages based on their engagement patterns and fatigue signals.
- Predictive Segmentation: AI-generated segments based on predicted next purchase, churn risk, and lifetime value.
- Copy Assist: AI-suggested message variations based on what's performing best across your campaigns.
Our philosophy is simple: AI should handle the optimization so your team can focus on strategy and creativity. Smart Send Time is live today—go turn it on and let us know what you see.