How do I make sure I don't send SMS in the middle of the night?
Using all sorts of communication channels is very important, but it’s also important to know when it is the best time to contact your customer, and which channel to use.
You can easily control that with Smartico “Activity hours” feature by defining the hours and the days you want to engage with your customers for each communication channel:
- SMS
- Push Notification
- IVR
To configure these channels and their corresponding activity hours simply do the following:
- Go to “Label” tab
- Go to “Email/SMS/Push/IVR” on the left menu under Channels
- Scroll down to “Activity Hours”
You will find JSON array with which you will configure the Hours and the Days.
The hours are set as HH:MM
Note: All Hours and Days are in USER TIMEZONE
Example:
To set Activity Hours for SMS, from 8AM to 6PM, which will not be sent on any day of the weekend, follow this method:
How to use it in campaigns?
When creating the flow of your campaign, and adding communication actions, under “Allowed communication hours” you will have 3 options to choose from:
- Send mail always, disregarding activity period
Choosing this option means that the scheduled communication via email will be sent to the player outside of his Activity Hours. If an email is scheduled to go out at 3AM and doesn’t meet the condition of activity, it will still go out. - Send mail only in activity period. From 08:00 till 18:00 in user timezone
With this option, email that is scheduled to be sent outside of Activity Hours will not be delivered, ever, and the user will miss that communication. A good implementation of this would be for a time limited promotion whereas the hour is critical and if the user is not receiving the communication on the spot the offer might not be relevant anymore. - Send mail in next available activity period
Using this option would probably be the most common one, if the scheduled communication was outside of Activity Hours, it will go out in the next available hour. The customer that was scheduled for 3AM, will receive the communication at his 8AM.
Please note, that Activity Hours delay is only while campaign is running. If the user at 3AM for some reason stopped campaign due to any action or campaign has ended, the communication will be lost.
This is done to prevent cases like RND campaign where some communications are scheduled for the night (late-night registration) and a communication promoting the First Deposit Bonus should go out to the user in the morning of his Time-Zone – but he already deposited during the night and the offer is no longer valid.
If you have any questions or if you need help setting up the Activity Hours, please contact your account manager or Smartico support team.
