Email Campaign Scheduling

Scheduling your email campaigns for the right time is one of the simplest ways to improve open rates without changing a word of content. This article covers how to schedule emails via the MigoSMTP API, best sending times by audience type, timezone considerations, and how to manage your sending queue.

How to Schedule an Email via the API

Add a send_at field to your send request with an ISO 8601 UTC timestamp to schedule delivery for a future time:

POST https://api.migosmtp.com/v1/email/send/bulk
Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "from":      "newsletter@yourcompany.com",
  "subject":   "Your weekly digest is here",
  "html":      "...your template...",
  "recipients": [...],
  "send_at":   "2026-06-09T04:30:00Z",
  "tags":      ["newsletter:week-23"]
}

IST ↔ UTC Conversion Reference

Best Sending Times by Audience Type

Sending to Multi-Timezone Audiences

If your subscribers are spread across multiple timezones, sending at a fixed UTC time means the email arrives at very different local times for different recipients. Strategies to handle this:

Option 1 — Segment by Timezone

1. Store your subscribers' timezone in your database (collect during sign-up or infer from IP).
2. Group them by timezone or timezone region (e.g. IST, GST, GMT, EST).
3. Schedule separate API calls per timezone group with adjusted send_at UTC times.

Option 2 — Send for Your Primary Timezone

If the majority of your subscribers are in one timezone, optimise for that timezone and accept suboptimal timing for the minority. This is simpler and works well for India-focused audiences.

Option 3 — Send at Universal Off-Peak

For global audiences where perfect per-timezone sending is not feasible, send between 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM GMT. This is workday-afternoon for Europe, morning for the US East Coast, and early morning for Asia Pacific — reasonable across all.

Managing and Cancelling Scheduled Sends

View Scheduled Messages

GET https://api.migosmtp.com/v1/email/scheduled
Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY

// Returns list of scheduled sends with IDs and send_at times

Cancel a Scheduled Send

DELETE https://api.migosmtp.com/v1/email/scheduled/{batch_id}
Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY

Scheduling for Daily and Hourly Limits

When sending large campaigns that exceed your daily limit, use scheduling to spread delivery across multiple days:

// 30k plan: 1,500 emails/day limit
// Campaign: 4,500 recipients → split across 3 days

Day 1: send_at = "2026-06-09T04:30:00Z" → 1,500 recipients
Day 2: send_at = "2026-06-10T04:30:00Z" → 1,500 recipients
Day 3: send_at = "2026-06-11T04:30:00Z" → 1,500 recipients

Next Steps

• Building your first email campaign
• A/B testing your email campaigns
• Understanding campaign metrics