Send Date vs Event Date: Which one should you use?

One of the unique features of SEINō is that almost every report can be viewed from two different perspectives: Send Date and Event Date.

Although the numbers may look similar at first glance, these two date dimensions answer completely different business questions.

Understanding the difference will help you build more accurate dashboards, reports and targets.

Send Date

When you choose Send Date, SEINō groups all metrics by the date an email campaign was sent. This means that every open, click, order or euro in revenue is attributed back to the campaign's send date, even if the actual interaction happened days or weeks later.

Example

A newsletter is sent on 30 April.
Recipients interact with that email over the following weeks.

When reporting by Send Date, all of these events are attributed to 30 April.

This answers the question:
How did the campaigns that we sent during this period perform?‍

This is the most common way marketers evaluate campaign performance.

Event Date

When you choose Event Date, SEINō groups metrics by the day the interaction actually occurred.

The campaign may have been sent weeks earlier, but the engagement is reported on the day it happened.

Using the same example:

Now you're answering a different question:
What happened during this period, regardless of when the email was sent?

This is particularly useful when analysing website traffic, revenue or customer engagement over time.

Visual example

Imagine you send a Mother's Day campaign on 30 April.

Customers continue opening emails and placing orders throughout May.

Using Send Date

Everything belongs to the campaign sent on 30 April. The campaign keeps accumulating results over time.

‍

Using Event Date

Revenue and engagement appear on the actual day they happened. This gives you an accurate picture of daily or weekly business performance.

Which one should you use?

Choose Send Date when you want to know:

• Which campaigns performed best
• How a newsletter performed over its lifetime
• Campaign benchmarks
• Template performance
• A/B test results
• Campaign comparisons

Think:

"How did the emails we sent perform?"

Choose Event Date when you want to know:

• Revenue generated this week
• Website sessions generated this month
• Daily engagement trends
• Monthly reporting
• Customer behaviour over time

Think:

"What happened during this period?"

Where can you change this in SEINō?

SEINō lets you choose the date dimension in several places throughout the platform.

Data Explorer

In the Data Explorer, click the Send Date / Event Date button next to the date selector.

Changing this option recalculates the entire dataset, meaning every metric, grouping and aggregation is based on the selected date dimension.

Dashboards

Each dashboard widget has its own Period by setting.

This allows different widgets on the same dashboard to use different date dimensions if needed.

For example:

• Revenue trend → Event Date
• Campaign performance → Send Date

Targets

When creating a target, you can choose whether progress is measured using Send Date or Event Date. This ensures your targets match the KPI you're trying to optimise.

Alerts

Alerts also allow you to choose the date dimension.

For example, you could monitor:

• Campaign Open Rate by Send Date
• Daily Revenue by Event Date

depending on what you want the alert to track.

Best practice

There isn't a "correct" choice between Send Date and Event Date—they simply answer different questions.

As a rule of thumb:

Once you understand this distinction, you'll be able to build dashboards, reports and targets that accurately reflect the question you're trying to answer.

‍