How does the Specific Date/Time feature work in Drip Marketing campaigns in Act! Marketing Automation?

Question: How does the Specific Date/Time feature work in Drip Marketing campaigns in Act! Marketing Automation?

Product Details:

• Product Family: E-marketing
• Product: Act! Marketing Automation

Answer:

Specific Date/Time

Act! Marketing Automation allows customers to schedule a campaign to be released as soon as it is activated, “Instant Release”, or at a specific date/time. The Specific Date/Time is helpful for when you would like to schedule a campaign to be sent in the future once activated, but you do not want to log back into the system in the future to activate the campaign.

A feature of specific date/time is that it will skip the first email if the scheduled date has expired. For instance, let’s say that today is March 1st and you schedule the campaign to send on March 5th. You activate the campaign and on March 5th, all of the recipients receive the email as expected.

Now let’s say that you would like to add more members to this group on March 10th. If the campaign has Campaign List Sync turned on or you manually re-sync and new members have been added to your group, then these members will skip the first email because it was told to send on March 5th. To learn more about Campaign List Sync, read the article below:

What is Campaign List Sync in Act! Marketing Automation?

This feature is in place for those customers that have time sensitive information in the first email. For instance, let’s say that you are giving a 3 day offer to register for an event. After three days, the event returns to normal rates. So, you do not want recipients receiving this first email.

To set a scheduled date/time:

1. In the campaign flow, click the arrow next to "Instant Release".
2. In the pop up window, change the first drop down to Specific Date/Time.
3. Use the calendar and clock icons to select a date/time for the email to release.
4. Select your time zone.
5. Click Save.

Pause/Change/Re-activate

If you have an active campaign that has a specific date, the date is expired, and you want future recipients to get the first email, then:

1. Pause the campaign by clicking Actions > Pause. On the next page click the Pause Campaign button.
2. Click the arrow by the scheduled date/time.
3. In the pop up window, change the first drop down to Time Interval and enter the number 0 into the select wait time field.
4. Click Save.
5. Click Actions > Activate then click the Activate Campaign button to re-activate your campaign.

The result of this action is two-fold. First, by re-activating the campaign, Act! Marketing Automation will examine all include and exclude lists and will add any net-new recipient to the top of the campaign. Second, since it is now an instant release email, they will get this first email campaign.