Telling the Machine How to Wait
Adding wait periods into campaigns and workflows helps time things just right. ActiveDEMAND has some pretty flexible wait actions including ‘wait for email opens’, ‘wait for clicks’, and wait for . . .well pretty much anything with the query builder, but this article will show how flexible even the standard ‘wait’ action can be.
The standard wait action can be added to drip campaigns, autoresponders, lead processing workflows. . .anywhere there’s a workflow in ActiveDEMAND.
Using this action, you can:
- Wait for time (x hours, days, weeks, months)
- Wait for the day of the week + time
- Wait for the first weekday
- Wait for this day of the month
- Predicted best time
- Predicted best day
Set period wait times
Set periods are good for drip campaigns that need a day or week or month between actions. “Send an email, wait a week, then send another” type of drip campaign. These are simple to use and very common.
Common uses
- Inside drip campaigns to prospects
- Inside training campaigns where you need to slowly drip out emails or messages over days/weeks.
- To leave time for internal staff to take some action
Option: Predictive Send
You can also wait until the system thinks the prospect will most likely be active. Predictive Send uses what ActiveDEMAND knows about the specific prospect to choose when to take action. You can send emails or take other action on the day of the week that the prospect is usually active, or the time of day, or both.
Wait until a day of the week
Now, the above wait actions are great, until you run across a situation where you don’t want to send an email on a weekend (for example). In those cases, you can add a “wait for day/time” action. These actions can help fine-tune your email sends or other actions so that you’re not taking action on days/times where it doesn’t make sense. If you add one of these to the start of a drip campaign, you can start the pace of it on the same day every time.
You can also add predicted send to this action if you choose.
Common Uses:
- Creating drip campaigns that send out emails on the same day of the week
- Ensuring drip campaigns don’t contact prospects on the weekend
- Automated emails that perform some sort of internal notification function
Wait until this day of the month
The last wait action to describe is the “wait for a day of the month”. This wait action is great for big, long drip campaigns where you need to pace things over a period of months.
Common Uses:
- Pacing out very long-term drip campaigns
- Reminding prospects about monthly recurring events
- Structured monthly follow-up (like reminding customers about invoices)
Conclusion
Ultimately, this just covers the basic wait action. There are also several wait options in the decisions section, such as: “wait for email open”, “wait for email click”, “wait for change”, and “wait for next”. These combine a wait action with a decision that the system watches for.
To learn more about the basic wait action, as well as the more advanced wait decisions, check out our help article on Workflow Starting Steps, Actions, and Decisions.
