Timing is everything and adding  wait periods into your campaigns and workflows helps time things just right. ActiveDEMAND has always had flexible wait actions including ‘wait for email opens’, ‘wait for clicks’, and wait for . . .well pretty much anything using our query builder, but now a few more options have been added to make even the standard ‘wait’ action flexible.

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 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 campaigns. These are simple to use and very common.

Common uses

1. Inside drip campaigns to prospects
2. Inside training campaigns where you need to slowly drip out emails or messages over days or weeks.
3. 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:

1. Creating drip campaigns that send out emails on the same day of the week
2. Ensuring drip campaigns don’t contact prospects on the weekend
3. 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:

1. Pacing out very long term drip campaigns
2. Reminding prospects about monthly recurring events
3. 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.