Wait is a Campaign Action that can be dragged into the campaign workspace for use in any campaign flow. When campaign members reach this Action, they wait and are held in the Wait Action for a specified duration of time according to rules set by the campaign creator.
Wait Actions are useful to control timing and cadence of your campaigns. For example, if you are running a drip campaign, then you would add Wait Actions in between your Email Actions so that emails go out at a specific rate. Another common scenario where the Wait Action would be used is when you are setting up event driven campaigns whereby a certain period of time must pass before reminder emails or "thank you for attending" emails are sent.
A Wait Action will not work until you configure the Action's Properties. In Properties, you will be able to specify the Default Option as well as additional Options that will determine how Wait behaves for different qualified prospects.
With just a Default Option configured, whenever prospects reach Wait in the campaign flow, they will remain in this Action for a specified duration of time. After the duration of time has elapsed, prospects will immediately be released from the Action to continue through the campaign flow.
To configure the Default Option:
- Drag the Wait Action into the campaign flow of your choice.
- Double-click to open the Action's Properties.
- Choose how long prospects will remain in this Action before proceeding into the next Action in the campaign flow:
a. Period of Time - Use the menu to set the Weeks, Days, Hours, and/or Minutes that you would like prospects to wait.
b. Until Date - Click on the date field to set the date that you would like prospects to be held until and use the drop-down menus for Hour, Min, AM/PM, and Time Zone to specify the exact time of day that prospects should be released.
c. Before / After - Prospects will wait a certain number of days relative to a date contained in a chosen prospect field. Note that this feature only works with Date fields.
Specify the number of days to wait, then select whether this will be Before or After the date in your prospect field. If you would like prospects to be released ON the date of your prospect field, choose 0 days.
Next, pick which prospect field the Wait Action will be applied against by selecting an option from the drop-down menu. Note that only fields with Date as their selected data type will appear as choices.
Note: Only the following fields will work at this time:
- Date Added
- First Visit Date
- Last Visit Date
- Any custom (Date) field that you created
For example, let's say you wanted to wait seven days before sending prospects an email to remind them that their free trial is ending, and you have the end date of the free trial stored in a custom date field called 'Trial End Date'. The screenshot below illustrates how you would set up the Wait Action to do this.
d. Indefinitely - Prospects will be held in the Wait Action for an indefinite amount of time when this setting is chosen. This configuration is typically used in conjunction with the Or release immediately based on activity setting which allows prospects to be released only when they match a specified activity or criteria. For any prospects that do not match, they will remain in the Wait Action forever until circumstances change.
e. (OPTIONAL) Release prospect if field is empty - With this box checked, if the Wait Action detects that a value is missing for the specified prospect field, then the prospect is released from the Wait Action.
e. (OPTIONAL) Ignore year in field (for recurring dates) - With this box checked, the Wait Action will ignore the "year" of the selected Prospect Field and will only consider the day/month. This is especially helpful with regards to recurring dates such as birthdays, renewal notices, trial end dates, etc. - After prospects are done waiting the amount of time specified in Step 3, the Wait Action performs one more check to see when they should be released by the Action.
- Right away - This allows you to release prospects immediately into the next campaign action.
- On the following... - This gives you the ability to control the exact day(s) of the week and time of day that your prospects will be released into the next campaign action. The prospects are only released when the current day and time matches one of the days and specified time.
Choose one or more days and then specify the time and time zone.
To illustrate, the screenshot below is configured to hold prospects until it is 7 days before the date in the 'Trial End Date' field for those people. Then it will only release them from the Action when the current day is either a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday at 8:00 AM PST.
- Right away - This allows you to release prospects immediately into the next campaign action.
- (OPTIONAL) Or release immediately based on activity - With the box checked, prospects will be released immediately from the Wait Action if they match a specified activity or criteria.
Click on Add Condition to choose the specific activity criteria to match on. If a prospect qualifies while "waiting", they will immediately be released from the Action. Otherwise, the prospect will continue to wait until the specified duration of time has elapsed. - When finished, click Apply to retain your configuration settings.
Along with the Default Option, you can also configure additional Options which can dictate how the Action will behave for different groups of prospects.
NOTE - When additional Options are used, the Default Option may be disabled by clicking on 'do the following' which will change to 'release the prospect from this action without any wait'.
To configure an additional Option:
- Drag the Wait Action into the campaign flow of your choice.
- Double-click to open the Action's Properties.
- Click Add a Rule.
- Next to IF, click Add Condition to configure the search criteria that will be used as the rule for assigning specific prospects to this Action Option.
- Next to THEN, choose the appropriate duration that prospects should be held in the Wait Action for.
- Repeat steps 3-5 to configure additional Options as needed.
- When finished, click Apply to retain your configuration settings.
With additional Options in place, prospects that reach Wait in the campaign flow will be evaluated by their prospect details (field data and activity history) against the criteria of the additional Options. Upon evaluation:
If a campaign member matches one or more Options within one Action, the rule for the first matching Option will be applied. The prospect will wait until the corresponding period of time has elapsed and be immediately released from the Action to continue through the campaign flow. Any other matching Option rules will NOT be applied.
OR
If a campaign member does not match any Option while the Default Option is ENABLED, the prospect will automatically be applied to the Default Option and wait until the corresponding period of time has elapsed and be immediately released from the Action to continue through the campaign flow.
OR
If a campaign member does not match any Option while the Default Option is DISABLED, the prospect will be released from the Action according to the wait duration chosen and continue through the campaign flow.