topic Re: Advice on contacts entering a workflow after a set date has passed in Lists, Lead Scoring & Workflows

Advice on contacts entering a workflow after a set date has passed

RMorgan34 — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 11:38:40 GMT

Hello,

We are building a workflow that people enter via form submissions. We were planning to schedule several emails for specific dates and times, but the form will remain open beyond the first few dates. If a contact were to submit a form after the date of the first scheduled email had passed, would they still receive this first email, or just move through the workflow until the next future send?

For example:

Email 1 is scheduled for April 3

Email 2 is scheduled for April 7

A customer submits their form on April 4 - will they still receive the email scheduled for April 3, or do they just receive the next send on April 7?

Re: Advice on contacts entering a workflow after a set date has passed

Whathcock — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 12:58:46 GMT

Hi @RMorgan34 ,

According to this Knowledge Base article, "enrolled records will immediately proceed to the next action after your configured delay", so it's expected that if a contact enters your workflow on April 4, they will move into the delay and then receive the next email on April 7.

If you want them to still receive email 1, you can do so by adding a branch for contacts who enroll after April 3 to take (see directions below or in the article linked above).

To execute different actions based on whether or not the set date has passed, select the checkbox Yes, add a branch.

If you selected a Calendar date as your source of delay, the branch will contain two branches: On the date and After the date. For example, you can create a workflow that delays until August 31st at 10 AM. At which point, it sends an email containing a webinar link. After the date, you can direct any subsequent contacts who enroll in the workflow to receive a different email that informs them the original webinar is over and provides a list of upcoming webinars they can attend instead.
If you opted for a Date property as the source of delay, the branch will contain three branches: On the date, After the date, and Date property unknown.

Hope this helps! If it did, please help the community by marking my answer as a soultion.

Whitney

Re: Advice on contacts entering a workflow after a set date has passed

danmoyle — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 13:12:29 GMT

+1 for @Whathcock here. If you're building the date-based workflow, that's expected behavior.

If you want them to defnitely get the first email, I'd maybe build a regular workflow so everyone who enrolls gets the first email, then "delay until a set day/time" to have the second email go out to everyone, whether they enrolled before April 3 or after, on the specific date of 4/7. That seems like the simplest move in my mind.

Re: Advice on contacts entering a workflow after a set date has passed

CFransen89 — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 19:57:15 GMT

If the workflow actions are: Delay Until April 3, Send first email, Delay Until April 7; wouldn't that mean that it would skip the first delay and send the first email immediately?