Temporarily Unavailable Contacts - leave, break, etc.

[mkarsten]

When working with auto replies, we get information about contacts being out for extended periods of time because of maternity/paternity leave, extended vacations, sabatical, etc. I'm trying to figure out a way to put the contacts in a holding pattern until they return, so they're not receiving stale info from months before that they'll probably ignore as they bulk delete as much as they can from their inboxes.

Depending on the campaign, we do use the Don't send to contacts with low engagement, but not always. And, we just want to pause sending to them, until they return.

My first thought is to create a suppression list, but I'll need to add a couple properties, one to mark that they're unavailable and another to identify when they're returning. Then, to setup a workflow(s) that adds and removes them from the list based on the return date property (not sure if the workflow options are going to be friendly with this or not).

Looking for feedback. Is the best way to handle this? Suggestions?

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @mkarsten,

I would work with a custom date property here, e.g. Contact unavailable until (date). You could then create a list with one criterion: "Contact unavailable until (date) is more than 1 day from now" (screenshot).

You would then exclude this list from every email send. Once a contact returns, they would magically disappear from the list. (Within 24 hours of their return they would already be eligible for email, that's where this solution isn't perfect.)

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any follow-up questions.

[AmyYUL]

How do you create this custom date property? I am stuck...

[mkarsten]

Here are the basic steps... under Settings go to Properties and click the create property button. Choose Contact for your object type, assign it to a Group, Label is the name of your property, description is optional, and then hit Next. Your Field type is date picker, leave the date empty, and hit Next. Any date is allowed, I turned off property visibility, and you're ready to save. You can find more detailed instructions at https://knowledge.hubspot.com/crm-setup/manage-your-properties .

[mkarsten]

Much more streamlined! Thank you.:)