HubSpot Ideas

andrewdavis_SF

Delay until Date & Time Workflow Action

I'd like a way to delay contacts from throwing through to a certain step of a workflow until a specific date. 

 

This came about when we have a micro-nurture running to a specific set of our audience. We are launching a flash deal to our contacts that will last from today for another 8 days. In the micro-nurture workflow - we have an email that provides a different offer. We didn't want two competing workflow offers to go out. So we put an 8 day delay in the workflow as a temporary step. It would be great if I could tell all the contacts to delay until a specific date instead. That way when the date has passed, the action becomes disabled or whatever. 
Other option would be pause workflow (but that doesn't help the previous steps)

HubSpot Updates
June 21, 2023 06:50 AM

Hi @TobiasWi ,

This is a great question. We do want to move in that direction, and have already started expanding access to associated records in other, additional actions with this beta: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows/use-associated-record-data-in-workflows

If you want to join this beta (even though it doesn't directly solve your use case) you can do so from the "what's new" page in your account: https://app.hubspot.com/l/whats-new/betas

 

We haven't yet added the ability to use date properties in delay actions, but it's definitely something we want to work towards. I would be very interested to hear more about your end to end process. I will send you a direct message if you want to book time to speak, or you can outline your use case here. Thank you!

Megan

Delivered
September 01, 2022 11:02 AM

Hi Everyone,

 

Thanks for the continued comments and questions. As @isabellweiss kindly laid out (thank you, Isabell!) this feature launched in mid August and is now available to customers. The new delay action allows you to create delays centered around a calendar date (eg. an event happening on 9/15/22) or centered around a date property (for example the "close date" of a deal). Our KB doc has all the details: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows/use-delays#delay-until-a-date

 

Thank you so much for your openness and feedback that helped form this feature, and bring it to fruition.

 

Best,

Megan

 

May 24, 2022 06:02 AM

Hi @RKers ,

Thanks for following up and adding details about your use case. I updated this thread to "In planning" on ‎Apr 15, 2022 because we did start developing at that time and are actively working on it now. We're getting close to a beta, and I think your use case will work really well in the new functionality. If you want to participate in the beta please send me your Hub ID in a private message and I will let you know when it's ready.

 

I will also update this thread with additional status updates.

 

Thanks!

Megan

In Planning
April 15, 2022 06:44 AM

Hi folks,

 

I'm Megan, a product manager for the workflows tool at HubSpot. 

 

My team is currently working on date based delays for all object type workflows. These delays will allow you to create delays that are relative to a date in a particular date property (eg. deal close date), or a fixed date (eg. 4/1/22 at 9am). Please follow this thread for updates as the feature moves through development.

 

Thanks!

Megan

Being Reviewed
January 19, 2022 10:38 AM

Hi everyone,

 

Thanks for continuing to take the time to show your support for this idea through your votes and comments. While today we offer some functionality for date centered automation, for example with date centered contact workflows, which can run automation around specific calendar dates or the values in contact date properties, we're also currently doing research to explore how we can offer more broad date centered automation options that could work in and across all types of workflows. Please follow along here to stay informed of progress.

 

Best,

Megan

Not Currently Planned
June 22, 2021 12:26 PM

Hi everyone,

 

I’m Megan Legge, a product manager for HubSpot’s workflows tool. At this time there are no plans to develop this Idea. This is not to say that this idea will never be developed, just that there are no plans to do so at this time. 

 

Today, we offer some functionality for date centered automation, as mentioned in some of the above comments, for example with date centered contact workflows, which can configure automation around specific dates or contact date properties. Additionally, in the other workflows (deals, companies..), there are filters that help trigger automation centered around date properties. For example if you wanted to trigger a deal workflow when a renewal date is 30 days away, you could create an enrollment trigger using the filter operators less than 31 days ago and/or more than 29 days ago.

 

I recognize that these options don't cover all of the use cases outline in this thread, but we hope to dig into this problem more in the future. 

 

Best,

Megan

71 Replies
JS2016
Member

Currently with the standard workflow you can add delays but you need to know the specific number of days and/or how many hours/minutes to delay the next step by. When setting up a workflow with multiple emails, it would be really helpful if I could chose the specific date/time I wanted the email delayed until so similar to when you schedule an email. This would be more accurate and reliable.

Even using the fixed-date workflow, it would require knowing how many days are between the fixed-date and when you want the sequence of emails to go out.

 

This feature would be good for companies with longer buying cycles and send out emails to nurture contacts to become leads every quarter. By adding in an option in the delay to choose a specific date and time would be beneficial to any step that had a set known date/time. This would also eliminate any element of guess work someone would have to do if they knew what date/time they wanted something to happen in their workflow such as an email to be sent. This is available when you schedule an email to be sent out, thus it should be available when you set a delay or set an email to be sent from a workflow.

mikesf
Member

Great suggestion. Sometimes the specific date/time might also be restrictive if it's an ongoing workflow like a nurture. Would love to see something like "Wait two days and send next email at [TIME]". This way you can optimize for time email is sent without having to guess # of hours based on open time, etc.

mpeterswbr
Participant

I agree. For some of the campaigns we do, we want emails to be sent on specific dates and times and I had to count out how many days after the launch of the campaign to make sure the emails were being sent out on the correct date. It would be nice to have the option of picking a specific date and to have the x days later option. I have used other platforms that allow for either.

mrowe
Participant

 This is such a great idea!

MSteer
Member

Could not agree more. For me, I wanted to vary the days and the times of when the emails were sent to reach different audiences. Calculating the varying amount of days/ times proved very cumbersome and meant that some emails were sent at the incorrect hours or days meaning open rates were lower than intended. If I could pick the precise date and time it would allow emails to be more easily targeted to reach different audiences.

winton
Member

I can strongly second this idea, but would also like to add to its functionality.

 

Instead of simply saying 'delay until 09:00', I would like an option - and see great use for it - where I can say 'only allow contacts to pass this step between 09:00 to 17:00, Monday to Friday'.

 

This can greatly aid a sales process, and my reasoning behind this is that we are looking to send plain text 'sales' emails as part of a workflow, to brand new leads. We have no control over what time the leads populate in HubSpot, and as such cannot control what time of the day they will receive email at - and we don't want a personal 'sales' email being sent outside of working hours.

 

With this functionaility it would means that all those who enroll outside of working hours only paass to the next step once business hours commence the following day, or after a weekend. 

 

@bellawu

Melly2022
Key Advisor

This is very applicable when creating an automation to handle sending a survery for example, or to set a property on a specific date.

Example: send out a workshop invitiation, contact registers for the workshop but we don't want to change their property status until the day of the workshop.  The registration can happen anytime between the email send and the event date. But the delay by days means that those that register say right before the event status wont change till XX days later.

 

It would be great if we can delay a specific action based on a date and not the length of time after!

MichaelKopp
Member

Agreed 100000%. I just came from a Marketo shop, and I was one of Eloqua's first customers way backl when. I've been switching between the two for almost 18 years and i wouldf think having a wait step that can be based on a set date, not number of days, would be standard functionality.

 

We run webinars, and once someone registers we don't want them processed as attended or no-show until the webinar happens. I don't want to build more than one workflow per webinar, or this stops becoming true markieting automation.

 

Is the something i'm missing? The workflow centered on a date is next to useless.  Maybe we've already outgrown Hubspot and it's time to move on. It seems like everything we do I have to come up with an inelegant hack to make it work.

 

I have a theory that i can hack this with a zapier. I'll check back and let you know what I find.

megannorris
Participant

I would love to have a specific date and time delay as well. I know hubspot recently added a date and time delay but that only allows for looking into the future by a week. 

 

My use case is for a webinar reminder. I want to be able to turn on my workflow to capture registrants as they come in starting next week, but my webinar is not until next month. I want my reminder emails to go out one week before, one day before, and day of the webinar (which are very specific dates and times). I can only set the reminder email to be X days away or on a day - so if I set x days, people would be reminded sporadically based on when they register, or if I choose on a day it will be the next Wednesday (or whatever I choose) that they will get the reminder. 

megannorris
Participant

^ I have the same thoughts as @MichaelKopp 

 

I'm coming from Eloqua as well and thought wait until a specific date would be standard. It's so frustrating to have to guess how many days I need to delay, or in the case of people entering the workflow at different times, not being able to ensure that certain steps execute at the same time for everyone.

 

My use case is for a webinar reminder. I want to be able to turn on my workflow to capture registrants as they come in starting next week, but my webinar is not until next month. I want my reminder emails to go out one week before, one day before, and day of the webinar (which are very specific dates and times). I can only set the reminder email to be X days away or on a day - so if I set x days, people would be reminded sporadically based on when they register, or if I choose on a day it will be the next Wednesday (or whatever I choose) that they will get the reminder. 

Lindsay2
Member

The webinar reminder is the same use case that I have. Would love to have the delay until a specific date option.

astett22
Member

This is definitely needed for all of the webinars that we are alll marketing right now.  We need to send reminders to attend on fixed dates.  That seems like a very simple function that hubspot should definitely have!   

Spoiler
 
mprofile
Contributor

We also would like this functionality for use with organizing webinars!

AHasselsteen
Participant

Same in regards to webinars.

IanMarck
Member

Absolutely backing up this. It's necessary and just logic to be able to control the date and time stamp on a workflow. Plus, not to add rivalry to the thread but having moved from Pardot to HubSpot in sakes of power and efficiency, it falls too short not being able to use it for my (webinars too) workflows.

mprofile
Contributor

@AHasselsteen and @IanMarck after I posted me backing this idea on the 7th of October I found out there is a date centered approach possible in HubSpot.

Not saying it solves all our headaches, but at least a few for me. You can add a new workflow that is centered to a date. Please look here https://knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows/create-center-on-a-date-or-center-on-a-date-property-contact... for me this approach made it possible to send reminder e-mails to registered webinar viewers -1 week, -1 day and -1 hour.

Paul_A
Member

We would also like to be able to delay workflow emails to a specific date/time in the future (like with a calendar selection tool or the same functionality available in non-automated emails). 

Khalvin
Member

Please let 2021 be the year this feature becomes available. 

BRobinson
Member

This is ridiculous this isn't a feautre yet lmao.

 

There's a whole thread of people asking for months for a date field. This is key to automation smh.

alexluong1
Participant

Agreed.

 

Need this as well.