Enterprise requirement: all global, 24/7 enrolment email nurture workflows need this!

[JoeDavies]

I've uncovered quite a major flaw in the workflows tool, which severely hinders the ability to create effectively functioning, always-on workflows for B2B companies with a global audience.

If you want contacts to only receive emails on weekdays, and during work hours in their respective timezones, you have to restrict your pause steps to 7 days, or risk sending your contacts emails in the middle of the night!

Given that you need the emails to be able to deliver emails 24/7 (it's always business hours somewhere!) during the week, but not on weekends, it's the setting of these executable windows for workflow actions where it all falls down...

If a contact enters such a workflow at 4pm UK time on a Tuesday, receiving an email and going into a 5-day pause step before email 2, they will reach Sunday and wait for the sending window to open again - which in this case would have to be just after midnight on Monday morning, to account for contacts in different timezones.

This would cause that contact to receive an email in the middle of the night!

WE NEED the ability to allow contacts to enter the next step at the same time as they entered it, rather than having emails triggered as soon as the window opens.

The current functionality only works if your audience is all in one timezone, and so you can set specific email windows such as 9am-4pm. 

If you have a global audience, a set time window cannot be used.

So... that only leaves us with two, quite undesirable options!

- Set them to weekdays only, contacts begin dropping in naturally in their various timezones, and some pass through fine, but others reach the weekend, and as a result receive an email at a bizarre time on a Monday

- Set all the pauses in the workflow to be a 7-day step, so the emails are guaranteed to be sent on a weekday AND at an appropriate time related to their location, but severely limiting the flexibility we have with pause steps in the process.

It looks like the latter is the only option at this time.

Please review this oversight, as it is severely limiting for all companies with a global audience!