Deliver in Person Time Zone

Anonymous
Not applicable

I’ve noticed a number of posts and questions in the community regarding the Deliver in Person Time Zone feature so I wanted to post a quick update. We’re so excited to roll out the number one idea on the community, Deliver in Person Time Zone. You’ll already notice a field on each lead record on the Person Info tab called Recipient Time Zone that will be automatically updated based on their explicit or inferred location data and will continue to be updated if any of this location information changes. If you’re not yet able to enable Recipient Time Zone on your Email and Engagement Programs, don’t panic! Now that the Q4 2017 release is live, we’ve begun the process of gradually enabling this feature to customers. If you’re as excited as we are about this feature, please check back in a few days and I’ll provide another update regarding when to expect access.


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Dan_Stevens_
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

Hi Frank - I too was super excited when I learned of this until I found out that this doesn't affect emails sent in default programs - just Email and Engagement Programs (and the latter only works with simple emails - not child programs that are used within EPs).  90% of our email marketing/nurturing is done using default programs.  We were really hoping that this would allow us to consolidate all of the country workspace-specific EPs and build into a central/global version to leverage this new capability.  Is it on the roadmap to extend the scope of this so that it can be used across any program type that sends emails?

Anonymous
Not applicable

We don't have this feature enabled yet but I see the Person Time Zone field on the Lead. How is this data being populated? We've already noticed some discrepancies (eg. lead in US with UK time zone). Is it based off inferred data?

Anonymous
Not applicable

Charlton Swearingen​ The time zone calculation will be based on city, state, zip code, country fields and we will defer to then inferred versions of those fields in the event that we are unable to derive the time zone from what is provided for each person in the standard fields. If we are still unable to derive the persons time zone from the inferred field values, the person will qualify based on what the user has set for the program.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Dan Stevens​ we currently only support the Delivery in Person Time Zone functionality for email content in Engagement programs and Email programs. We have a pretty significant project underway where we are rearchitecting Smart Campaigns, so once we have completed the rollout of the new Smart Campaign architecture, we will re-evaluate what extending this functionality to the smart campaign will look like.

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

So there's no specific field that can set the IANA timezone via manual entry?

If someone has their corporate HQ as their mailing address, that might have nothing to do with their present office/contract location. And while using the mailing address makes sense in the absence of more authoritative info, we have to allow for that more authoritative info to be used.

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

... and also, now that I remember it, we have 3 clients that do cruises and vacations. So they know exactly where the lead is, and it ain't their home address!

Anonymous
Not applicable

Correct, there is no way to manually overside the Person Time Zone field. I you would like to influence that value, changing city, state, country and zip code will allow you to indirectly manipulate that field. We will evaluate allowing the override of the Person Time Zone field in 2018 where you will be able to choose to block field updated from specific sources in field management.

Anonymous
Not applicable

To confirm, are you stating that populating the following fields will influence (Override inferred data) the Person Time Zone field:

  • city
  • state
  • country
  • zip code
Anonymous
Not applicable

The inferred data cannot be overridden. It is set on first website visit based on reverse ip lookup.

The data that we look at to calculate someones time zone is:

  • City
  • State
  • Country
  • Zip Code

If we are unable to calculate the time zone based on the values stored in the explicitly stated fields listed above, then we will fall back to the inferred versions of those fields to try to calculate time zone:

  • Inferred City
  • Inferred State
  • Inferred Country
  • Inferred Zip Code

If we are still unable to to calculate the time zone, then the person does not get a time zone assigned and they will qualify for the program based on the subscription time zone.

Since we always check the explicitly stated values first to calculate time zone and we automatically re-calculate time zone anytime one of these explicitly stated field values change, you are able to influence the time zone that is stored in the Person Time Zone field by changing the values in the explicit fields:

  • City
  • State
  • Country
  • Zip Code

So if someone resides in San Mateo CA, but they are going to be in New York during the time of the send, you will be able to change the city, state, zip code, country fields to recalculate their time zone to an east coast time zone. Again, we are going to evaluate allowing users to override of the Person Time Zone field in 2018 where you will be able to choose to block field updated from specific sources in field management. So in the future you could have a smart campaign setup to change that field based their present office/contract location.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Question,

Will this happen automatically for emails that I'm sending via email programs or engagement programs, or is there a box i need to check (or do another action).

I'm just wondering if I were to do a batch and blast email for 7 am, if everyone now, including UK would receive their email at 7 am?

thanks