Send email regarding the time (business hours/non-business hours) and the day of the week (weekdays/weekends)

[RaulEr]

Hi community,

We want to send different versions of an email regarding the time and day of the week a field changed its value.

We have a value (DateTime) that captures and triggers the smart campaign to send the emails. However, the email will change regarding if it was on business or non-business hours, and if was on a weekday or a weekend. 

We can’t create time-only fields and we can’t (by knowledge) pull the time from the DateTime field. Are there workarounds for this hard-to-believe Marketo technical limitation?

Thanks and regards,

Raul

[SanfordWhiteman]

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We can’t create time-only fields and we can’t (by knowledge) pull the time from the DateTime field. Are there workarounds for this hard-to-believe Marketo technical limitation?

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It’s very easy to send different content based on the time of day (or day of week) using Velocity. So not a technical limitation.

[Darshil_Shah1 · Accepted solution]

As Sandy said, this is absolutely do-able using velocity! Linked here is Sandy's blog post that has some relevant content and examples. Hope this helps and let us know if you have any questions. 🙂

[RaulEr]

Hey, thanks for the replies!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this Velocity script applies only to code inside the emails?

How can I use it on the Smart List filters if I want to only change/update data in Marketo or add/remove from lists?

Thanks and regards,

Raul

[Darshil_Shah1]

Below are some options you can explore to control the execution of campaigns/flow steps based on the time, date, day, etc. :

1. You can schedule batch campaigns with apt flow and filters to run periodically based on your requirement.

2. You can employ the normal wait step if you would wanna wait for fixed units of time before executing the subsequent campaign flows. 

3. In case you would wanna wait before executing a certain flow step until a specific day/time you can setup advanced wait properties.

4. You can use run/execute the campaign from the flow of a campaign (Request Campaign/ Execute campaign).

The exact approach for setting something up would depend on your exact use case!

Just to clarify you cannot schedule to activate/deactivate the trigger campaigns or filter out the person based on the day/date they qualify for the trigger campaign e.g. you cannot filter out the person if they qualify on a weekend.

Also, yes you cannot use the velocity variables/data in the smart campaign.