Time Zone in wait step

[Anonymous]

Hi,

If we do not include a time zone such as PST in a wait step will it default to the users time zone? See example below.  The issue that I have is that users are global so setting a time like 2:00PM should be based on where the lead is located.

Thanks,

Gerard

[SanfordWhiteman]

It'll use the instance time.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Sanford is right, the email will always send in the instance time. One way I have dealt with this in the past was to add multiple send email steps in the flow with wait steps in between to account for time differences. For example, if your audience is all in the US, and you want your email to send at 9am local time (and you are PST), you could set it up as follows:

You would schedule the campaign to run at 6am PST

Step 1: If State is: Eastern states, send email (9am EST), otherwise, do nothing

Wait 1 hour

Step 2: If Stage is: Central states, send email (9am CST), otherwise, do nothing

Wait 1 hour

Step 3: If State is Mountain states, send email (9am MST), otherwise, do nothing

Wait 1 hour

Step 4: If State is: Western states, send email (9am PST), otherwise, do nothing

If you have international audiences, you could expand this to start much earlier for other countries, and continue down the line to capture all timezones.  This can add up to a lot of logic and time figuring out which audiences fall where, and how much time to wait in between, but once you've set it up one time, you can use it as a reference for future campaigns. Until Marketo adds logic to be able to send emails in the recipients local time, I'm not sure if a better way to do this.