Trigger a reminder email 1 hour before a webinar

[Dave_Cunningham]

Is there a way to trigger a reminder email to be sent 1 hour before a certain date? My webinar date is a date program token field and I can easily automate the day prior reminder, but I am wondering if there's a way to do it in hours? Guessing it's a hack, if so.

If I wanted to do 12 hours prior I would think it would be like this, but it doesn't look like it will work.

[Devraj_Grewal]

Dave,

If the webinar is at 10a EDT, why not just have a separate batch smart campaign run at 9a EDT? Then you won't need to deal with advanced wait. With long wait steps, you run the risk of not removing leads from the flow if they decide not to attend or cancel the registration. However with a batch campaign at 9a, the smart list will make sure only those registered will receive the reminder.

[Dave_Cunningham]

Thanks Devraj. We're trying to automate as much as possible so would like to avoid batch.

You bring up a great point though with the long wait step. I sometimes overlook this. What I'm testing with here is a trigger on the program status changing to "Registered". There could be days/weeks between when someone registers and when the reminder email would be sent. I'm not sure we have a way for registered users to cancel their registration though. I don't think I have ever come across a webinar that has that concept. I feel like users register and then they either join or don't. So this doesn't seem like much of a risk. Maybe we even send the reminder to some who wasn't planning on joining, but it changes their mind

[Devraj_Grewal]

A batch will be automated, you just schedule in advance that one hour before the webinar, the flow will run to send the reminder. That way one hour before only those registered and qualifying to receive communication will be sent the reminder.

As for cancelling, I didn't mean those who cancel will need to be removed, rather I just meant as best practice in long wait steps for any campaign is to avoid them. But if they are necessary, to make sure right after the long wait steps, to throw a few remove from flow steps in there to make sure you filter some leads out (ex. Unsubscribed, lead status changed).  In terms of a webinar it's fine, everyone can receive the reminder. But best practice is to remove certain leads you may not want to progress after a long wait step depending on what the rest of the flow steps need to do.

[Dave_Cunningham]

I probably should have been clearer on what I am trying to do. The program I am creating will be a template that all webinar programs will be cloned from. I am trying to limit, as much as possible, what the webinar team needs to touch. However, having to schedule a batch reminder might end up being an option we will have to live with.

Related to the remove from flow steps, do you know when the reminder emails are actually queued up? I am guessing it is when the trigger happens. So when my status is changed to "Registered" I run through the smart campaign to send the reminder X days before the webinar date (date token). What happens if we change the date of the webinar? So we change the date token. Will I get the reminder at the wrong time? Is there a way to cancel/edit the reminder emails if this is the case?

[Devraj_Grewal]

You won't need the remove from flow steps if the only thing is to send the email because there will be no wait steps. Instead of a trigger running and keeping registered leads in the wait step until one hour before the webinar, just have a batch that looks for those who registered and it will run one hour before the webinar to send the email. If the webinar date were to change and you adjusted the wait step to a later date, those leads in the original wait step will wait the original duration unless they are removed. That's why a batch is better here as well in case the date does change, you can simply reschedule the batch campaign.

[Dave_Cunningham]

Yes, makes sense. I was asking for the trigger / wait step scenario. Just interested to know how Marketo queues things up.

[Darrell_Alfons2]

Looking at through this thread I'm starting to think I need to do it the way Devraj suggests.

The way I've done this in the past is a trigger campaign that fires on registration and then the reminders go out based on wait step and then date, and the one hour before reminder I just set to one hour before manually.

[Anonymous]

What if you just added another date token, such as "my.one hour reminder" and then manually put the reminder date in when you build out the campaign. It is a tiny manual step, but maybe less risky than long wait steps and status changes. Plus, it's easily clonable.

[Jessica_Kao3]

Like Devraj said,  the cleanest way is to have a separate smart campaign to send out the reminder 1 hour before and you would just need to schedule it.  You want to use tokens to minimize what needs to be changed but wait steps can cause all kind of issues because when someone is in the middle of the wait step you can't do anything other than shut down the whole program and becomes error prone.  Separate out all the actions,

Have a separate campaign to process registration.

A separate campaign to send reminders.  I have a separate one for 1 day reminder and 1 hour reminder.