When 10am is not really 10am...

[Anonymous]

When is 10am not really 10am?  Email Send time is 10am EDT, Settings are set to EDT, but emails still fail to send at that time and instead send at 11am EDT.

Confused.

Anyone have similar issues?

[Anonymous]

Depending on the size of your email database, complexity of your smart lists, etc., the emails are going to take X amount of time to send out - so your emails go out at [time selected + X] instead of the time that you selected.

Our "full database" blast takes around 3 or 4 hours to send out - so we end up scheduling it early in the morning before we want the emails to start arriving in inboxes.  For lists with more complex requirements (like sending emails based on past email history), we run that smart list and save to a static list first - so the email goes out a bit more consistently close to the scheduled time and doesn't get bogged down on the qualification step.

[Anonymous]

Thank you Robert.  It's amazing that Marketo is comfortable with being the #1 company in marketing automation given these lengthy, unnecessary technical instructions for simply sending an email at a specific time.  We're coming onboard from using an automation provider best suited for a call center who has a fraction of the market share, and we could send an email whenever we wanted.... it's 10:00am and we need to send an email at 10:10am, no problem.  You were right, we do have a very large database... do you know of a master list of Marketo's limitations or downfalls?  #ROI

[Anonymous]

Not sure about a list - but you can look up user reviews on something like G2 if you want to search for particular keywords like "speed" and "server reliability".

With that said, I think you're going to have the same trade-off with any marketing automation system based on the complexity of your email list qualification.  Either you do the qualification step in "real time" with the sending of the email, and thus the email program takes a long time to send, or you off-load that processing overhead to a separate process (like generating a static list) prior to the email going out, and speed the actual email program with the trade-off that your qualification is "out of date" by whatever amount of time has passed between generating the static list and running the email program.

[Anonymous]

Hi Robert,

Yes, I agree.  I guess it's frustrating that when you pay more than 5x as much as before, you don't anticipate these problems.  I guess I'll focus more on the Suggestion/Product Improvement part of the community for now.