How long is a month in a wait step?

[Anonymous]

If I have a drip campaign where I send an email then have a wait step of 1 month then send another email. Will the 2nd email be sent exactly 1 month later (ex. May 1 then June 1 or June 1 then July 1)? Or does a month always equal 30 or 31 days?

[Anonymous]

Never tested this. But I would always use 4 weeks. This ensures you that the lead always receives the email on the same day (and not on Sunday for example).

[Anonymous]

That would work unless you want the email to always go out on a specific day of the month, regardless of day of week.

[Anonymous]

I posted this in an other thread:

It's not perfect but I use tokens and date tokens in my programs. I put all send dates (e.g. 20-01, 20-02, 20-03) as date tokens in my program setup. In the flow I choose date token for the wait steps. This enables the flow to mail every 20th of the month. Make sure to add an additional wait step of 10 hours to make sure it doesn't send at 0:00.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

I did some digging around and it looks like 1 month is exactly 1 month.

Example:

• campaign triggered on Jan 13
• 1 month wait step
• rest of flow on Feb 13

January is a 31 day month

• campaign triggered on Sep 14
• 1 month wait step
• rest of flow on Oct 14

September is a 30 day month

So a one month wait step will last till the exact day of the month, and they both resumed after the wait step within an hour of the time that the step began.

[Anonymous]

- Within the same hour? Or exactly on the same minute (excluding the fact that only 2 processes can run at the same time).
- Based om the same original hour or the hour of the previous step? Else it would graduatly be later each month.

[Anonymous]

OK. I know this is a lot of random testing, but I THINK I've cracked the code. If the wait step begins in the on a day other than the last day on a month with 31 days, it will end on the same number day. BUT if the wait step begins on the last day of a 31 day month and the next month is less than 31 days, then it considers a month to be 31 days. At least this is what it seems like the logic is. Now there are some obvious outliers and lags where the wait step can end anywhere from 4 minutes to 8 hours (and 31 hours in the first example) after the begin time. See below for my tests.

·         Example 1 (+1 day 7 hrs 44 min)
o   Recycle Timeframe to 1 month – Mar 1, 2013 @ 4:14pm
o   Remove from Flow – Apr 2, 2013 @ 11:58pm
·         Example 2 (+4 min)
o   Recycle Timeframe to 1 month – May 1, 2012 @ 10:59am
o   Remove from Flow – Jun 1, 2012 @ 11:03am
·         Example 3 (assuming 1 month = 31 days, +7 hrs 22 min)
o   Recycle Timeframe to 1 month – Jan 31, 2013 @ 1:13am
o   Remove from Flow – Mar 3, 2013 @ 8:35am
·         Example 4 (assuming 1 month = 31 days, +7 hrs 30 min)
o   Recycle Timeframe to 1 month – Jan 31, 2013 @ 1:14am
o   Remove from Flow – Mar 3, 2013 @ 8:44am
·         Example 5 (assuming 1 month = 31 days, +11 min)
o   Recycle Timeframe to 1 month – Oct 31, 2012 @ 8:01am
o   Remove from Flow – Dec 1, 2012 @ 8:12am
·         Example 6 (assuming 1 month = 31 days, +3 hrs 24 min)
o   Recycle Timeframe to 1 month – Oct 31, 2012 @ 2:51pm
o   Remove from Flow – Dec 1, 2012 @ 6:15pm
·         Example 6 (+2 hrs)
o   Recycle Timeframe to 1 month – Feb 22, 2013 @ 4:54pm
o   Remove from Flow – Mar 22, 2013 @ 6:54pm
·         Example 7 (+3 hrs  52 min)
o   Recycle Timeframe to 1 month – Feb 20, 2013 @ 11:24am
o   Remove from Flow – Mar 20, 2013 @ 3:16pm