Fall Release: Sending emails based on recipient timezone!

[Dan_Stevens_]

I just saw the Fall release notes and noticed that one of the most popular feature requests is finally happening:

This is especially significant for those of us who operate globally (or even across the US, given the multiple time zones).  Today, we're forced to build complex engagement programs in each country workspace - primarily due to time zone differences.  With this feature enabled, we'll now be able to create global engagement programs (while leveraging personalization/segmentation to apply any localization if necessary (translated content, etc.).  [EDIT: this isn't as significant of an enhancement as we thought, since it will only be active in Email Send programs and Engagement Programs with individual emails (not child/default programs that contain basic "email send" smart campaigns)]

Question for the product team: when will this be deployed in everyone's instance?  Is it on a specific date or gradually during a specific timeframe?

Justin Cooperman​

[Anonymous]

Hi all, I tried the feature a couple of times now and am not sure whether our database is throwing it off or something else because the inferred field is empty. I activated a program today for a  send tomorrow and Marketo wanted to send the email within 15 minutes even tho' my list of only 6 people were all in the US with max. 3 hours ahead regarding the time zone. I suspect this happened because some of the contacts don't have the field inferred state filled out. Did anybody experience similar issues?

Thanks,

Yulya

[Phillip_Wild]

Shame we can't use another field ....we use ISOCountry on the Account to determine when to send (we're very global). But this is a significant improvement. I remember being able to do this in Eloqua by throwing to a subroutine program, but there was no easy solution in Marketo. This will help!

[Ayan_Talukder]

Hi Phillip, do you know what field Marketo uses for the Recipient Timezone? I've seen a few responses mentioning different fields. So far it sounds like a combination of State/Province and Country?

[Phillip_Wild]

Full link here: Understanding Recipient Time Zone - Marketo Docs - Product Documentation

[Mark_Price]

From the docs-

(just sent this to a team member so had it handy)

[Anonymous]

Hi guys, let me try to provide some clarity. We are going to support deliver in person time zone for both email programs and nurture programs in our 4 release. This will be a slow roll out and we are planning to have this completed in less than one month. The time zone calculation will be based on city, state, zip code, country fields and we will defer to then inferred versions of those fields in the event that we are unable to derive the time zone from what is provided for each person in the standard fields. If we are still unable to derive the persons time zone from the inferred field values, the person will qualify based on what the user has set for the program.

[Dan_Stevens_]

Frank Passantino​, will this apply to child programs - with individual "send email" smart campaigns - within Engagement Programs (and not just single emails within EPs)?

[Anonymous]

Dan, the Deliver in Recipient Time Zone feature will only apply to Engagement Program streams with single emails as cast content and Email Programs. Standalone batch campaigns and batch campaigns selected as casts in engagement programs streams will not be supported.

[Dave_Cunningham]

I agree with Dan. This is too bad. Hopefully you guys will eventually roll this out for default programs as well. The majority of our emails are sent as batch campaigns in default programs.

[Dan_Stevens_]

Wow, that’s a shame - unfortunately this will be of no use for us, based on how we build/use Engagement Programs.  When I first saw this announced, I guess I communicated prematurely to our team what I thought was going to be a game-changing feature. Is it on the roadmap to eventually extend this to default programs as well?

[Bonnie_Jeffers2]

Agree with Dan and Dave. This wasn't fully thought through on how users manage engagement campaigns.

[Dan_Stevens_]

FYI - Another thread was started today which includes additional details: Release Notes: Fall '17: Recipient Time Zone

[ChristinaZuniga]

I'm so ready for this functionality! Thanks for bringing this topic up Dan, I'm hoping it rolls out before the end of Jan.

[Dan_Stevens_]

I hope so too - since January is the dead of winter (not Fall)! 😉

[ChristinaZuniga]

I am located in Santa Barbara and Marketo is here in CA, winter does not exist haha

[Dave_Cunningham]

We are excited about this one as well. I'm interested in learning exactly how Marketo will determine local time zones. Will it be based on a lead's country/city or something else in the back-end? I'm also wondering if this functionality can be turned on/off at a global level and per email? There may be times that every recipient should receive an email right away.

[Josh_Hill13]

I suspect it will be based on previous engagement or Country/State. Mailchimp uses the recipient's server and click data to determine the person's time zone.

[ChristinaZuniga]

Josh Hill​ you're a level 10?! Did Marketo send you a gift bag for making it beyond their highest level on the community?!

[Josh_Hill13]

lol. haven't heard from them.

[ChristinaZuniga]

I saw your blog post and thought to myself "Nooooo!" because I tag you (and Sanford) in things I need help on, so I'm sad to hear you're pulling back from the Community, but I get it. I hope you'll still speak at Summit, you have a lot of knowledge to share!

Meghana Rao​​ or Shea Cibulsky​​ - Josh made it to 300,000 points! There should be a celebration or some sort of account change so that it doesn't say level 10, it's just a gold star. No wait! A purple star .