Ability to trigger series based on my custom dates

[MJohnson0289]

Hi All!

So I just switched over from another EMM provider, and there are some things that are really being overlooked for professional marketers as far as automation is concerned. As someone who was a diehard, and consistently in the top 5% of monthly users, there are things that I love so far about Constant Contact (i.e. easily being able to adjust the theme of emails without diving into source code).

There are definitely some things aside from the basic email editor that I think can be improved on. For instance, being able to base an automated series around a specific date or custom field is crucial in B to B email marketing. Our clients have lease expiration dates listed in their contact profiles (custom fields), which means that they would specifically be looking for our products around this time. Being able to time an automation series around this would be a game-changer.

Another improvement would be to allow the functionality of automatically funneling contacts into separate contact lists once they finish an automation series. For example, during an automated series, I do not want my "general interest" emails going to specific contacts in addition to the automated series, but after the automated series is complete, I would love to avoid having to manually remove them from the automated series and add them back into the "general" list. 

Just some thoughts on taking the automation-side of Constant Contact to the next level!

Thanks for listening to my rant!

Matt

[LeaF88]

There should be a way to select the start date (or end date or middle date for that matter, why limit ourselves!) for an autoresponder campaign based on a date field in the contact entry. This would enable so many possibilities! Our use case involves an end user signing up for an educational online learning product. We want to offer timely information and promote product engagement by sending emails at regularly spaced intervals based on the age of the user’s newborn baby, as defined by the child’s due date field or child’s birthday field within the parent’s contact entry. You could also send a reminder Anniversary (or Birthday) email AND a follow up Anniversary (or Birthday) email. Why are we limited to 14 days before the date in the field?

[ToddR0465]

Please Please Please - add the functionality wherein emails can be triggered by date and not just by days, hours, etc. This functionality will open up an unlimited number of business processes that are currently of out of scope because of this limited functionality Example - I own a vacation property management company - everything is date driven from initial checkin, to followup communications, to planning for checkout, to review requests.

[Caitlin_M]

Hi @MJohnson0289. These are great ideas! For your second point about moving contacts into different lists when they are done with a series, how you would expect the contacts to move to the appropriate lists? Would there be a prompt in the last email asking what content they're interested in or something else?

[LucasS687]

If I add a new e-mail to an autoresponder campaign, the campaign starts right away for this new contact. I would like to be able to set a starting date for a new (group of) contact(s).

If it's already possible, please let me know.

[PeterC253]

Caitlin,

We are a Baby Ultrasound business.  It's extremely important that our email reminders focus on the time in weeks during pregnancy to schedule additional appointments to see baby.  I really expected that I could develop an email series around custom dates for the optimal time to purchase a time specific package.  I am very disappointed that I am limited by your product options.  What can you do to help me?   

[Frankie_P]

Hi @PeterC253 if you are looking to send based on a specific weekly timeline, what about the current week delays you can set between each email in your series does not fit these needs? Does each mother have a different timeline causing the need for specific custom dates?

[PeterC253]

Frankie,

I need automation based on a Date.  My mommies don't fit into a drip email based on being a newly added record.  Mommies have a specific time period of pregnancy - 40 weeks.  Each mommy enters our facility at different times during pregnancy.  Current Week Delays will not accommodate my list generation.  I need to be able to generate my series based on a date trigger.  Mailigen offers this option.  What is Constant Contact doing about adding this feature?

[CoreyK196]

Looking into automated emails, it would be helpful to schedule an automated email based on a trigger AFTER the event. Currently, the only option seems to be new subscribers or added to the list. If an automated email could be added based on data from the list (event date), then we could create a trigger that sends the day AFTER the event date. We currently use Tripleseat as our event booking software so it automatically creates a list in Constant Contact and it would be helpful to send automatic emails after the event get feedback about how it went. 

[Susan10]

Requesting the ability to trigger series based on custom dates