Choosing an Email Send Method

Choose to send your email immediately or schedule it to be sent at a later time. Make sure you have validated your email for sending beforehand.

In the new Email Composer, there are the following options in the Send Details tab, in the Send Method area:

• Start sending to recipients right away
• Send later
  • Schedule date and time
  • Send in recipient's time zone
  • Send over time
  • Use Adaptive sending

For emails created in the legacy email composer, there are the following options in the Send tab:

• Send now
• Send at the following time
• Send in recipient's time zone
• Send over time
• Use Adaptive Sending

Start Sending to Recipients Right Away (Send Now)

New Email Composer: In the Send Details tab:

1. Select Start sending to recipients right away.
2. At the top right, click Review & Send.
3. Review your email. See How to Validate an Email for Sending.
4. At the top right, click Send email & confirm when prompted. A confirmation message appears.

For legacy emails: In the Send tab:

1. Select Send now.
2. Click Submit Launch Request.
3. A confirmation window will appear showing the details of the email such as the 'From' address, the recipient list(s), and the time that the email will be sent.
4. Click Send and the email will be sent right away.
   • When in the confirmation window, if you see any changes that need to be made, simply click the Go Back button. This will return you to the Send tab where you can go back to any of the previous steps to make the necessary changes.

Schedule Date & Time (Send At the Following Time)

New Email Composer: In the Send Details tab:

1. Select Send later > Schedule date and time.
2. Specify the Date & Time to send your email.
3. Select Send in manually selected time zone & set the Time zone from the dropdown.
4. At the top right, click Review & Send.
5. Review your email. See How to Validate an Email for Sending.
6. At the top right, click Schedule email & confirm when prompted. A confirmation message appears.

For legacy emails: In the Send tab:

1. Select Send at the following time.
2. Specify the Date & Time to send your email.
3. Set the time zone from the dropdown.
4. Click Submit Launch Request.
5. Review the details, and if they are correct click Schedule.

Send in Recipient's Time Zone

Send your email so that it hits your contacts' inboxes at a time specific local time for their location.

Once your lists or segments are correctly configured with time zones, in the new Email Composer, in the Send Details tab:

1. Select Send later > Schedule date and time.
2. Specify the Date & Time to send your email.
3. Select Send in recipient's time zone & set the fallback time zone from the dropdown.
4. At the top right, click Review & Send.
5. Review your email. See How to Validate an Email for Sending.
6. At the top right, click Schedule email & confirm when prompted. A confirmation message appears.

For legacy emails: In the Send tab:

1. Select Send at the following time.
2. Specify the Date & Time to send your email.
3. Set the time zone from the dropdown.
4. Click Submit Launch Request.
5. Review the details, and if they are correct click Schedule.

If a send has recipients in every time zone, the launch can take about 24 hours to complete. To allow for this, we recommend submitting the launch request at least 24 hours before your desired time of receipt.

If the time zone value is improperly formatted, then Act-On checks the mapped address (using the standard fields: Business Country, Home Country, Business Zip, Home Zip, Business State, & Home State, as country alone may not be sufficient, for example, Australia, USA), and the phone number to determine a time zone. If this is unsuccessful, the email is sent using the fall-back time zone set, which defaults to the user's timezone:

Send Over Time

Instead of sending out your email as a single large event, you can spread it out using the send over time feature. This is good for:

• Sending a high volume of emails.
• Sending emails that are not time-sensitive.
• Spreading responses or CTA clicks over a longer period, to avoid a one-time spike in replies/traffic.

After you set a date range & daily send window, Act-On will send emails throughout the send window based on system resources and bandwidth. The end date is the latest possible date for emails to be sent; the email launch may be completed sooner.

In the new Email Composer, in the Send Details tab:

1. Select Send later > Send over time.
2. Specify the Date range & Daily send window to send your email, and the Time zone for the send window.
3. At the top right, click Review & Send.
4. Review your email. See How to Validate an Email for Sending.
5. At the top right, click Schedule email & confirm when prompted. A confirmation message appears.

For legacy emails: In the Send tab:

1. Select Send Over Time.
2. Set the Start Date and End Date.
3. Set the Daily send window for sending your email (eg., only during your business hours) and the time zone for these hours.
4. Click Submit Launch Request, for example:

5. Review the details, and if they are correct click Schedule.

Use Adaptive Sending

With Adaptive Send, you can send your email at the ideal time for each recipient. See this page for more details.

Check Scheduled Emails

To see your scheduled emails, go to Outbound > Other Messages > Scheduled.

While your email is scheduled, it is locked for editing.

Cancel a Scheduled Email

When using a send method that is scheduled ahead of time, you may cancel an email before its scheduled time.

From Scheduled:

1. Go to Outbound > Other Messages > Scheduled.
2. Find the scheduled email, hover over it, and choose:
   • Reschedule to choose a new time to send it.
   • Move to Drafts to cancel the scheduled send & make changes.
3. Follow the prompts to ensure the email is either rescheduled or moved to drafts.

From Sent Messages:

If the email is already in the process of being sent out but has not finished, you can also cancel the email for the remaining recipients who have not been sent their email yet.

1. Go to Outbound > Sent Messages.
2. Select the dropdown box for the email:
   
   
   
   ...and choose Stop Launch.

This button can also be found in the Message Report:

Handling Opt-Outs With Scheduled Emails

Please note that when using Time Zone Send, Adaptive Send, or Send Over Time, if a contact opts out after your email has already been processed for sending, they will still receive this email. This is typically 24 hours but could be a few days for emails scheduled further in advance.

If you use these features regularly, we recommend including language on your opt-out page saying that their unsubscribe will take up to 48 hours to process. 

Note on Total Recipients

The contacts who are sent your email are determined at the scheduled launch time rather than when the email is created. Act-On re-evaluates the contacts in a segment just before sending an email.

Example:

When you schedule your email to be sent, you choose a segment of 100 contacts. Then, 25 new contacts enter the segment before the email's send time. If there are no suppressed contacts, the email will be sent to a total of 125 recipients because that is the total number of contacts who appear in the segment at the time of launch.