Scheduling a Launch

When setting up a launch, you have the option to launch the campaign immediately, delay your launch until a specified time, or use personal delivery time settings to schedule a launch time.

Screen capture of campaign launch time options: now, at specified time, or use personal delivery time

Note: personal delivery time is an on-demand feature and will only be visible as an option if activated. Contact your account manager if you would like more information about activating this feature.

Launching at a specified time

If you are preparing campaigns in advance, you may wish to delay the launch until a given date and time.

  1. Select the at specified time option from the launch time options.

  2. Use the calendar to define a date, e.g. 24-Jan-2023.

    Screen capture of launch options showing calender date selector

    Screen capture of launch options showing calender date selector

  3. Use the time dropdowns to select a time for your campaign to launch, e.g. 09:00 to launch your campaign at 9 am.

  4. Continue setting up your launch by selecting your audit options, frequency suppression, and follow-up campaigns, etc.

  5. When you press the launch button, Adestra will wait until the specified date and time, e.g. 9am on the 24-Jan-2023, to launch your campaign.

Using personal delivery time

Personal delivery time (PDT) uses machine learning to identify the most likely time a recipient engages with an email and sends the email at that time. If you have personal delivery time activated:

  1. Select the use personal delivery time option from the launch time options.

  2. Use the calendar to select the date your campaign will start, e.g. 8-Aug-2023.

    Note: by default, PDT will send emails over a 24 hour cycle so some emails may send on the following day, e.g. if you want all of your emails to be sent by 9 am on the 9-Aug-2023, you should start your campaign on the 8-Aug-2023 at 9:00.

    Screen capture of personal delivery time example settings

  3. Use the time dropdowns to select a time for your campaign to start, e.g. 09:00.

  4. If you want to run your launch over a shorter duration than 24 hours, e.g. you want to schedule PDT to send over the working day, check the specify an end time checkbox and enter an end date and time for the launch cycle.

  5. Enter a fallback time, e.g. 17:00.

    Note: the fallback time is only used if a personal delivery time cannot be calculated. This may be because there are new contacts in your distribution list without enough engagement data to calculate a time.

  6. Continue setting up your launch by selecting your audit options, frequency suppression, and follow-up campaigns, etc.

  7. When you press the launch button, Adestra will wait until the specified date and time, e.g. 9am on the 8-Aug-2023, to launch your campaign.

    When the launch starts:

    • Each hour, the campaign will send an email to the recipients most likely to engage with the email at that time.

    • Any recipients that do not have a PDT will be sent the email at the fallback time.

Note: PDT campaigns will have up to 25 launches, one for each hour of the 24-hour cycle plus a fallback launch for all recipients who did not have a PDT.

Screen capture of launches scheduled by personal delivery time

Example: you have a campaign with a distribution list of 1,000 people that you wish to send using PDT.

You choose to start your campaign on 1-Nov-2023 at 10:00.

You decide that anybody without a personal delivery time should be sent the email at 4 pm (fallback time = 16:00).

When you press the launch button, Adestra calculates a personal delivery time for 900 people. The remaining 100 people on your list are allocated to the fallback launch.

On 1-Nov-2023:

  • 46 people with a PDT of 11:00 are sent the email at 11 am.

  • 121 people with a PDT of 12:00 are sent the email at 12 pm.

  • 288 people with a PDT of 13:00 are sent the email at 1 pm.

  • 36 people with a PDT of 15:00 are sent the email at 3 pm.

  • 41 people with a PDT of 16:00 are sent the email at 4 pm

  • 100 people with no PDT are sent the email at the fallback time of 4pm.

  • 50 people with a PDT of 17:00 are sent the email at 5 pm.

  • 114 people with a PDT of 18:00 are sent the email at 6 pm.

On 2-Nov-2023:

  • 94 people with a PDT of 08:00 are sent the email at 8 am.

  • 110 people with a PDT of 09:00 are sent the email at 9 am.

The launches tab displays 11 launches for this example campaign.

  • A launch for the start time (10:00). This launch would have zero sends but is included to indicate when the campaign started.

  • 9 PDT launches.

  • A fallback launch.

The two launches at 4pm are counted separately to distinguish between the PDT launch and the fallback launch.