Send email X hours before Date Time custom field

You can use the Wait until a custom date field matches setting and there you can select the custom field with the date and in the selector you can choose the time on that date.

No, that doesn’t work. It doesn’t let you do “X hours before [Date Time Custom Field]”.

It only lets you do “X DAYS before [Date Time Custom Field] at SPECIFIC TIME”.

okay, then you can select only the date (and select before on or after the date) and put another regular wait step with the desired hours

That won’t work either.

So I want to send at %DATE_TIME% - 6 hours.

Wait you are suggesting would send at %DATE% at 6:00 AM, which is completely different.

What do you want to achieve, can you give an example? I think your thoughts are stuck in a certain way that you don’t see other options.  Check the example automations  for webinars and adjust them.

You have a date for the webinar and a time. so a webinar on eg may 14th 8pm you can use the date eq today and wait until 2pm (6 hours before 8pm) etc.

I’m trying to create a pre-call email sequence.

To send 9 emails before the sales call at certain times based on the call date and time (which comes from Calendly and varies from prospect to prospect): T-50, T-42, T-34….

It’s a common practice, and it can be easily configured in other tools like GoHighLevel, so I’m surprised it’s not supported in ActiveCampaign.

I understand, every platforms has its pro’s and con’s and it is probably different then you used to do.. But is absolutly doable, therfore use the examples in automation library

Lets see if someone from AC can come and chime in, because right now I can’t find a way of doing it in ActiveCampaign and I’ve already spent all my morning trying.

​@Ryan_ActiveCampaign can you provide any help about this? Or talk to the right team so they can implement this feature?

Thanks! 🙂

Hi ​@viviralmaximo1 👋 

I spotted that you had posted in the Facebook group and had commented there, but let me share that same response for you here so that you don’t have to hunt it down!

Thanks for sharing the feedback regarding how the segmentation logic could be improved for the "wait" blocks. This is something I'll share internally with our Product and Design Teams. Let's definitely get you set up with a process that compliments your end goal as well. There are a few ways I think you can reach that outcome.

Based on the current logic available for the "wait until" blocks, you can set up conditions that wait until the current date matches the date stored in the custom date field. You then also establish a time (such as 9AM, 10AM, etc). This means that the contact would be held in that wait block until the date matches the custom field and the time matches the time you establish in the configuration of that block. Let's say you have an event scheduled for 2PM on a given day, you could then have one wait block set up that releases contacts on the top of any given hour leading up to that event.

Another approach would be to use the "wait until a specific day and/or time" condition. This would allow you to remove the criteria looking at the custom field and instead simply say "contacts should wait here until X day and X time" before continuing.

Additionally, you can leverage the "wait until specific conditions are met" wait block that would allow you to get more granular with timing (allows for 15 minute increments instead of increments that fall at the top of each hour). So you can add a wait block that says "wait until [custom date field] is [insert date] and the current time is [insert time]."

You can also use a combination of any/all of these wait conditions. So perhaps one wait block type would be good for earlier in the day or even in days leading up to an event, but then more granular controls are ideal as you approach the event start.

Let me know if you're still seeing any challenge with your specific use case and we're glad to dive deeper!

Sorry about that, ​@Ryan_ActiveCampaign! Don’t check Facebook much these days.

I just responded you there:
 

Thanks for your answer, Ryan ActiveCampaign!

I appreciate your suggestions, but they don't work for my scenario (pre-call sequence when the call date and time are dynamic).

Notice that in my case the date and time in the custom field is dynamic, it's different for each user (it's a sales call, not a live webinar), so what I want is to send are emails based on the call time: at T-24 hours, T-16 hours, etc.

This cannot be done right now because the current logic available for the "wait until [custom date field]" action ignores the time in the Date Time custom field and forces you to choose a fixed time.

So no combination of what you suggest will work, unfortunately.

As I said, I'm quite surprised this scenario is not allowed. It seems pretty common to me, it's just "wait until [x] [hours] before [custom date and time field]", and it's supported by other platforms like ConvertKit and even GoHighLevel.

Could you please pass this to the Product Team?

It’s better that we communicate here or in the Facebook group? It doesn’t make sense to do it in both places :P

i think you are still locked in your own mind here. What is different then a webinar on date x and time Y? Nothing…  The date and time are stored in variables and so you can use a webinar automation as example.

if the call is created you start an automation and fill the date and time in a help automation, then start the main automation where you use the variables set.  

​@JanEverts it’s completely different. Let me explain why.

In a live webinar you know the date and time in advance, and it’s the same for all leads. So you if the webinar is at 19:00 and you want to send 8h before then you can do “wait until date in [custom field] at 11:00” o just “wait until [date] at 11:00 am”.

However, when it’s a sale call booked by the user, you don’t know the date in advance plus it’s different for each lead. So there is no way to send an email at %TIME% - 8 hours.

your right, the only way to solve this is via an endpoint eg make where you make a calculation and trigger an automation for time - x.

another option could be but depends on the time which are avaible for an appointment and which time frames you want to send before the real time in the appoinment. It is not easy.

​@viviralmaximo1

Thanks for the additional context. You’re definitely thinking about this the right way.

For a shared event like a webinar, ActiveCampaign can handle this well because everyone is working from the same event date and you can use a wait step tied to that date. For example, you can wait until a custom date field matches, or wait until a set day and time before that date.

Where this becomes limited is with 1:1 booked calls, where each contact has their own appointment date and time. At this time, there is not a native way for an automation to calculate and send an email at something like “appointment time minus 8 hours” directly from a single custom datetime field for each contact.

The main reason is that the “Wait until custom date field matches” option can wait for the field date itself, or a number of days before or after it, but if you use a Date Time field, the time stored in that field is ignored and the wait step uses the time configured in the automation instead.

The best workaround is to pre-calculate the reminder send time outside of the automation, then sync that value into ActiveCampaign as its own custom field. For example, instead of storing only the booked call time, you would also store a separate field for “Call reminder send time” that already equals call time minus 8 hours. Then your automation can wait on that reminder field and send the email when that value is reached.

A potential setup would look like this:

1. Your booking tool or integration creates the appointment date/time.

2. That same integration also calculates the reminder timestamp, such as call time minus 8 hours, and writes it into a separate custom field in ActiveCampaign.

3. The automation waits until that reminder field matches, then sends the email.

4. If the call is cancelled or rescheduled, the integration should update the fields so the automation can stop, skip, or re-time the reminder as needed.

If you want to send multiple reminders, like 48 hours, 24 hours and 8 hours before the call, you would follow the same pattern by storing multiple pre-calculated reminder fields and building the automation around those values.

With that said, this is absolutely something I can surface internally with our Product and Design Teams. I’ll pass that feedback along for you so that the right folks internally are aware of the product gap and the desire for it to be added as a feature. I can’t make any promises on timing or if/when this might be added, but please know that this is being surfaced internally. Let me know if you have any questions about the information I shared and I’m always happy to help! 

Hi ​@Ryan_ActiveCampaign!

Thanks for your response 🙂

I think the workaround you propose won’t work precisely because of what you said: that ActiveCampaign ignores the time in Date Time fields. So even if you calculate call time minus 8 hours in an external tool and write it to a different Date Time field (step 2), you won’t be able to set a wait until that Date and Time (step 3), only until that Date plus a time of your choice.

So I think there are two different issues here that need to be solved:

1. Support for Date Time custom fields in Waits. If a custom field contains a Date and a Time, ActiveCampaign shouldn’t ignore the Time part and force you to choose a new time. Instead, it should detect that the custom field already contains a time and let you wait until/before/after that date and time.
    
2. Support for Hours. Right now ActiveCampaing only lets you wait until X days before a Date. Instead, it should let you choose the unit: days, hours and I would say that minutes too.

Those two are critical improvements that I think are needed.

In addition to that, I think it would be good to add support for custom fields in regular “Wait for [x] [days/minutes/hours]” actions. That way, you could write a number to a custom field and tell ActiveCampaign to wait to the amount of days/minutes/hours in that custom field.

Initially I thought of this as a potential workaround, but it’s not supported either.

You are entirely right. I went back to test my theory about using a unique custom field for each timestamp, but in practice, it runs into the exact same hourly limitation.

Regrettably, this means that reacting dynamically to each contact’s unique, specific meeting time is a use-case that isn't natively supported by the platform right now. While you can trigger reminders at fixed intervals (like 9:00 AM or 2:00 PM), the system can't currently calculate automations down to the exact hour/minute for individual contacts.

I know how frustrating it is to hit a wall like this when trying to build a seamless experience for your clients. Because of that, I have updated the internal feedback request I previously submitted. I made sure to include these specific findings so our product and engineering teams understand the exact scope of what you are trying to achieve and why the current workarounds fall short.

I’m sorry I don't have a better native solution for you today, but please let me know if there is anything else I can assist you with and I am happy to help. 

​@viviralmaximo1 

i just faced the same issue. Here is my workaround- hopefully it will work for you.

• create separate automations (eg 1 hour before, 30 min before)
• use another tool to calculate the time before event datetime
• eg use zapier to “wait” until 1 hour before call time
• then, zapier task to add AC tag “1-hr-before” to the contact. This tag is the trigger that puts them into the “1-hour-before” automation and fire the reminder email 

hope this helps! 

Khai