Scheduling and Throttling

Overview

Batch messages can be sent immediately, scheduled for a future date and throttled according to audience size or maximum number of batches.

Sending a Batch Message Immediately

Messages are set to send immediately by default. When all required content is provided, you will see the option to Send Message.

Scheduling a Batch Message for Later

If you would like to schedule a batch message to be sent on a future date, click the Edit button under Schedule and choose Schedule for future date.

Choose the date and time you would like the message to be sent and click Save.

If all required content is provided, the Schedule Message button will become available.

Scheduled messages can be located by navigating to Messages > Scheduled. Hover over the arrow next to the scheduled message name to reveal available options including Edit, Copy as Draft, and Remove.

When attempting to edit a scheduled message, you will be notified that the message status will change from scheduled to draft. Click Yes, Continue Editing to proceed. Your message can now be edited and rescheduled.

Schedule a Send According to Contact's Time Zone

When scheduling a message for a future date, you are able to set the scheduled send time according to contact's time zone. Before this option becomes available, you will first need to designate a contact attribute as the contact's primary time zone.

When scheduling a message, choose Contact's time zone in the menu under Schedule time.

Throttling a Batch Message

Message sending can be throttled to govern your sending volumes over time for any given batch message. This is useful if:

• There is a need to spread out sending volumes because your domain has issues scaling to large volumes of inbound traffic.
• You are warming an IP or sending to a list of newly acquired contacts and there is deliverability concern with a particular volume.
• Your analysis of message open rates suggests that the number of messages per batch should be distributed unevenly. For example, front-loading the first batch and gradually tapering the volume.

To set up message throttling on a batch message:

1. Edit message schedule and select Throttled batch sending.
2. Select to batch either by audience size or max number of batches.
   • Audience size per batch -
   • Auto: specify the audience size per batch and the number of batches will be calculated automatically:
   
   • Custom: specify the number of batches and assign a percentage of the total audience to each batch:
   
   Note: Audience counts are re-calculated for each batch of a throttled send. Therefore, it is possible for the audience count to fluctuate during the throttling time period.
   • Max number of batches - specify the maximum number of batches and the audience size per batch will be calculated automatically:
   
3. Choose batch interval and allow days/hours.
   • Batch interval -
   • Daily: send a batch once per day on specific days.
   • Hourly: send a batch on specific hours of specific days.
   • Allowed days - which days of the week you would like the message to send.
   • Allowed hours - which hours of the day you would like the message to send.
   • Select minutes - the minutes of the hours of each day. For example, 10AM and 30 minutes will send at 10:30AM.
   • Start batch sending - the date after which the batch sending intervals will start.
   • Start time - the time after which the batch sending intervals will start.

For example, you could send each batch of messages every hour between the hours of 9AM and 7PM on weekdays until all messages have been sent.

In the next article learn about message performance.