With Intercom, it's easy to schedule a message to send at exactly the right time.
There are three ways you can do this in Intercom:
Schedule messages to send during or outside your office hours.
Set a specific delivery times during which your message will send.
Schedule a particular date and time for your message to start and stop sending.
Schedule your message to send when your team is available
You can schedule messages to send only when your team are available to reply. This ensures users get a quick response, and no leads are left behind.
When creating a message, just scroll down to the 'Frequency and scheduling' section. From here, choose whether to send your message during your office hours, outside of your office hours, or within a custom time set by you.
Where possible, we recommend scheduling your message to send during your office hours.
Note:
If you choose to start sending your message immediately, you'll still need to set it live first.
Delivery times for emails and mobile push messages are calculated based on the recipient's timezone, to avoid any disruption at inconvenient hours.
Delivery times for chat and post messages are calculated based on your app’s timezone, to avoid delivering outside of business hours and setting false expectations for a "real time" response.
The message will not appear paused outside these times, but they will be inactive.
Scheduling a date and time for your message to go live
It's easy to schedule a time for your message to go live. Your message will begin sending at that time, assuming that customers match the other filters that you set. When creating a message, you will see the option to schedule a time for your message:
Notes:
Scheduling a live or paused message is not supported. This feature only works when your Outbound message is still in draft form.
The time and date you set will be your app's timezone, not your customer's timezone. For example, imagine your app is set to Pacific time and your customer's timezone is New Zealand. In this case, when you schedule a message to send at 9am on Wednesday, it will send to your customer at 2pm on Tuesday.
How to send messages during specific times
When creating a message, you will see the option to schedule a time for your message to go live in the 'Schedule your message' section.
In this section you can also select custom days and times that you want your message to be sent. Your automated email or push message will only send during those times, assuming all other filters you set are matched.
For example, you could set your email or push message to only send during weekdays and within business hours. You'll get better open and engagement rates during that window.
Note: event-triggered messages follow the schedule too
An event-triggered message only sends if the event happens while the schedule is open. If the event happens outside the days and times you set, the message isn't sent for that event. It isn't held until the schedule opens. For example, if a message is set to send from 10am to 5pm and the event happens at 5am, that person doesn't get the message. This also applies to Series steps triggered by an event.
When this is useful: the message only makes sense at certain times. For example, an in-app message offering live help should only show while your team is online.
When to avoid it: every event must get a message. Receipts, password resets, order updates, or monthly statements would be lost whenever the event happens at night or at a weekend.
What to do instead:
Set the schedule to "On any day, any time", so the message sends whenever the event happens.
Send the event from your own system only during the hours you want.
Target people with audience rules instead of an event. Audience-based messages are checked again later, so they send once the schedule opens, if the person still matches.
Learn more in Using events as filters and triggers.
How the custom time works
Your email or push message will only send to users who match all filters during the custom time that you set.
When possible the recipient's time zone will be used, but if a recipient's time zone is unknown the app's time zone will be used instead.
Note: For fixed messages, sending during custom times will only send to customers whose timezone overlaps with your app's timezone during the window it's open, for example:
If you set your message to send from 9am-12pm on Wednesdays only, that window will "open" at 9am in your app's timezone, then any customer who is between 9am-12pm in their timezone will receive the message.
When the window "closes" at 12pm in your app's timezone no further customers will receive it.
A customer who is 8 hours ahead of you won't receive the message at all, since there is no overlap during that 3 hour window.
If you have a global customer base, a better option might be to set it up as a dynamic message with a stop date, so it sends to everyone over the course of 24 hours as their timezone matches the custom sending window.
Note: If a user does not interact with an Outbound Chat, they will continue to see that chat when they move to different URLs.
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