With the plus/minus option in a wait condition, you can determine if a contact should move to the next step in an automation (or jump to/proceed through a goal) a certain number of days before or after a date stored in a custom date-based field for that contact.
You may want to use this to send a promotional code or coupon prior to a contact’s birthday, or send follow-up emails to a contact after an event date.
It is important to note that when creating a date-based wait condition:
- “Plus” translates to “X amount of days BEFORE the date stored in your custom date field”
- “Minus” means “X amount of days AFTER the date stored in your custom date field”
For example, let’s say my contact has a webinar date of August 11th. In my automation, I want to send:
- a reminder 7 days before their webinar date
- a reminder the day of the webinar
- a follow-up email the day after the webinar
This is the wait condition I would set up for the 7-day reminder:
When a contact reaches that Wait Until action, they will queue there until August 4th because August 4th (current date) plus 7 is August 11th (webinar date).
This is the wait condition I would set up for the day-of reminder:
And this is the wait condition I would set up for the 1-day follow-up:
When a contact reaches that Wait action, they will queue there until August 12th because August 12th (current date) minus 1 is August 11th (webinar date).