Personalizing your emails is almost as crucial as sending them at the right time of the day. That's why Autoklose introduced a new Custom field that allows adding information about contacts' time zone.
How does this work?
As with all other contact fields, the Time Zone can be found on the Contact fields page https://app.autoklose.com/settings/contact-fields
This is one of Autoklose's default fields that can not be deleted. As for editing, the Edit button is available on the right side. It is possible to set the Default value, i.e., the time zone that will be used only if there is no such information for specific contact/s.
Additionally, this field can be deactivated, that is, not used and shown on the contact information page.
As the Time Zone field is of this specific type, other text or numbers can not be added as a Default value. Only one of the available time zones can be selected from the drop-down.
Why is this field useful?
In rare occasions and really specific use cases, it can be used directly in campaigns as a customization field. Simply use the Insert Token dropdown and click the Time Zone.
But this is not why this field is really created; most importantly, it can be used together with the Sending Schedules feature to send emails to recipients only in their time zone. This way, you can avoid emails being sent to some contacts when they are outside of work hours. Please note that system will not pause sending for the campaign. It will continue sending to other available and scheduled recipients and will attempt sending to contact with a time zone set only when the appropriate time is reached and if there is a daily sending limit still available.
A new feature consists of conditional tokens that depend on the recipient's time zone and can be accessed inside Editor under the {;} Special Tokens dropdown.
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Time Of The Day: Before sending an email, Autoklose checks the recipient's time zone and replaces the token with the appropriate time of day: morning (5 AM - 12 PM), afternoon (12 PM - 6 PM), or evening (6 PM - 5 AM).
For example:
"Good #{{Time Of The Day}}” → when sending → “Good morning” if it’s before 12 PM
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Day Of The Week: Autoklose checks the recipient's time zone and replaces the token with the corresponding day of the week.
Use case:
"Have a great #{{Day Of The Week}} !" → when sending → "Have a great Monday !"
The replacement is determined based on the following priority:
- Recipient time zone
- Campaign time zone
- User time zone
If the recipient's time zone is unavailable, the system will automatically use the next available time zone in the sequence.
How to add Time Zone information to contact/s?
If there is a need to add this information to a handful of contacts, the time zone can be added using the Contact Single page. Simply click on the contact email address when in Contacts view, and Edit contact information. The Time Zone field will be available only if it is in an active state. Choose any value from the dropdown, or type it in. Once done, hit the Save button, or in case contact is already in use in some campaigns, use the option to push those changes and update campaign information too.
This is a great way to edit a small number of contacts, but it can get time-consuming for larger lists. For that reason, we added functionality to add the Time Zone information via a CSV file.
Please note that the time zone inside the CSV file must be in IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) time zone format. This format is case-sensitive and should look something like this America/Phoenix.
Correct format examples in the screenshot below are highlighted in green, while in red are the ones that will not be accepted. Contacts with an incorrect time zone format will not be imported and displayed on the import result page. They will be shown as Not imported/Invalid rows.
Please note that it is perfectly fine not to include the time zone in the file if it is not available. In that case, and for contacts without this information, Autoklose will use the Campaign, Sending schedule, or Default value for the time zone (if set in the Contact field page).
To be able to map this field on the file import screen, it needs to be in an active state, or else, it will not be displayed. Once in the Map CSV table screen, connect the field containing the time zone information from the file, to the Autoklose Time Zone field. Once ready, hit the Add Contacts button and wait for the import to finish. In the end, the result screen will show up, with an additional option to download and check all contacts that failed to upload. For more information and detailed instructions on how to import a CSV file, please check this article.
The recipient time zone has higher priority over the Sending schedule or Campaign time zone settings. If available and enabled, Autoklose will always follow contact information over the campaign's general settings, and only if this value is not available, will it use contact default (fallback) or the campaign and time zone set in a specific sending schedule.
All subscription tiers can map the Time Zone information, if necessary use it in campaigns as a personalization token, but only Advanced and Accelerated Kloser plans have the ability to utilize the Recipient Time Zone in the Sending Schedule feature.
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If you have any questions, do not hesitate to initiate a live chat.
Your autoklose.com team!
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