After you’ve built your creative for your message, you’ll move onto the Scheduling step.
For scheduling the message, you’ll have a few different options. Your first choice is to pick between a One Time message and an Automated message.
One Time
A one time message is just that—a message that is only sent once to your users.
For a one time message, you can send the message Immediately, or Scheduled. Immediately is a great option for sending breaking news—for everything else, we recommend scheduling your message.
Scheduled One Time
A scheduled message allows you to better reach your users when they want to be contacted. Scheduling a message means you won’t send someone a 4 AM push about a flash sale—potentially turning them off from your app.
When you schedule a one time message, you can choose a date and time for the message to be delivered to the end user. After picking the date and time, you’ll be able to choose Deliver simultaneously or Deliver in a user’s timezone.
Deliver Simultaneously means that all of your users will receive the message at the same time. This is great if all of your users in your audience are in the same place, or a similar time zone. Otherwise, we recommend choosing Deliver in a user’s timezone.
A Note About Timezones
When you choose for your message to be delivered in a user’s timezone, you’ll see another line to pick the beginning timezone. The default setting is the International Dateline—where our timezones technically begin. For the most part, we recommend keeping this default. Using the International Dateline as your starting point ensures that all of your end users get your message when they’re supposed to—say 2 PM local time.
You can change the beginning timezone to account for those one-off messages that shouldn’t go to some users until a certain time. If you’ve got a message that is relevant to your West Coast audience before it’s relevant to everyone else (say a delayed live stream), you’ll want to set your beginning timezone to the West Coast.
Regardless of what starting timezone, you pick, sends will continue for a full 24 hours, to cover all timezones available.
Automated Messages
You also have the option to automate your message. Automated messages can be sent out multiple times.
Similar to setting up a one-time message, you’ll be able to time your message to whenever it ought to send. This can be done:
- Hourly
- Daily
- Every other day
- Weekly
- Monthly
You can specify, down to the minute, when this message will send to users on whatever cadence you choose. And like with a one-time message, you’ll be able to specify if you’d like the message delivered simultaneously or delivered in a user’s timezone.
After you’ve chosen a cadence for when your message should be delivered, you’ll want to pick the frequency. This can be:
- Send only one message ever per device
- Allow multiple messages per device
If you choose to send multiple messages per device, you’ll be able to cap the number of messages the device receives. Choose to the total number of messages your end user receives, the frequency at which they receive them, or both.
Last but not least, you can choose the start and stop times for the message. If you’ve got a message about a sale or a limited-time offer, you’ll want to pick a start and stop for the message.
A start time can be different from your original scheduled time—that way if you need to hold the message for any reason, it won’t send immediately. You can also pick a stop time, or choose to manually stop the message.
Scheduling Terms and Examples
Here’s a quick overview of how each of the settings in your scheduling section plays out. We’ve also got some examples to tell you when to deliver each message.
|
Message Type |
Feature |
When to use it |
|---|---|---|
|
One Time |
Immediately |
You have a one-time message you want to send right away |
|
One Time |
Scheduled |
You have a one-time message you want to send in the future |
|
Automated |
Timing |
You have a message you want to send on a recurring basis (where the qualifying Audience is refreshed just before every send) |
|
Automated |
Time Zone Delivery |
You want every user to receive your recurring messages at the same time of day based on the user's local timezone (rather than Localytics delivering all messages simultaneously) |
|
Automated |
Starting Timezone |
You want to deliver the message in the user's local timezone, but you want to delay the start of the sends until a particular timezone - for example, due to an event that goes live for users in a particular region first. |
|
Automated |
Frequency |
Since users may be able to qualify for your recurring message more than once (depending on the Audience definition), you want to cap the number of messages a user may receive either within a certain time interval or ever |
|
Automated |
Start and Stop |
You want your recurring message to execute from the selected start time until the selected stop time |
Next up—confirm and send the message!