How to add a delay between follow-up emails

This article explains how to add a delay element to your campaign sequence to give your follow-up emails a pause.

If you want to cultivate a positive relationship with your prospects, make sure your email communications are unobtrusive.

Our campaign builder lets you add Delay elements to your sequence for that purpose.

Delays help to avoid bombarding your prospects with emails too quickly and create natural pauses between follow-ups.

Let’s get into how delays work and how to add one to your sequence:

Add delay element to a sequence

When you’re on the Sequence step in a campaign builder, drag & drop a delay element to the field:

• drag it onto the field below the previous element until you see a dotted line
• drop to connect with the previous element

In the email flow, the delay element should be usually positioned between the two emails. After the delay, you can continue the sequence with Email, another Delay, or Goal element.

Set waiting time

• Click the delay element to activate settings pop-up.

One parameter determines how long a delay will take – the waiting time. You can think of it as a countdown timer to determine how long it will be until your next follow-up email.

To set a delay:

• Enter the number into the input field and choose a unit of time: hours, days or minutes. 

Minimum waiting time value is 1for every unit of time and should be a whole-number.

Note:  If you want to stop the campaign for a prospect after getting a response, we suggest setting a delay for at least 30 minutes to make sure the reply is tracked.

Maximum waiting time value is 30 days or 720 hours.

Another Delay element can be added to stack their waiting time values if you need a bigger pause before the follow-up. 

How delay works

Each recipient’s delay timer is calculated separately and starts when the email preceding a delay is sent to the recipient.

When the waiting time you set is over, the email succeeding a delay in the sequence will be sent.

Campaign schedule has higher priority than delay. The follow-up email will be sent if the campaign schedule allows emailing.

Have more questions? We’re here to help at help@snov.io or live-support chat.