If you’re a B2B company using Braze, how do you ensure your messages are only sent during the work week? Regardless of if you're in financial services, healthcare, or some other B2B vertical, it’s a fact that reaching your audience during the work week leads to better outcomes. While the sad news is that Braze does not provide a built-in option for scheduling messages exclusively on weekdays; the happy news is that our talented team at Covalent Marketing has developed a solution using Liquid code and Braze's Canvas Flow to make it happen. So, get out your pen and paper, because we’re gonna spill the beans on how to do it!
How to Schedule Messages for Weekday Delivery in Braze
In order to ensure that a message is only sent on weekdays you will need to know how to create a couple of things in Braze: 1) A content block containing Liquid logic to evaluate if the current day is a weekday, and 2) a Canvas to send the messages.
Using Canvas Flow provides the opportunity to determine if the message was sent and to resend as needed. You can use this approach for a single message campaign as well as multiple messages in a user journey.
The example below showcases how to execute a B2B Welcome Canvas with multiple message steps.
First you'll reate a content block (HTML or Drag and Drop) with the following Liquid code snippet:
{% assign today = 'now' | date: "%A" %}
{% if today == 'Saturday' or today == 'Sunday' %}
{% abort_message('weekend quiet hours') %}
{% endif %}
This code snippet assigns the day of the week (e.g., 'Monday', 'Tuesday') to the variable ‘today.’
Conditional messaging logic is used to evaluate if ‘today’ is Saturday or Sunday, if so, the message will be aborted.
The aborted message will be logged in the Message Error Log (Settings>Message Error Log) with the descriptive error “weekend quiet hours” as displayed below.
Next, you'll include the Content Block of Liquid at the top of your message body. This Liquid can be applied across multiple channels in the Canvas (e.g. Email, In-App, SMS, Push, WhatsApp), allowing for consistent experience no matter the channel.
Now create your Canvas with the following workflow:
You'll need to create a message step that includes the Content Block of Liquid at the top of your message body. Liquid can be applied across multiple channels in the Canvas (e.g. Email, In-App, SMS, Push, WhatsApp), allowing for consistent experience no matter what the channel.
Next, add a Decision Split immediately following the message in the Canvas and configure with a retargeting filter for “Has received message from Canvas step” and select the message from the previous step. Each path will execute the following:
Yes Path: Configure this path to continue the next message as needed. The qualifier being that message was sent on a weekday, and the original message was not aborted.
No Path: Configure this path with an immediate delay step configured to delay the user until the following Monday. The qualifier is that the message was determined to be scheduled for a Saturday or Sunday and was aborted.
Finally, add a message step directly after the Weekend delay step to resend the original message that was skipped due to weekday Liquid logic. Advance the user to the next message in the journey, Email 2 in our example, if applicable. Otherwise, if your Canvas is a for single message rather than a journey, you’re done!
By leveraging Canvas Flow and a bit of Liquid code, you can effectively manage the timing of your messages in Braze to ensure they are only sent on weekdays. Implementing these steps can help you achieve more strategic and effective messaging campaigns and contributes to achieving high engagement rates and respecting customers’ preferred communication times.
To learn more about strategic Braze features check out: Four Braze Features You Shouldn't Sleep On.