Use a follow up timer based on local time

Neelke Stadler Updated by Neelke Stadler

You have a great chat service that help users move towards positive behaviour. To assist users in creating impactful habits you want to remind them at times.

On Turn, you can set up a follow-up timer to remind users within a 24 hour period. In our How to set up a follow-up timer article we share two use case where this feature will be useful and show you how to do it.

This article focus on setting up a follow-up timer to allow you to send a message at a specific local time, instead of after a specific number of hours.

Send a follow-up message at a specific local time

Let's say you want to share the latest news with users daily at 13pm.

To do that you need to ask them if they want to get a news update from you and use that interaction to set up a follow-up timer. Once the timer completes, a message with the latest news can be delivered to users at the set time.

Because the message will be delivered within 24 hours since the trigger interaction you will be using a session message and not a template message to do the follow-up. For that reason you do not need user consent to send the message.

However, to set up a follow-up timer you need a defined interaction with the user. We highly recommend that you provide a clear prompt so that the user will expect the message. And then use their response to the prompt as the trigger for the timer.

How do I set this up?

As shared in the previous article you need to set up two automations.

  • The first automation sets the timer based on a user interaction, e.g. if the user clicks the "Yes, please" button the timer is set for them.
    • Trigger: Button pressed
    • Action: Set a follow-up timer
  • The second automation determines what happens when the timer completes, e.g. send the "Latest news" piece of content.

How is the local time determined?

The localised time will be derived from the user's phone number. E.g. +27 will result in a SAST timezone message, likewise will +91 mean the user gets the message at the determined time (say 8am) within the IST timezone.

Things to note:

  • If the user is interacting with a +27 number whilst they are in India, they will get the message based on the SAST timezone and not the IST timezone.
  • In our news example, if the user selects 'Yes, please' at 12pm they will get the news at 13pm on the same day, not the next day.
  • The follow-up timer schedules a once-off follow up messages (within 24 hours max), not a recurring follow-up. This means if you want to send an update the next day the user needs to select that again option again. Use buttons with your 'Latest news' content so users can request the news for the next day again.

That's it!

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