by James Campbell 
A few days ago Pardot released a new feature which now allows you to specify the exact date that an email is sent out in an Engagement Program.
I cannot begin to count the number of times that I advised customers to use Scheduled Emails in Pardot when they asked how best to ensure that an email is sent out on a specific date – the response to this question is no longer so straightforward.
This heavily requested feature opens up the use of Engagement Studio for many different ‘point in time’ communications (e.g. event-related emails) rather than just continuous nurture activities. Engagement Studio Programs are now a great way of sending out your pre-event and post–event emails to delegates, whereas before we would have usually advised Scheduled List Emails.
When you specify a send time in an Engagement Studio Program, Pardot will only send that email on the specified date and not after. If a Prospect reaches the step after the send date, they will just skip the step. For example, you may setup a pre-event program to send an email each week for the 4 weeks prior to the event. If someone registers between 3 and 4 weeks before the event, they would enter the program, skip the first email and go straight to the next email ready for sending 3 weeks out from the event.
As this is a brand-new feature we are still identifying things to watch out for, however an initial observation is that you should be careful when adding ‘Waits’ to other ‘Actions’, ‘Rules’ or ‘Triggers’. This is because ‘Waits’ in a program could prevent Prospects reaching an email in time for the specified send date.
Another consideration for using this feature is that the time of send is not an option so if you need to be specific about the time of day that the email goes out, Scheduled Emails are still your best bet.
Overall, the Nebula team are thrilled to see this addition to Engagement Studio and more posts utilising this feature will follow in due course.
With scheduled email steps in Engagement Studio, you can ditch counting and define a send date on the email action itself.