You can skip sending on selected days when you schedule your GPass campaigns — and now, you can skip holidays too.
After all, who's going to take the time to review your pitch and reply to your campaign on a holiday?
In this quick guide I'll cover why you'll want to use GPass's Skip Holidays feature… how to set up your skippable holidays in the dashboard… and the option in the campaign settings to skip holidays in your campaign.
Why You Need to Skip Sending Emails on Holidays
Skipping holidays might seem unnecessary if you're only looking at a single-message campaign with a modest volume of recipients and no follow-ups. You initiate and send that campaign, it goes out that day, and no holidays get in the way.
However, not every campaign is quite so neatly contained.
That's when skipping holidays (and skipping other days, like perhaps weekends) comes into play.
For example, you might want to use the Skip Holidays feature when…
- You have a large campaign (or a campaign that uses end times for a tight window) that's spread across multiple days.
- You run a campaign with auto follow-ups.
- You're running a recurring campaign, say to every new contact you add to your recipient list.
- You're throttling your campaign to spread it out across several days.
In other words: There are lots of different scenarios where you could be sending emails across several days — and/or when automations are running at various cadences.
In those situations, it's entirely possible you could have emails go out on major holidays — when your recipients aren't at their computers or looking to do business.
That's when it's good to have some defined holidays in place.
How to Set Up Holidays in the GPass Dashboard
We aren't going to tell you which holidays you should skip.
After all, holidays are different all over the world; you know where your prospects are and when they're likely to be off work and celebrating.
That's why you'll need to define which holidays you want GPass to skip.
Your list of holidays to skip is established at the account level, meaning you define your holidays in one central place. You can then select whether to skip those designated holidays on a campaign-by-campaign basis.
Also, note that the holidays are based on your time zone. So if you're in the Central time zone, Christmas runs from 12:00 A.M. Central through 11:59 P.M. Central on December 25th.
Setting up holidays in the GPass dashboard
Now it's time to set up some holidays.
Go to the GPass Settings page. There you'll find the Manage Holidays section.
You'll see a few common US federal holidays we've automatically added to the Standard Holidays section.
Marking a holiday as observed
The toggle switch next to each of the holidays, under the Observed heading, controls whether GPass will skip that holiday.
Toggle the switch to turn a holiday on or off — which determines whether GPass will skip sending on that day.
Adding a custom holiday
You can add any holiday (or any other day where you don't want to send emails) using the Add a custom holiday feature.
Type in the name of the holiday, then select the date. Once it's entered, click the Add this holiday button.
That holiday will now appear in your Custom Holidays list.
By default, we assume you're observing all your custom holidays and won't send messages on those dates.
Using the "Skip Holidays" Feature in a Campaign
Now that you've set up some holidays, you can choose whether or not to skip them in each campaign you create.
When you're working on a campaign in Gmail with the GPass Chrome extension, open up the GPass panel in the compose window.
Go to the Schedule section. In the Time area, check the box to Skip holidays.
And now that campaign, and all of its recurring sends, auto follow-ups, and triggered emails will skip over the holidays you've designated that you're observing in your dashboard.
GPass will also let you know if today is a holiday you've chosen to skip when you send your campaign.
Note: You don't need to set up holidays before you set up a campaign to skip them in that campaign.
For example, if you have a recurring campaign that runs every week, Skip Holidays is on for the campaign, and you add a holiday after the campaign has been running for a while — it will still skip the new holiday in the future.
Skip Holidays: Next Steps
Skip Holidays is a feature available in all GPass plans.
And it's just one of GPass's powerful, but easy-to-use, scheduling features. Those also include:
- Scheduling when to send a campaign (now, or any date in the future).
- Selecting what time of day to send your campaign and automated follow-ups.
- Choosing specific days to skip, whether those are weekends or any other days of the week.
- Throttling the number of emails you send per day.
- Adding delays between your emails.
- Creating powerful recurring campaigns.
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