A regular email campaign runs on a predefined schedule. Two schedule rules decide when the first survey is sent to a customer and how often recurring surveys follow. A third setting, the throttle, keeps the same person from being surveyed too often.

Each regular email campaign follows its own schedule. Surveys sent by your other campaigns do not hold a customer back from being surveyed here, unless you set the throttle to count them.

In this tutorial we will cover the details of each schedule rule configuration:

Once you switch ON your regular email campaign, the first survey will be sent out to customers that have been imported to Retently a specific number of days ago or more.

For example, if you have configured to send the first survey in 3 days, then a customer will receive the survey only after 3 days have passed since the date they have been imported.

IMPORTANT: If a customer has been imported more than 3 days ago (e.g., 20 days ago), then they will receive the first survey immediately as soon as you switch ON the campaign.

The first survey will be sent only to customers that have never been surveyed before in this campaign. If one of your other campaigns has already surveyed them, they can still receive the first survey here. If they have already been surveyed in this campaign, then you can only send them recurring surveys in this campaign.

The customer will continue receiving regular surveys every specific number of days, counted from the date of the last survey they received in this campaign, which might be the first survey or a previous recurring survey.

Surveys sent by your other campaigns do not restart this countdown. Only the surveys sent by this campaign do.

Reminder surveys do not restart the countdown either. Reminders are follow-ups to the survey they were sent for, so the countdown keeps running from that survey. If reminders are still scheduled for a customer, the next recurring survey waits until the reminder sequence has finished, so the customer never has two survey sequences running at the same time.

The customer will receive a single survey in this campaign and no further surveys from it. That is the first survey, sent only to the customers that qualify, as described in the first chapter.

They can still be surveyed by your other campaigns.

The schedule rules above decide when a customer is due for a survey from this campaign. The throttle is the guard that sits on top of them: if the customer was surveyed recently, this campaign holds off.

You will find it on the Schedule step, under Throttle the survey to avoid over-surveying contacts. Switch it ON and you get two settings.

The time window. Under Do not survey contacts that were surveyed in, choose the number of days. Anyone surveyed inside that window is skipped for now. You can set anything from 1 to 365 days.

Which surveys count. Choose Any campaign or This campaign. Any campaign counts surveys from all of your campaigns, whichever channel they were sent on. This campaign counts only the surveys this campaign sent.

This is a delay, not an exclusion. A customer skipped by the throttle is not dropped from the campaign. As soon as the time window passes, they become eligible again and the campaign picks them up on one of its next runs. Nothing needs to be re-imported or reset.

The throttle does not replace the recurring interval, it is checked alongside it. A customer is surveyed only when both agree: the recurring interval for this campaign has elapsed, and the throttle window has passed. So if your recurring interval is 30 days and your throttle is set to 90 days on Any campaign, the throttle is the one deciding, and the customer is surveyed no more often than every 90 days across everything you send.

NOTE: New campaigns are created with the throttle switched ON, set to 30 days, counting Any campaign.

One of my campaigns shows a “Skip contacts surveyed by other campaigns” option. What is it?

It is the older way of avoiding over-surveying, kept switched on so that your existing campaigns keep behaving exactly as they did before the throttle existed. When it is ON, a customer is skipped if any of your campaigns already surveyed them within this campaign's recurring interval. When it is OFF, only this campaign's own surveys count.

Why do I not see it when I create a new campaign?

Because it is being retired. The throttle does the same job and does it better, so the older option is only shown on campaigns that already have it switched ON. New campaigns never show it. It is scheduled for removal on 31 August 2027.

How is it different from the throttle?

The older option always reuses this campaign's recurring interval as its time window, and it always counts every campaign. The throttle lets you set its own window, independently of the recurring interval, and lets you choose whether other campaigns count at all. That is why we recommend moving to it.

Should I switch the older option off?

Only after you have set up the throttle to give you the protection you want, otherwise the campaign may start surveying customers your other campaigns surveyed recently. Switch the throttle ON with Any campaign scope first, pick your time window, then switch the older option off and save.

IMPORTANT: Switching the older option off is one way. Once you save the campaign, the option disappears from the Schedule step and you cannot switch it back on yourself. Get in touch with us if you need it restored.