I am seeking advice how to avoid sending emails during weekends and statutory holidays.
We need to stop sending emails when ever there is a Holiday, Saturday and Sunday.
Here one more complexity is Holidays dates may vary yearly.
Email sends may be form Automations or Journeys.
Every email send from SFMC must happen only weekdays and Working days. Holidays list and dates will feed every year into a DE.
Thanks in advance.
To ensure that emails are not sent during weekends and statutory holidays in Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC), you can set up a solution that takes into account dynamic holiday dates. This involves creating a Data Extension (DE) that contains the holiday dates for the current year and configuring email sends to exclude weekends and holidays. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to achieve this:
1. **Create a Data Extension (DE) for Holidays:**
- Create a DE to store the holiday dates for the current year. The DE should have at least two columns: one for the date (HolidayDate) and another for the holiday name (HolidayName).
2. **Populate the DE with Holiday Dates:**
- Use an automation or manual import to populate the DE with the holiday dates for the current year. You may need to maintain this list annually.
3. **Create a Query Activity:**
- Create a SQL query activity that retrieves the holiday dates from your DE and combines them with a list of weekends (Saturdays and Sundays) for the entire year. This query should create a list of dates to exclude from email sends.
- Sample SQL Query:
sql
SELECT
DateAdd(Day,ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY [Date]),'1900-01-01') AS ExclusionDate
FROM
(
SELECT HolidayDate AS [Date] FROM Holidays
UNION
SELECT '2023-01-07' AS [Date] /* Sample date for Saturday */
UNION
SELECT '2023-01-08' AS [Date] /* Sample date for Sunday */
) ExclusionDates
4. **Create a Sendable DE with Exclusion Dates:**
- Create a new sendable DE that includes all your email subscribers, along with the exclusion dates generated in step 3.
5. **Segmentation:**
- When you create email sends, use this sendable DE as your target audience. Ensure that you use a suppression list based on the sendable DE with exclusion dates. This will prevent emails from being sent on weekends and holidays.
6. **Automation:**
- Set up an automation in SFMC to refresh the list of exclusion dates periodically. You can schedule this automation to run annually or as frequently as needed to update the holiday list.
7. **Testing:**
- Before sending any emails to your entire list, test your segmentation and suppression rules to ensure that emails are not sent on weekends and holidays.
8. **Monitor and Maintain:**
- Continuously monitor and maintain your holiday DE to ensure it includes the correct dates for each year. Make adjustments as necessary.
