Is it possible to set a custom date field to the last day of the month, every month? My goal is to use an timer in an email that shows the upcoming deadline. Some of the records have a deadline every month, every other month and every 3 months. This field would be used to countdown to with each monthly deadline reminder. I just am not sure if it’s possible.
Thanks
Keith
Hi Keith. Can you share a little more on how this idea might work. I am seeing where you might run into some roadblocks, but I wanted to see if you could run through the idea you’re working on, specifically the part about setting the custom field date each month. Would this be something that you would want to happen after the monthly reminder is sent, and then some sort of loop sets the contact up for their next reminder?
I feel like if we run into roadblocks with this initial idea of resetting a date with automation, there might be another easy way to go about this.
Ok, a little while back I posted about a recurring email to clients with reminders about their account. In our case it’s a deadline to manage the personalized message on their newsletters that we produce (physical direct mail) Each client gets an email about a week before their deadline. We want to be able to put a countdown to their deadline and for that to work, I need to have a field that has the last day of the month in it, for the counter to count down to…
A monthly client gets an email on the 24th and then the 28 of the month.
A Odd Month client gets an email on the 24th and the 28th of every other month (odd Jan, Mar, May etc) so they would get the emails on the 24th and 28th of the prior month (Dec, Feb, Apr etc.)
If each active client record has a field with the last day of the month, the emails can have the countdown and the campaign with a loop in it would run the emails necessary. I have everything but a way to put the last day of the next month in a custom field. Frequencies aside, if we narrow it down.
Today is the 19th of September, on the 24th of this month an email is going out to a client that has a newsletter produced for the month of November and this email will have a countdown to the last day of September which is the 30th. On the first of October they’ve reached their deadline to personalize that newsletter. I have to create the urgency in the reminders of the deadline. I hope that makes what I need the field for clear. If there’s a better way to do the countdown I’m up to hear it. Seems like PlusThis has a good countdown, just needs a field with the date and that date needs to change once per month so it’s always up to date and the last day of the month changes 30th, 31st, 28th and sometimes 29th (leap year) although if the 28th is the deadline date on leap year, who cares right? It’s a free day anyway 
Thanks
Keith
Yeah, this is what I was gathering from your initial post. The roadblock I am running into, is the ‘Set Field Value’ automation calls for a specific date to be configured in the process. I can see this happening with the help of the API / an integration like Plus This… but with the tools available in app, I can’t see how we can make that happen, without some complex campaign structuring.
I believe Plus This has a trigger that would allow for you to run a call each month to get that date changed, with ease, and then the campaign could run its loop to run a week before the date in the field.
The complex idea revolves around building out a year long campaign of weekly reminders, but I can see that easily becoming convoluted.
Oh man, I might be hyping PlusThis a little but they’ve got features that do everything needed in this date arena. I have to have 2 fields that have certain dates and months. 1. the last day of the month 2. next month. Both of which I need to use to a. Set a countdown to a deadline (Last day of the month) b. merge into an email of the issue month the deadline is for. So PlusThis has a Date Calculator feature. Talk about getting this done in a hurry.
I’m sure it can be done manually but I ain’t that cool.
Keith