How does email timing work when a workflow runs around a date?

Sound familiar?

You've built a webinar countdown and you're wondering what happens to someone who signs up the day before. Will they get the "one week to go" email a week late? Will they get all five emails at once? Or you've seen the words On joining, Pinned and Squash next to your emails and you're not sure which to choose. Or someone joined late and didn't get every email, and you want to know why ⏰.

What's happening

In a workflow that runs around a date, every email says when it goes. There are three choices in a shared-date workflow:

Nobody ever gets an email after the moment it's about. Nobody gets a pile of emails all at once.

Why it works this way

The system never reads your emails to guess what they say. You tell it, by choosing the timing. That's the whole idea: the timing you choose should match what the email says.

Each person's whole schedule is worked out the moment they join. That's why it can be checked in advance, and why it never sends something late 🎯.

What to do now

  1. Create the workflow with A shared date (see "Which kind of email workflow should I use?"). Fill in:
    • What's the date? The date, and a time if you want hour-level reminders such as "1 hour before".
    • What is it? A webinar, An offer closing, An event or Something else. This names your merge fields, for example [DAYS UNTIL WEBINAR].
    • After the date passes… Choose End everyone's journey, or Continue (for after-date emails) if you want to send a "thanks for coming" or "here's the replay" email afterwards.
    • Minimum gap between squashed emails: 2 a day, 1 a day (the usual choice) or Every 2 days. Late joiners never get squashed emails closer together than this.
    • If not everything can fit: see the next section.
  2. Click Create Workflow & Add Emails → and add your emails.
  3. On each email, click its timing label and choose On joining, Pinned or Squash. For Pinned, choose how long before or after the date.
  4. Read the hint under each email. Pinned emails are safe to say "tomorrow" or "in an hour". Emails that may move (On joining and Squash) should be written so they make sense whenever they land. Use merge fields such as [DAYS UNTIL WEBINAR] instead of typing dates. They fill in for each person at the moment of sending, so they're always right.
  5. Press Preview as a joiner to see exactly what someone joining today would get, with real dates. Try a few join dates, including one the day before.
  6. Turn the workflow's Active toggle on when you're happy.

[SCREENSHOT TO CAPTURE: the Emails step of a shared-date workflow showing the timeline strip and the timing labels On joining / Squash / Pinned on each email]

An example: a webinar on Friday 31 October

Your emails: a Welcome (On joining), three education emails (Squash), Tomorrow! (Pinned, 1 day before) and We're live (Pinned, 1 hour before).

When not everything fits

If a person joins so late that the squashed emails won't fit at your minimum gap, your choice under If not everything can fit decides:

The emails that don't fit are dropped for that person only, quietly. They don't receive a note about it. You can see what was dropped, and why, in Who gets what, and when on the workflow page. You decide this once, when you set up the workflow. It never changes at the last minute.

If you want more detail

The question behind the question

"Will a late joiner get a confusing email?" Not if the timing matches the words. A pinned email can't arrive after its moment, and squashed emails written to make sense at any time can't be wrong. Merge fields like [DAYS UNTIL WEBINAR] work out the number for each person when the email is sent. That's how one email can say "3 days to go" to one person and "1 day to go" to another, and be right both times ✅.

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