Campaign Scheduling, How It Works and Why You Should Use It

One very important factor to consider when sending simulated phishing emails is the delivery schedule.

Recipients expect to receive certain emails at certain times of the day, and may become suspicious of emails that arrive outside of normal hours.

• E.G - If your organisation's operating hours are 09:00 - 17:00 Monday-Friday, and you send a simulated email claiming to be from the 'Finance Team' on a Saturday, the chances are high it will be ignored or reported.

Another thing to remember is that recipients are people, and people talk, not just via email but also in person, over coffee, by the water cooler and to those immediately around them.

This is great for morale within the organisation, but it also increases the chance of your recipients spreading the word that a phishing test is running.

To combat this, Phishing Tackle allows you to customise the delivery schedule when creating a simulated phishing campaign, we shall cover in detail how it works below.

Scheduling Details

Here we see 'Step 3 - Scheduling Details' within the Campaign Creation Wizard

1. Start Time 
   • Choose at what point to start your campaign.
   • If you choose to Repeat the campaign, the time you choose will be used for all repetitions.
     • E.G - If you set Repetition to Daily, and a Start Time of 12:00, the entire campaign will repeat at 12:00 the next day, until stopped.
2. Send immediately or stagger over time
   
   • Choose whether to:
     • Send all emails at the start of the campaign (recommended for baseline tests).
     • Stagger the sending schedule over a set period of time (recommended for regular phishing tests).
       • The staggering is split into 3 sections:
       • Quantity & Period 
         
         • E.G - 5 Days.
       • Start/End Time
         • E.G - 09:00 - 17:00.
       • On these days
         • E.G - Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu & Fri.
3. Exclusion Dates
   • Add exclusion date Tags (configured within Organisation > Exclusion Dates).
   • Any dates associated with these tags will be skipped when sending campaign emails.
4. Repetition
   • Set how often, if at all, you wish to repeat the entire campaign.
   • Note: Be mindful of your scheduling when selecting the repetition.

Important Notes

• The Repetition begins when the emails have finished sending.
  • E.G - If you set Repetition to Biweekly and spread the emails over the course of 1 Week the campaign will repeat 2 weeks after the last email has sent (a total of 3 weeks from the campaign's start time).
• We do not recommend Daily repetition.
• Pay attention to the orange banner, it tells you the last day your campaign will send on (before any repetition):
  
• Watch out for the red banner, it tells you if you've selected more days than your schedule allows!
  

Should you require any further assistance with this article, or any aspect of our platform, please contact support.