About SMS Quiet Hours

In Mailchimp, quiet hours prevent your marketing text messages from being sent during specific times of the day, typically late at night or early in the morning. This ensures you comply with local laws and avoid disturbing your contacts.

In this article, you'll learn about SMS quiet hours for countries with an SMS marketing program.

Things to know

Here are some things to know.

• SMS Marketing is available as an add-on for users with the Essentials plan or higher.
• You are responsible for knowing and following the quiet hours regulations for the countries where you send messages. You are responsible for ensuring your messages comply with local laws. When you schedule an SMS campaign or automation, Mailchimp checks the recipient's country and time zone. If the send time falls within a quiet hour window, we hold the message and send it once the quiet period ends. Generally, only transactional or user-initiated responses should bypass quiet hours.
• The option to bypass quiet hours is only available for specific triggers, such as Contact texts, a keyword or Transactional events.
• Before you can send messages, you must submit an application and receive approval. Requirements vary by country.
• You need SMS credits to send messages. Credits are a unit of payment separate from your monthly marketing plan.
• At this time, you can only send text messages to subscribed SMS contacts from the country that’s associated with your SMS Marketing program. If you have registered senders in multiple countries, you can send messages to subscribed contacts in each country you're registered for. For example, if you have a sender registered in the UK and one registered in the US, you can send text messages to subscribed SMS contacts in the UK and the US.

How it works

Quiet hours create a "do not disturb" window for your contacts. The specific hours depend on the country code of the recipient's phone number.

By default, Mailchimp prevents automated SMS messages from being sent during quiet hours. If a contact triggers a journey during this time, the system queues the message and sends it when the quiet window ends.

For specific interactions such as a "text-to-join" confirmation or a transactional receipt, you can configure the message to send immediately, regardless of the time.

Quiet Hours On (Default): The message respects the recipient's local time zone restrictions and varies by country (e.g., 9 PM to 8 AM).

Quiet Hours Off (Bypass): The message is sent immediately after the trigger event occurs, even if it is 3 AM for the recipient.

If you send a campaign to a mixed audience (e.g., contacts in New York and London), Mailchimp sends the message to each contact at the correct time for their specific time zone.

As a default setting, your primary country, sending number, and quiet hours are displayed. Be sure your preferred country and sending number is listed before sending SMS messages. Quiet hours can be set up for multi-countries and multi-audiences. Multi-countries and multi-audiences can be added during the SMS marketing program setup and changed from the Opt-in preferences located in the SMS settings by selecting the Double Opt-in option. Once the Double Opt-in option is enabled, multi-audiences can receive SMS from a sending country.

Set up custom quiet hours

To customize quiet hours for your SMS marketing program, follow these steps.

1. Click SMS.
2. Click Settings.
3. Click Country Settings.
4. The primary sending country number is set by default. To change the sending country, click the drop-down arrow in the sending number field to select a preferred country.
5. In the Quiet hours section, click the drop-down to set preferred quiet hours and timezone. Use the recommended Quiet hours by county table provided below to input the best hours.
6. Click Update to save your changes.

Configure send times

You can adjust the quiet hours settings for individual SMS steps within an automation flow.

To configure send times for a Send SMS action in an automation flow, follow these steps.

1. Open the automation flow you want to work with.
2. Click the Send SMS action you want to edit.
3. In the side panel, look for the Send time section.
4. Review the current status (e.g., "As soon as possible, outside of quiet hours").
5. Click Edit to change the setting.

Bypass quiet hours

To send time-sensitive messages immediately, turn off the quiet hours restriction for that specific step.

1. In the Send SMS settings panel, scroll to Quiet hours.
2. Toggle Turn on quiet hours to Off.
3. Review the warning message regarding compliance.
4. Click Save.

The message status will update to Send during quiet hours.

Quiet hours by country

The following table lists the default quiet hours and restrictions for supported.

Next steps

Now that you know more about Mailchimp’s SMS Marketing, check out these resources to get started.

About SMS Marketing with Mailchimp Learn about SMS marketing in Mailchimp.

Import SMS Marketing Contacts to Mailchimp If you have contacts who have already opted in to your SMS marketing, import them to your Mailchimp audience with a CSV or TXT file.

Create and Send a Marketing SMS Learn how to create and send SMS marketing messages to your subscribed contacts.