Microsoft Outlook’s ability to schedule an email’s delivery for a later time or date is a handy feature. Sometimes, you may be trying to stay on top of your email responses by composing several emails before you leave for the day, but you don’t want to send them right away. Once you’ve composed your email, you can schedule when you want it sent. Follow these steps to schedule an Outlook email send time on Windows, macOS, or the web.
How to Schedule an Email in Outlook (General Procedure)
Scheduling emails in Outlook is a great way to send messages at a later date and time.
This can be extremely useful for a variety of purposes, including sending reminders, meeting follow-ups, or anything else you want to send but don’t need to send right away.
The best part is that learning how to schedule emails in Outlook is simple. Simply follow the steps below and you’ll be a pro in no time!
- Step 1: Create a New Email
Log into your Outlook account, select the ‘New Email’ button, and compose your email as usual, including the subject line, email body, and recipient(s). - Step 2: Enable the ‘Delay Delivery’ Option
After you’ve written your email, use the ‘Delay Delivery’ feature to schedule it to be sent at a later time. To schedule your email, click the ‘Options’ button in the header menu and select ‘Delay Delivery’. - Step 3: Determine the Delivery Date and Time
When you click the ‘Delay Delivery’ button, a popup window will appear on your screen. Select the ‘Do not deliver before’ checkbox in the ‘Delivery Options’ section. Once marked, choose a date and time for your email to be delivered to the recipient(s). - Step 4: Click the ‘Close’ and ‘Send’ Buttons
Close the pop-up window after selecting the best date and time to send your email, and click the ‘Send’ button to schedule your email in Outlook. When you press the ‘Send’ button, your email will be saved in the Outbox folder and sent automatically at the specified date and time.
Schedule an Outlook Email on Windows
It only takes a few clicks in Outlook on Windows to schedule an email to send later.
- Step 1: Launch Outlook on Windows and select either New email or Reply to an existing message.
- Step 2: As usual, compose your email, add the recipient, and enter the subject line.
- Step 3: Go to the Options tab in the message window and click the Delay Delivery button in the ribbon.
- Step 4: Scroll down to the Delivery options section in the Properties box that appears. Mark the box for Don’t Deliver before deciding on a date and time to send the email.
- Step 5: To exit Properties, click Close.
- Step 6: You’ll be taken back to the email window. To send the message later, click Send.
- Step 7: Navigate to your Outbox folder to view, edit, or cancel a scheduled email.
Schedule an Outlook Email on Mac
You can schedule an email in either the classic or new versions of Outlook on Mac.
- Step 1: Launch Outlook on your Mac and select either New email or New message, depending on your version. You can also respond to an existing message.
- Step 2: As usual, compose your email, add the recipient, and enter the subject line.
- Step 3: When you’re ready, click the arrow to the right of the Send button at the top and select Send later.
- Step 4: Enter the date and time, then click Send.
- Step 5: Go to your Drafts folder to view or cancel an email you’ve scheduled.
Schedule an Outlook Email on the Web
You can also schedule an email using the web version of Microsoft Outlook.
- Step 1: Open Outlook on the web, sign in, and then select New message or reply to an existing email in the top-left corner.
- Step 2: As usual, compose your email, add the recipient, and enter the subject line.
- Step 3: To schedule the email, at the bottom, click the arrow to the right of the Send button and select Send later.
- Step 4: Choose one of the suggested dates and times, or choose Custom time to enter your own.
- Step 5: Press the Send button.
- Step 6: Navigate to your Drafts folder to view, edit, or cancel a scheduled email.
How to Keep Track of Outlook Scheduled Emails
If you intend to schedule multiple emails to be sent later, you must learn how to keep track of each scheduled email in Outlook.
This is due to the fact that Outlook does not indicate whether you have delayed or failed to deliver an email to the recipient.
Fortunately, there is a way to distinguish emails with delayed delivery in Outlook.
Here are the steps to tracking your scheduled emails in Outlook.
First, open your Outlook application and navigate to the ‘Outbox’ folder.
Then, right-click on the bar with the column names and choose ‘Field Chooser’ from the menu.
Step 3: Include the ‘ Defer Until’ column.
Now, in the ‘Field Chooser’ window, add or drag the ‘Defer Until’ column right next to the ‘Subject Line’ column.
You’ll be able to see the date and time of your scheduled emails in Outlook after adding this column.
The Drawbacks of Scheduling Email in Outlook
Email scheduling in Outlook can be extremely useful. However, using Outlook for email marketing or cold outreach has a number of drawbacks.
You should be aware of the following key disadvantages of scheduling emails in Outlook.
#1. Lack of Personalization
One of Outlook’s major drawbacks is that it does not allow you to customize your emails at the recipient level.
While you can certainly personalize your email message’s first name, last name, greeting line, and so on, there is no way to dynamically include personalized details that are unique to each recipient.
This semi-personal “mail merge” approach is insufficient to pique people’s interest and elicit a response.
#2. High Risk of Triggering Spam Filters
If you schedule an email with dozens or hundreds of recipients to go out at once in Outlook, you’re very likely to encounter spam filter issues.
Because email service providers (ESPs) flag this type of email blast behavior as suspicious, your emails may be routed directly to spam folders.
To avoid this, you must maintain a proper time interval between each outgoing scheduled email in Outlook.
#3. Difficult to Manage Large-Scale Campaigns
In Outlook, scheduling a few basic emails to team members and coworkers is fine.
However, if you want to run a segmented email campaign with hundreds of personalized emails on a regular basis, Outlook can make organizing everything incredibly difficult and frustrating.
Simply put, Outlook isn’t built for large-scale email outreach or marketing. If you need to launch an email marketing or outreach campaign, you should use cold email software.
#4. Impossible to Track Performance
Outlook does not support tracking key email marketing metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and reply rates.
You have no way of knowing who opened your emails and who ignored them. You can’t see what subject lines, content, and offers resonate with your recipients unless you track email open and click-through rates.
This makes long-term optimization and improvement of email campaigns extremely difficult. Dedicated email tools provide powerful analytics for measuring engagement.
#5. No Auto Follow-Up Feature
Last but not least, Outlook lacks automatic follow-up capabilities. As a result, if you’ve scheduled an email and are eagerly awaiting a response, you’ll have to roll up your sleeves and do the follow-up yourself.
This may not seem like a big deal for a single email, but imagine manually following up on dozens or even hundreds of emails.
Sending follow-up emails to non-responders is an extremely powerful technique for nudging them, keeping your brand at the forefront of their minds, and driving responses over time if you’re doing cold email outreach.
Fortunately, there are now specialized email outreach tools that allow you to create auto-follow-up sequences in which the initial emails are automatically followed up with new messages if the recipient does not respond after a certain period of time.
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