Automations

Delay

Pause an automation for a fixed duration before continuing to the next step.

A delay step pauses the automation for a specified duration before continuing to the next step. See Using automations for how steps chain together.

Common use cases:

Email sequences — space out emails in an onboarding series.
Cooldowns — prevent sending too many emails in a short period.
Follow-ups — give users time to take action before sending a reminder.

How it works

In the dashboard you configure a delay duration in natural language. Over the API, the delay step accepts a single duration field with a human-readable time value.

import { MailBlastr } from 'mailblastr';

const mb = new MailBlastr('mb_xxxxxxxxx');

const { data, error } = await mb.automations.create({
  "name": "Welcome series",
  "domain": "yourdomain.com",
  "steps": [
    {
      "key": "start",
      "type": "trigger",
      "config": { "event_name": "user.created" }
    },
    {
      "key": "wait_1_day",
      "type": "delay",
      "config": { "duration": "1 day" }
    }
  ],
  "connections": [
    { "from": "start", "to": "wait_1_day", "type": "default" }
  ]
});
console.log({ data, error });

Example durations: "30 minutes", "1 hour", "12 hours", "1 day", "3 days", "1 week".

The maximum delay is 30 days.

Configuration

config.durationstringrequired

The delay duration in natural language (e.g. "1 hour", "3 days"). Maximum: 30 days.

{
  "key": "wait_1_hour",
  "type": "delay",
  "config": {
    "duration": "1 hour"
  }
}