Auto Sends
From EtelligentWiki
Etelligent's Auto Send functionality allows you to define a set of rules that trigger pre-made emails to be sent to your recipients at scheduled dates and times.
Contents |
Examples of Auto Sends
The possibilities with Auto Sends are limited only by your imagination, but below are some examples of processes that you could automate:
- Birthday emails to be sent every year on a recipient's birthday
- Reminder emails when a recipient is approaching a key date; e.g. subscription expiry, a period since they last made a purchase, a week before their holiday, etc
- An email sent a week following a purchase requesting feedback
- A chain of emails going out every week, e.g. 6 weeks' worth of wine tasting tips following sign-up
Using Auto Sends
Requirements for an Auto Send
In order to create an Auto Send, you should complete the following:
- Using the Manage Contact Fields option, you have created the necessary date field in the contacts database. For example, for the date a customer laste made a purchase you might create a field named lastPurchaseDate.
- You have uploaded your contacts and imported the necessary date field.
- The email to be sent by the Auto Send is already created in your Campaign Overview.
Creating an Auto Send
From your Campaign Overview, select the email that you wish to use for your Auto Send. Under the Emails sub-section, take the Create Auto Send option. The Auto Send creation screen is wizard-like; you should use the combination of radio-buttons and drop-down menus to complete the logic for triggering your email's send.
Defining the Trigger For a Send
Setting the time for your Auto Send
From the drop-down menu, set the approximate time that you wish Etelligent to queue your message.
Selecting the recipients
Select whether Etelligent should look for contacts contained within a specific Filter or whether it should consider all of your subscribed database for your send.
Selecting the date trigger
Next you need to point Etelligent to the relevant date field in your database. There are 3 default fields in Etelligent's database, which are:
- dateOfBirth
- created_On - the date the contact record was created, e.g. when they signed up if you are using an Etelligent sign-up form or when they were imported if they were brought in from an external source
- modified_On - the date the contact record was edited, perhaps when they changed mailing preferences, completed a survey, etc
Note: You can add your own date/time fields to Etelligent to achieve any kind of Auto Send you need. Etelligent accepts any valid SQL date/time format, for example YYYY/MM/DD.
Off-setting the Auto Send by days or weeks
You can configure any kind of reminder or warning email schedule you like, just select the off-set period in days/weeks and then choose whether the email should go before or after your chosen schedule.
Recurring send or one-off?
Finally, you need to decide whether this is a recurring email (such as a birthday, which would go every year) or a one-off send (such as a "last chance" email before a cut-off date). For the former, you should check the radio-button for "day and month". For the latter, you should check the radio-button for "day, month and year".
Changes to Filters & Emails
Important! After you have created an Auto Send, changes to the email or the target Filter will not be picked up. You must delete and re-create the Auto Send.
Related Topics
Triggered Emails | Emails | Managing Contact Fields | Contacts Database
