Avoid marketing-like Email Campaigns

While we encourage the user of Proactive Email Campaigns for Service use cases, that still increases the chances of the Customer not wanting to receive proactive communications from you. Reserve large-scale email marketing communications for tools like MailChimp and reserve Proactive Email Campaigns to communicate pertinent information to Customers.

When to use Proactive Conversations vs. marketing communication tools
The simplest way to distinguish when to use a Proactive Conversation tool (like Proactive SMS and Proactive Email) is by asking yourself this question: “Is this communication a Service or Marketing communication?”
Service-type communications lean toward communicating information that helps provide better service to Customers. For example, telling Customers whose subscriptions are about to expire is a Service communication. It also typically impacts a group list of Customers.
Marketing-type communications lean towards mass communications and having a message that affects your general Customer population. For example, telling all your Customers about the newest device and how they can pre-order resembles a Marketing-type communication. Mass, general communications are better suited for tools like Attentive, Mailchimp, and other marketing communication tools.

Remain diligent and carefully think through how you write your Email Campaign message and frame it as a Service communication instead of marketing to avoid your communication from being perceived as spam.

Inform your team of any Email Campaigns

Inform your entire team about any upcoming or ongoing Email Campaigns and what they’re about to ensure your team is ready to handle any questions.

Consider an email address just for Proactive Email Campaigns

Creating and adding an email address just for Proactive Email Campaigns allows you to route replies to a specific Inbox just for Proactive Email Campaign replies. Or, you could route to a “General Inbox” and use a Topic applied to that email address as a People Match boost criteria, either prioritizing overall or prioritizing matches with specific Agent skills.

Just remember that by default, Email Campaign replies will route to the Inbox linked to the email address (based on Entry Points settings) you used for the Campaign.

Rules, Skills, and People Match

Rules and People Match can be helpful if you use an Inbox for a Proactive Email Campaign that receives many kinds of requests, like a “General Inbox.” For example, when a Proactive Email goes out, you can configure a Rule to detect replies to an Email Campaign using the email’s subject or body (Message Subject, Message Body Condition).

Conditions for email channel with privacy policy in message subject highlighted.

If the Conditions are met, you can send Email Campaign replies to a specific Inbox (or an Agent) knowledgeable to answer Email Campaign replies. You can also apply a Topic that indicates the new email is a response from an Email Campaign.

If you use Rules to automatically apply a Topic, as another option, you can utilize People Match to prioritize routing replies to Email Campaigns. If you have a specific Inbox for Email Campaign replies, you can prioritize (boost) those replies based on the Inbox the reply is located in. Furthermore, based on the reason for the Email Campaign, you can even employ Skills to prioritize Email Campaign replies to Agents that can best help.

Multiple or simultaneous Email Campaigns

You may have multiple or simultaneous Email Campaigns (different recipients) running simultaneously. An Email Campaign can either utilize an existing Email Answer used in another Campaign or create a unique Email Answer for a different Campaign altogether.

Note – Watch out for duplicate recipients unless it’s intentional.

Take note of email send limits

A Proactive Email Campaign can send a maximum of eight emails per minute and 40 emails every five minutes, which equals 480 emails per hour. So, if you have 500 recipients on a Campaign, it will take a little over an hour to send emails. The limits exist to prevent your emails from being tagged as spam. Plan accordingly and consider this limit when creating your Campaign, especially if it’s a time-sensitive Campaign and you have an extensive recipient list to reach out to.

Note – The frequency or the number of emails sent every five minutes cannot be updated.
Note – If the Should outreach end on a certain date/time? checkbox is checked and a specific end date/time is scheduled on the Campaign, some recipients may not be contacted when the outreach ends due to not having enough time to message all recipients against the email send limit.

Inbox to route Proactive Email replies

Because your Email Campaign recipients can reply to your outbound message, it’s possible to see an increase in inbound emails, but this depends on the topic or reason for the Email Campaign. Check out the suggestion below if you’d like to encourage or discourage replies on a particular Email Campaign.

Encourage replies

If you’d like to encourage recipients to reply to your Email Campaign, consider including that language in the Email Answer. Here’s an Email Campaign messaging example related to a member program update:

Hello, Retale Platinum Members can now enjoy more benefits valued at up to $2000. Interested? If so, reply to this email and we’ll get back to you.

Prevent replies

If you’d like to discourage recipients from replying to your Email Campaign — even though they technically could — provide contact instructions in your Email Answer on how you’d like them to contact you:

Hello! Platinum Members can now enjoy more benefits valued at up to $2000. Interested? If so, contacts us at members@relate.com for additional details.

You could also omit any mentions of contact from your message:

Hello! Platinum Members can now enjoy more benefits valued at up to $2000. Log into your Members Only page to learn more about the updated program.

What report can I use to track Proactive Email Campaigns?