The Email Marketing and Tracking functionality lets customers setup email marketing campaigns and track useful information such as the number of emails opened, the number of bounced emails, the number and details of hyperlinks clicked and by whom, and the number and identity of unsubscribers.
In general, the tracking makes the most sense only when separate emails are sent to a single address for each record in a table. By default, KBs are configured to use Email Marketing for the Leads and the Contacts tables because these tables hold records for each individual who might receive mass emails. Emails are linked to the Campaigns table in the default configuration.
In contrast, emails sent on process tables, such as the Support Case or Change Request table, are often sent to multiple individuals. If a single email is sent to multiple people, the actions taken by any of those persons on that email would be reflected in the statistics, but only once. This means that if two recipients open the same email, it only counts as one "open" and there is no way to know which user performed the action.
To set up email marketing for a table, you must configure the following items:
Email marketing is enabled on a per-knowledgebase basis in the Admin Console, and then enabled for each table in Outbound Email Settings.
If it has not been enabled, follow these steps in the Admin Console:
Once the knowledgebase has the email marketing structures defined, marketing must be enabled for the tables you wish to use.
The first step to manage bounced mail is to configure an inbound account to receive the bounce reports. Tracking of bounced emails can be set up for any table without setting up Email Marketing. It is not dependent on the marketing function. It may be used in your process tables on the working inbound email accounts that are used to create or update records. Go to Setup > Email > Configure Inbound Email. If there is not already an inbound account for the table, create a new account.
There are some requirements for this tracking to work. In order to capture bounce email replies, you must:
This means that if you email a lead and they reply by email, they will be replying to this address and the system, not directly to your individual sales representative. While this has the benefit of capturing all communications in the system, it may not be the way your sales team is used to working.
There are a couple of options for how this might be handled:
Whichever method you choose, if you want to capture bounces, you need to configure at least one inbound account. If you choose the first option above, follow this setup:
Next, configure outbound email behavior:
There are a couple of important options on the To Options tab:
The default setup of the Leads table checks the box to exclude the encrypted ID from the subject line of the email to make it less apparent that the contact is receiving a bulk email. The encrypted ID is always included in the email header and can be used to identify the record to be updated if the user replies, provided that their email program or server does not strip it out of the email header.
MS Exchange strips out such headers for internally sent emails, but most other programs do not. However, you must weigh the risk of not also including the ID in the subject line. If a lead replies to an email back to the system and the ID is missing, the system creates a new lead record if permitted, based on whether you have enabled creation by email in the option shown above.
The option to "Send same email to all recipients" is not compatible with email marketing tracking. If it is selected and you choose one email to send to 100 leads, all 100 emails are sent with the same tracking code, and responses can't be counted appropriately.
Most of the tracking configuration is done on this tab. Your company's Mailing address can be included by default, as well as an Unsubscribe link.
If you enter a company address, it is placed in the email below the Unsubscribe text. The system does not require an address here, but it is a legal requirement when sending unsolicited email. The ExitURL defines where to take users to confirm they have unsubscribed after clicking the Unsubscribe link. This can be any URL. If you don't want to create your own page, we have a simple page available for use at: www.agiloft.com/unsubscribe.htm
The default Leads table includes the Opt Out field for tracking opt-outs by leads, and you can also choose to set a field value when processing unsubscribes. The Opt Out field can be selected automatically when the unsubscribe link is clicked. If you select an Additional Unsubscribe field, its choices or input aid will then appear for you to select the appropriate value.
The Campaign option allows you to link a mass outbound email with a particular campaign to collect its statistics. You should select the table you chose to use for the campaign table when enabling the marketing email upgrade, as that will be the table which holds the statistical fields. By default, this is the Campaign table that is included out of the box.
If desired, you can use a saved search to show only active campaigns. The drop-down list of campaigns is then filtered by the saved search.
Once Email Marketing has been enabled for a table, you can access the additional marketing options on the Options tab when you compose an email in . If you chose to include tracking by default on the Email Marketing tab of the Outbound Email Wizard, the dialog has these options selected:
Use the drop-down list next to Campaign Name to find the campaign and select it. You can automatically exclude leads who have unsubscribed or bounced previously, and you can choose whether or not to include the unsubscribe link and audit headers.
It is very important to select a campaign if you want to be able to track statistics for the emails. If you forget to select one, you can mass edit the sent emails and link them to a campaign, but any bounces or responses sent before your edit can't be captured and might lead to inaccurate reporting.
Additionally, Collate Results should be set to No. There is another Collate Results option in the Options tab of the email editor.
This kind of collation is appropriate for escalation emails that find multiple records and send them to the Assigned To, or to some teams of users. It is not appropriate for mass marketing emails and should always have the default value of No for the results to be correct. For more information, see Email Options.
If the Campaigns table statistics aren't accurate, make sure the emails were linked to a campaign. If they weren't, you can mass edit the emails to link them to a campaign, but any bounces or responses that were already sent can't be captured retroactively. This also doesn't update the number of sent emails for the campaign, which is recorded at the time of sending.
It is possible to run an action to update the total count and the percentages whenever such a correction is needed. A recalculation action button is included in the default out-of-the-box configuration for this purpose. If you don't have the action button or you deleted it, you can create the button and update actions manually. The actions update the Number of Sent Emails and Calculated Number of Sent Emails(recalculate) fields.
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