Automated Messages
Automated messages allow you to set up messages sent to a segment of your constituents on a recurring basis. For example, "Happy Birthday!" emails.
To achieve this goal, you need a couple of things:
A list that identifies the people to contact
A template used to send your message
Optionally, you may create dedicated Message categories, Subscription Categories, and Message Tags specific to your message or to automated messages in general — or use existing categories and tags
Building your list
Instead of building 366 different lists to cover every potential birthday in a year, automated messages add a thin layer of magic over the existing lists functionality. To start, the list should be built as you would for any other list.
Firstly, create a list with at least one date-based filter. We'll use the birthday example:
What enables the automated messages magic is the operator chosen for the Birth Date filter: Month & Day Match. The first thing that the automated message sender does is find this filter and update the value to the current date; this way you're only sending birthday messages to people whose birthday is "today."
Preparing the list for use with automated-messages
When creating your list, be sure to select the purpose, Automated Messages. Without that, you won't be able to select it when you create your automated message.
After your list is built, you will need to ask an AlumnIQ staff member to finalize its preparation for use with message automation (create a support ticket). We will need to add a special flag to the date filter whose value should be updated with the current date as part of the automated send.
Building your message template
If message automation followed the existing message creation pipeline, it would require manual intervention with each message as it is created — which isn't very automated!
Instead, you'll put the entirety of your message contents into the message template: message body, tokens and all. If it's not in the template, the recipient will not see it! The template must still contain the {{unsubscribe}} token; and if you build your template using the older template editor (not drag-and-drop), you will also need to include one "dummy" region so that you are allowed to save it. It can go anywhere and will be removed before sending.
Our recommendation is to create a message draft, exactly as you would send it if you were manually creating these messages every day, and then clone it to be a new message template. After you save your draft, go to the Drafts & History screen, click the Actions button next to your draft, and select Make Template.
The standard recommendation for images applies: Please attach them to the template.
An overly simplified example template, to give you a rough idea, could look like this:
Preparing your message automation
Now that you've prepared your list and your template, it's time to wire all of the parts together.
You may notice that much of this is familiar from the edit message screen.
Automation Name is the name of the automation "job." Think of it as the robot that wakes up every morning to prepare these emails for you.
System List is the list that you prepared for this job.
Message Category is the category that you want assigned to the generated message.
Message Template is the template that you prepared for this job.
Subscription Category is the subscription category that you want assigned to the generated message.
Send Time is the time of day that you want the message to be scheduled to send. It will be the same time every day.
Message Tags are zero or more tags that you want applied to the generated message.
Next up, some additional bits of metadata for the message:
Sender Name, Sender Email, Reply-To Name, and Reply-To Email should all default to the same values you get by default when creating a new message. You are free to change these as appropriate.
Subject is the subject of the message. Just as with regular messages, you may include tokens for customization.
And finally, if you would like to set an appeal code or Google Analytics campaign & source identifiers, you may.
How automated messages get sent
Daily, usually shortly after your scheduled warehouse refresh time, the automated message bot will wake up and handle all configured message automations.
For each automation:
Update the flagged date filter value to "today" (campus local time)
Refresh the list members
Create a new message using the parameters defined in your message automation configuration
And that's it. One of the automation parameters is send-time. The message is scheduled to send same-day, with the send-time that you specify. From here on out, the message flows through the regular email marketing delivery workflow.
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