Service Autopilot™ EMAIL ACTIVITY · A large part of the email you do in the system will be what...
Transcript of Service Autopilot™ EMAIL ACTIVITY · A large part of the email you do in the system will be what...
Service Autopilot™
EMAIL ACTIVITY
Table of Contents
Summary ............................................................................................................................. 3
Getting Started .................................................................................................................. 3
Creating Batch Emails........................................................................................................ 3
CRM>Marketing.......................................................................................................................................................... 4
Client List ....................................................................................................................................................................... 4
Dispatch Board ............................................................................................................................................................ 4
Estimates ....................................................................................................................................................................... 5
Invoice Screen .............................................................................................................................................................. 5
Where to See Email Activity ............................................................................................. 5
Email Activity Home Screen ............................................................................................. 6
Cumulative Stats ................................................................................................................ 6
Requests ......................................................................................................................................................................... 6
Delivered ........................................................................................................................................................................ 7
Opened ........................................................................................................................................................................... 7
Bounced ......................................................................................................................................................................... 7
Spam ................................................................................................................................................................................ 8
Avoiding the Spam Folder ...................................................................................................................................................... 8
Rejected .......................................................................................................................................................................... 9
Individual Cumulative Stats Screens ............................................................................. 10
Columns ....................................................................................................................................................................... 10
Errors .............................................................................................................................................................................................10
Definitions ................................................................................................................................................................... 10
Filters ............................................................................................................................................................................. 11
Actions .......................................................................................................................................................................... 11
Removing Bounced/Spam Emails ......................................................................................................................................11
Email Activity Main Screen Tabs .................................................................................... 12
Results ..........................................................................................................................................................................................12
Scheduled ....................................................................................................................................................................................12
Processing ...................................................................................................................................................................................13
Email Activity
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Completed ..................................................................................................................................................................................13
Archived .......................................................................................................................................................................................13
Batch Email Statistics Dialog .......................................................................................... 14
Email Information ..................................................................................................................................................... 14
Created .........................................................................................................................................................................................14
Resource ......................................................................................................................................................................................14
From ..............................................................................................................................................................................................15
Subject ..........................................................................................................................................................................................15
Body...............................................................................................................................................................................................15
Attachments ...............................................................................................................................................................................15
Send Progress ............................................................................................................................................................ 15
Current Status ............................................................................................................................................................................15
Start and End Times ................................................................................................................................................................15
Emails Scheduled .....................................................................................................................................................................15
Emails Skipped ..........................................................................................................................................................................16
Emails Sent ..................................................................................................................................................................................16
Broadcast Stats .......................................................................................................................................................... 16
Email Status / Icons .................................................................................................................................................. 16
Total Sent ....................................................................................................................................................................................17
Delivered......................................................................................................................................................................................17
Opened ........................................................................................................................................................................................17
Unopened ...................................................................................................................................................................................17
Bounced .......................................................................................................................................................................................17
Spam .............................................................................................................................................................................................17
Dropped .......................................................................................................................................................................................18
Deferred .......................................................................................................................................................................................18
Links Clicked ...............................................................................................................................................................................18
Unsubscribed .............................................................................................................................................................................18
Additional Icons ........................................................................................................................................................ 19
Processing ...................................................................................................................................................................................19
Completed ..................................................................................................................................................................................19
Rejected .......................................................................................................................................................................................19
Individual Batch Email Stats .................................................................................................................................. 19
Tracking Individual Emails on the Dashboard.............................................................. 21
Email Activity
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Summary
There are a number of reasons you may send email in Service Autopilot. Pro Members have
Marketing capabilities that allow for Email Blasts. But everyone has the ability to do Invoicing via
email, send out several Estimates at once, and email a group of Clients from the Dispatch Board
or Client List.
Whether you’re sending thousands, a handful, or just one email, being able to track your email
activity efficiently can mean the difference between making and losing money, keeping and
losing Clients, and keeping and losing your good standing with those Clients. Within the Email
Activity screen, you can see if your emails are being received, being read, bouncing, etc. and
more effectively manage your Client relationships.
Additionally, email sent to Clients, whether individually or as part of a batch, will appear on
Clients’ Timelines.
Getting Started
Everyone has access to the Email Activity screen, regardless of Member subscription level. There
is a Permission associated with it, however.
Go to Home>Settings>User Roles and Rights, and pick the Role
you’d like to edit. Under the second row of that Role’s CRM tab, look
for “Email Activity” on the far right. You need to check or uncheck at
least the “View Email Activity” box to have access to the screen.
Additionally, you can choose to give your users permission to remove
emails from the Spam or Bounce lists.
Creating Batch Emails
A large part of the email you do in the system will be what we call “Batch” Email. You can create
a Batch Email from a number of places in Service Autopilot. Invoicing and Marketing Email Blasts
are probably the most likely use cases, but you can also send email batches from the Client List,
the Dispatch Board, and the Estimates List.
Email Activity
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CRM>Marketing
From the Marketing link in the CRM
tab in Service Autopilot™’s header, you
can send Email Blasts to Clients.
Client List
From the Client List, selecting Clients and mousing over
the “Actions” button allows you to send Marketing emails
to those selected Clients. This is different from clicking
into an individual Client’s Record and choosing to email
that Client. Those individual emails appear in the Client
Timeline and in the Email History on the Dashboard
screen (see Tracking Individual Emails on the Dashboard).
Dispatch Board
The Dispatch Board allows you to email
several Clients at once from the “Actions”
button in order to notify Clients of things
like scheduling changes based on
inclement weather.
Email Activity
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Estimates
From CRM>Estimates, the Estimate List
gives you the option of selecting a number
of Estimates and sending them out at once
with an email. As with the Client List, this is
different from clicking into an Estimate and
sending that Estimate individually. Estimates
sent from the main list screen go out as
Batch Emails.
Invoice Screen
When you elect to send several Invoices out using the
“Actions” button in Accounting>Invoices, the resulting
Emails are considered Batch Emails. This is the case even if
you only select one Invoice to email.
Where to See Email Activity
The Email Activity screen is located under CRM>Marketing.
Email Activity
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Email Activity Home Screen
Clicking on Email Activity opens the Email Activity Home Screen, which collects and lists all of
the batch and trackable individual email that has been scheduled and processed and allows you
to see individual batches as well as cumulative statistics for email.
Cumulative Stats
The boxes across the top of the screen display cumulative numbers for all of the trackable email
you have sent in the system. Clicking into each box takes you to a new tab for that specific
category.
Requests
When you send emails through Service Autopilot, you are essentially requesting that the system
deliver the email. The number in this box represents the total number of emails you have tried
to send through the system. When your application or server attempts to send an email to one
of your customers via Service Autopilot, we record that as a “request” to your Dashboard.
Email Activity
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Delivered
A delivery is recorded when a request to send an email results in the email being
accepted by the receiving server. It is important to remember that the message may
never have reached the recipient’s inbox. Some users and some email applications
may filter email away from the inbox through rules they’ve set up. If that happens, the
email may sit unseen in a junk or other folder without being marked technically as spam.
Unfortunately, that is completely beyond our control.
If an email is indicated as delivered you can be certain only that it was not rejected in some
way by the ISP.
Opened
To help track “opens,” Service Autopilot inserts a small, transparent image into all
outgoing emails. When a client reads an email, that client’s application loads the
tracking image, which in turn registers the “open” event with Service Autopilot.
This is not successful across the board, however. Not all email clients load images by
default: Microsoft’s Outlook, Apple’s Mail.app, Mozilla’s Thunderbird, and Google’s Gmail are
among them. So, remember that there will be occasions where recipients may receive a message
and open it, but if they do not automatically download images, that message will not be
counted as opened because there is no way to track the event.
Bounced
A bounced message is returned to the server that sent it. Bounced emails are either a
permanent failure to deliver the email or a temporary failure, based on conditions
with the recipient’s mail server.
Hard Bounces - A hard bounce returns email to the sender because the recipient’s
address is invalid. This might occur because the domain name doesn’t exist or because the
domain does not recognize the recipient’s email address. If an email is on the bounce list, we
will automatically drop any future requests to this email address (see Rejected definition below).
Soft Bounces - A soft bounce is an e-mail message that gets as far as the recipient’s mail server
but is returned before it gets to the intended recipient. Frequently, soft bounces occur when a
recipient’s inbox is full.
Email Activity
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IMPORTANT: Validate each recipient’s email address. Most bounces occur because the
addresses or domains are incorrect. Examples would include misspellings or typos like
[email protected] (instead of david), or [email protected] (instead of gmail.com), etc. Note
that gmil.com got through the rejection filter on our end because it follows proper format
-- .com -- even though the domain is wrong.
Spam
Spam is unwanted email This seems simple enough on the face of it, but it can be
very easy for a message to fall into this category, given the kinds of safeguards we
have had to put into place to protect from scams, malicious email blasts, and general
junk that gets sent out in the millions.
Since it’s so easy for a message to fall into this category that as a sender you need to
understand how and why emails can get marked as spam.
We’ve isolated some of the most common pitfalls that send emails to the Spam Folder and also
made suggestions for how to avoid them.
Avoiding the Spam Folder
1. High Frequency. This is the most common reason subscribers either hit the Spam
button or unsubscribe from an email stream. ISPs want to make sure that their users’
mailboxes don’t get crowded. In order to protect their users from email fatigue they may
start junking the messages.
Avoid this how? Make sure that you don’t send unnecessary emails. Think about the
quantity of email you are sending out and prioritize messages.
2. High Complaint Rate. If too many of their subscribers flag your mail as spam, ISPs will
take action. First, they will start sending your mail to the Spam Folder. If complaints
persist, the ISP may start slowing down delivery of your messages or even block them
(known as “throttling”).
Avoid this how? Keep an eye on your complaint rate if you want to reach the Inbox. The
complaint rate is based on how many messages per 1,000 get marked as Spam by a
recipient. Most ISPs want you to be at lower than .1%. That’s fewer than one of every
1,000 messages that you send out.
3. Lack of an “Unsubscribe” link. You need to give customers the ability to opt out of a
service. Not adding an “Unsubscribe” link to emails will only force a subscriber to hit the
Spam button in order to stop receiving emails from you.
Email Activity
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Avoid this how? Add an opt-out link to your emails. Some studies have shown that you
can lower complaint rates by simply placing the “Unsubscribe” link at the top of your
emails and making it easy to find. You do yourself no favors by failing to put in an opt-
out link or hiding it in tiny text at the bottom of an email in the hopes that you’ll keep
more people on the list.
4. Sending to Inactive Users. People’s interests change all the time. Subscribers lose
interest and stop opening emails. Senders commonly respond to this by sending emails
to a wider group of users; however, this will only continue to hurt your deliverability. ISPs
monitor the responsiveness and engagement of their users. They can see whether
people open emails, click links, delete emails, or mark them as spam or not spam. Based
on these metrics, ISPs decide folder placement - whether the email goes to the Inbox or
if it gets junked.
Avoid this how? Track your own user engagement. Use the Email Activity screens in SA
to see who’s not opening email, etc. Also, have an appropriate policy for removing
inactive users from your distribution lists: before removing inactive users, try to re-
engage them. One great way to do that is through reconfirmation campaigns.
5. Inadequate Content. ISPs protect their users with the help of spam filters. Using the
wrong words or characters in your email can trigger spam filters and throw your email
into the Spam Folder. Remember: a spam filter is trying to remove commercial
advertisements and promotions.
Avoid this how? You want to avoid altogether or use very sparingly any words common
to such emails. Here are 100 Spam Trigger Words & Phrases to Avoid.
Rejected
Rejected emails are those that are removed from your outgoing list before being
sent. The system might remove them for a number of reasons, the most common
being the following:
Opt-Outs: The person to whom you are attempting to send an
email has requested not to receive Marketing or other Notifications via
email. S/He might have clicked an opt-out link, or you might have flagged
that client as “Do Not Market” in the Client Edit.
Invalid Formats: This would catch things like “fish@motorcycle” because
valid email formats need a dot-something. Emails that appear in the
correct format, even though they may have typos, will be bounced, instead
Email Activity
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of rejected. So, [email protected] would make it through the rejection
step but probably get bounced after that.
Individual Cumulative Stats Screens
Clicking into a cumulative stats box opens a new tab for that specific category. Each screen will
contain a list -- defaulted to date order with the oldest at the top -- of all the emails that have
met that condition.
Columns
You can sort the screen by clicking on the arrows at the top of any column.
Errors
If there are any errors, the “Yes” in this column will be a link. Clicking on it opens a small dialog
detailing the specific error encountered when trying to deliver that email. There are too many
kinds of errors to list, but here is a sampling of what you might see:
Definitions
The definitions that you see in this
document also appear at the top of
each individual statistics screen.
Email Activity
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Filters
These stats screens can get quite
large, given that they are
cumulative, so you may want to
filter down the emails you’re seeing
in order to isolate clients or emails
with errors, etc.
Actions
If you have only the permissions to view Email Activity, the
only available action for these screen will be to Bulk Create.
Selecting emails and clicking that link opens a dialog with the
several Bulk Create options.
Removing Bounced/Spam Emails
If you have the permission enabled to remove emails from
the Bounced or Spam lists, that option will also appear.
Clicking to remove emails from the Bounce List will
automatically remove those emails and refresh the list of
Bounced Emails. You may have a list of hundreds of bounced emails, and if you click on one
person’s email address to remove it, remember that you may have sent several emails to that
person, so removing one address might reduce your bounce list by a greater number.
Email Activity
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Clicking to remove an email from the Spam List opens a confirmation dialog requesting a
reason for removing that address from the list. You must remove these emails individually.
Email Activity Main Screen Tabs
Results
This tab is automatically loaded when you open the Email Activity screen. It contains the full list
of batch emails that have been created, except those you have archived.
Scheduled
Depending upon the size of the batch you’re sending, the traffic on our servers, and the number
of other requests for email that are pending at the time of your request, you may see a batch
sitting under the “Scheduled” tab for a few minutes, much as you would a document in a printer
queue. As other Batch Email requests are processed, yours will move forward in the queue from
“Scheduled” to “Processing.” Your batch may be in this stage for only a few seconds or, during
times of heavy traffic such as Invoicing days, the batch may take longer to progress.
Email Activity
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Processing
Emails that are processing are being sent. Again, the speed of this depends upon
traffic, the size of the batch, and upon how easily email addresses are verified. As
soon as email is finished processing, the batch moves to the “Completed” tab.
Completed
Emails under the “Completed” tab have been sent and all processes on our end have
been completed. Now, you can check on the status of those various emails by clicking
into an Email Batch line on the main screen.
Archived
The Email Activity screen is filled with historical data for your records. In order
to get a more streamlined view without having to use filters, you may decide
to Archive email batches that you perhaps sent out as tests or which no longer
apply to your company’s business. The “Action” button allows you to Archive
and also Restore Batch Emails. All Archived Batch Emails will sit under this tab.
Email Activity
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Batch Email Statistics Dialog
Clicking a Batch Email line from the Home Screen opens a dialog with that specific Batch Email’s
information. This screen is broken into three distinct areas.
Email Information
This top left section of the popup contains basic
information about the selected email batch.
Created
This is the date and time stamp for the email.
Resource
The Resource listed is the User who created/sent the
batch.
Email Activity
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From
Generally, this is your Company Email, which is automatically used for outgoing messages. If you
changed this for a specific batch, the alternate email would appear here.
Subject
This is the subject line of the batch and the name that the batch appears under on the Email
Activity Screen.
Body
From here, clicking on HTML will open another dialog containing the body of the email you sent
with any Personalization Fields in brackets.
Attachments
SA does not save attachments with individual emails. So, although you cannot open attachments
that you sent out with your batch, this field will list the names of any attachments that went out
with it.
Remember that Estimate emails always have a Quote attached and Invoice emails always have
an invoice attached, so those attachments will not be considered for this screen. Only
Attachments that you manually add will display.
Send Progress
The Send Progress portion of the statistics popup lets you know
in more general terms where in the process your batch email is.
Current Status
The Current Status will be one of four: Scheduled, Processing,
Completed, or Archived.
Start and End Times
This tells you when the batch began processing and when our
system finished sending it out.
Emails Scheduled
The total number of emails you originally intended to send when you hit the “Send” button
displays here. This is all-inclusive.
Email Activity
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Emails Skipped
Skipped emails are any emails that did not make it out of the scheduled queue. The system will
skip, for instance, emails belonging to Clients who have opted out of Marketing Emails (if the
batch is coming from Marketing).
Emails Sent
If you take the total number of emails scheduled initially when you created your batch and
subtract those emails that were skipped, the remaining number represents all emails that were
actually sent from Service Autopilot. Sent emails are finished processing and ready to be
delivered.
Broadcast Stats
The Broadcast Stats section of the popup displays a breakdown of what happened with the
emails that went through the process.
The pie chart gives you a visual representation of the success rate of your batch and updates as
emails are delivered or bounced, etc. One thing to note is that once the emails have been sent
out on our side, we must wait for our email delivery service partner to get us the information on
bounced emails, clicked links, etc. If they get bogged down, your batch of emails might be
placed in a processing queue which will delay the updates on the Broadcast Stats portion of the
overlay.
Email Status / Icons
This pie chart is a visual representation of nine of the ten fields to its right. Total Sent is not
included. Hovering over the chart will highlight “slices.” The nine fields represent a series of
actions that can be taken regarding your emails. For more extensive definitions/discussions of
the basics, refer to the Cumulative Stats section above.
Email Activity
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Total Sent
Although this is not a part of your pie chart, you can click on the number next to it to see an
unfiltered list of the emails that went out in the batch.
Delivered
Everything went smoothly and the email made it into the recipient’s inbox. Do not
mistakenly think each of these delivered emails was opened. We have no control over
rules that your clients or their email programs might have set up to immediately
move certain messages out of the inbox to other folders.
Opened
Your email was opened by the recipient.
Unopened
The message was delivered but hasn’t yet been opened.
Bounced
Bounced emails were neither opened nor received. You might have a bad email
address, or the intended recipient might have a full inbox.
Spam
This recipient’s email program has rejected your email as Spam, or the recipient has
marked the email as Spam.
Email Activity
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Dropped
The recipient of a dropped email is on a suppression list of some kind, whether spam
or bounced, unsubscribed, or even an invalid email address. This email will not be
delivered.
Deferred
Deferred email cannot currently be delivered. This might be a server issue on the
recipient’s end that places the email in a holding pattern. Some deferred emails will
be delivered eventually, but others may end up being bounced.
Links Clicked
You sent a link within the email using one of our Personalization Fields. The recipient
clicked on that link – to a Form, to your Client Portal or an Estimate acceptance page,
etc.
Unsubscribed
We are still building this functionality into our email tracking on the Service Autopilot side, but
unsubscribed recipients would not receive an email. Service Autopilot determines which emails
belong to unsubscribed clients before sending a batch. Also, if a recipient were to click on a
(future) “Unsubscribe” link at the bottom of the email you send, that email would appear under
this category.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Some of your Clients or their email providers may have configured their email
accounts to prevent companies from gathering statistical information from emails. In this case, those emails will not return to us any stats.
Email Activity
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Additional Icons
Processing
Emails that are processing are being sent. Again, the speed of this depends upon
traffic, the size of the batch, and upon how easily email addresses are verified. As
soon as email is finished processing, the batch moves to the “Completed” tab.
Completed
Emails under the “Completed” tab have been sent and all processes on our end have
been completed. Now, you can check on the status of those various emails by clicking
into an Email Batch line on the main screen.
Rejected
Rejected emails are those that are removed from your outgoing list before being
sent. See Spam section for further information.
Individual Batch Email Stats
You will notice that some of the numbers next to the above categories are clickable. Clicking an
individual, linked number redirects you to the Batch Email Status Screen, where you will see
which Client emails fell into a particular category.
Email Activity
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Although the screen opens specifically to whichever category you clicked, the filters can be reset
or changed to see other statistics as well. Clicking the “X” on the left of the filter bar will give
you the entire list of emails in the batch.
There is also an “Actions” button with a “Bulk Create” option. Checking the boxes of emails in
the list and clicking “Bulk Create” opens a popup allowing you to do a number of things.
This way, if you have a Marketing Email that you know was delivered to X number of people, you
can create a follow-up To Do to check in with them. That is only one of the many ways you can
use this feature to help follow up with Marketing or other Email.
Clicking on the Client’s Name on this screen – notice that it is an underlined link – takes you
directly to the Client Page so that if you are looking at bounced emails, for example, you might
be able to call your Client to see if you’re using a bad email address. Clicking anywhere else on
an individual line will open the original email. The icons on the right side are visual indicators of
the status to their left.
Email Activity
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Tracking Individual Emails on the Dashboard
For individual emails, you can still go to the Dashboard>Email History section.
Find this by going to Home>Dashboard.
Make sure you are on the “Company Performance” tab, which is
the far left tab on the Dashboard.
On the right side of this tab, you will see
the Emails section under the Company
Sales Pipeline graphic. From this Emails
area you can see individual emails you’ve
sent and their status.