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Batch messages

Overview

Batch messages are used for one-time sends. They can be sent immediately or scheduled for a future date. You can send batch messages through any available channel: email, SMS, or mobile.

Create a new message

When creating a new batch message, you'll give the message a name, add any message tags, and choose the sending channel.

1. From the Cordial dashboard, navigate to Messages > Create New Message.

2. In the Create New Message pane, complete the required fields.

    • Message name: The name that will be referenced in the system.
    • Tags: Tags are used for grouping related messages, searching and building audiences, and filtering message reports.
    • Channel: The channel email, SMS, or mobile push—will affect the type of message being sent. This selection will determine the message content method as well as the transport.
    • Editor: You can decide whether you want to create your message with our easy-to-use Sculpt editor, or by manually creating the HTML.
    • Classification: Promotional messages are general-purpose and used in batch messaging with rare exceptions. Transactional messages are sent in response to a person's behavior on your site or app.

Schedule a message

Batch messages can be sent immediately or scheduled to be sent on a future date in the Schedule pane. When scheduling for a future date, you have the option of scheduling the send according to the contact's time zone.

Message sending can also be throttled so messages go out in batches according to audience size or maximum number of batches. This is useful when you switch from another ESP (event stream processing system) and need to warm the new IP address for improved deliverability.

Messages will send immediately by default. To edit the schedule, click the Edit button under Schedule Sending and choose a schedule option:

  • Not scheduled
  • Send immediately
  • Schedule for future date
  • Throttled batch sending
  • Optimize send time using Send Time Optimization

Build an audience

Before a message is sent, you must choose the audience by selecting Edit in the Audience pane. You have the option to either send to all contacts, or use the Audience Builder to filter your contacts according to include and exclude audience rules.

Create message content

The type of message content you create will depend on the message channel. If choosing the email channel, you must also fill out Message Header info that includes the Subject, From email, Reply email, and From description.

Visit the following articles to learn about creating content for different message channels:

Insert images into a message

Once uploaded to Cordial, you can insert images into messages by with a single click. 

Generative AI content

Cordial offers powerful generative AI solutions for email subject lines, message content in Sculpt, and message experiments. Explore the following articles to learn how your team can generate smarter content—faster.

Select the message transport

Transport names available for selection in the Message Header will depend on the designated promotional or transactional classification. From email domains available for selection in the dropdown menu are determined by the chosen transport.

Message transport selection only applies to the email channel.

Configure goals and tracking

In the Goals and Tracking pane, you can choose whether to enable or disable link tracking and appending for all links in the message.

All event activity is stored in Cordial for 18 months. Message open and link click events are tracked for 30 days from the time the message is sent. Links will continue to work after 30 days, but tracking will be disabled. Attribution is not tracked for purchases made using links after the 30-day period.

Send a test message

You can send a test message to check rendering in the inbox. Before a test message can be sent, the message headers and content must be provided. Once you've created headers and content for your message, the Send Test button will appear in the left sidebar.

1). All test email addresses must exist as valid and subscribed contacts in your account. 2). Test message links will expire after 24 hours if link tracking is enabled for the message. 3). If you receive the error "Internal Render Error" when trying to send test messages, it may be a result of badly formed links in your HTML. Make sure to check all links for any unnecessary spaces or characters in your URLs. The Internal Render Error can also be the result of a missing HTML Include. Ensure that all HTML Includes that are referenced in a message do in fact exist in the account. 

Tip

When sending multiple message tests, it's sometimes useful to have a unique subject line per send since some email clients will group all messages with the same subject line within a message thread. (Gmail, for example, does this.) You can use the following getNow Smarty utility to generate a unique subject line per test send:
 {$utils->getNow('America/Los_Angeles', "Y-m-d H:i:s")} This is a subject line

Send the message

Once all required content has been completed, you can send the message to the specified audience by clicking the Send Message button.

Once a message has been sent, you can pause, resume, or cancel sending the message.

Campaign alerting

You can to set up custom alerting for batch messages across channels that fall below or exceed a specified threshold. Once you've configured the alert, an email is automatically sent to the designated email address(es) and logged in the Account Monitor dashboard. This increases awareness of potential issues for you and your team to resolve more quickly.

1. When creating a new message or editing an existing one, click Edit in the Alerting pane to configure your campaign alert.

2. Set the Status to Enabled

3. Configure your alert settings under Condition. By default, the When condition for the alert is total sent messages.

Use case

You could set an alert when the total messages sent falls below 2,000. You can also use greater than as a condition metric for triggering an alert.

4. Enter a destination email for the alert under Notify.

5. View details for your alert in the alert email or on the Account Monitoring page. 

6. To view alert details on the Account Monitor page, select Batch messages in the categories dropdown, then select Alerts from the levels dropdown.

View and change email sending status

Once you've built and scheduled an email, you can view or change its status by navigating to Messages > Email Sent. By default, messages are sorted by Send Time.

1. The badge under the Status column tells you the sending state. Click the badge to go directly to the message.

2. Click the i button to access Sending details for the message.

3. If there's an issue with the message, it will display in the Sending details window. Visit the Account Monitor page to find more information about a given issue.

4. Also within Sending details, you can choose to Cancel or Pause a scheduled message.

Search sent messages

Quickly search messages by name using the search field at the top of the page. Click the Advanced Search button for additional search and filter options.

  • Send time: Filter messages that were sent On, Before, or After a specified date.
  • Tags: Search for messages that contain specified tags. Tags are case sensitive. To search multiple tags, use a comma to separate each tag.
  • Status: Search for messages by status—Sent, Canceled, Paused, or Sending.
  • Priority: Search for messages by priority, with 1 being the lowest and 4 the highest.
  • Filters: Select the checkboxes to filter sent messages that have an Inbox Placement Test or Experiment.
  • Schedule method: Search for messages that were scheduled by Contact timezone or use a Throttled or Optimized (Send Time Optimization) scheduling method.

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