Overview

Automated messages enable you to interact with contacts in highly impactful and customizable ways. You can trigger automated messages using the following methods:

• API: Message is triggered by a POST/automationtemplates API call.
• Event triggered: Message is triggered as the result of a contact's behavior or a change to a contact's attribute.
• Recurring schedule: message is triggered according to a recurring date or time interval.

Any of the above sending methods can be filtered by audience rules to add powerful personalization and segmentation options.

Create an automation

1. Navigate to Message Automation › Create New Automation.

2. Fill out the fields to create a new automated message.

• Message name: The friendly name that will be referenced in the system.
• Message key: The name used to reference the message in the database for API calls. Message keys are not generated for batch messages.
• Tags: Tags are useful for grouping messages together (similar to folders) when building audiences and filtering message reports.
• Classification: Give the message a classification to comply with SPAM laws.
  • Promotional: For subscribers that gave permission to receive a promotional message. Note that promotional messages will only be sent to contacts that are both valid and have a subscribe status of subscribed.
  • Transactional: For subscribers that are receiving the message based on an order. Transactional messages can be sent to anyone who is valid, regardless of their subscribe status.

    If your account has multiple sending transports, be sure to choose the appropriate transport for the designated message classification. Transactional classification should only be set when you are certain the message meets your local legislation for what is defined as a transactional message.

• Channels: Choose the supported channel to send the message. Automated messages currently support email, SMS, and mobile push channels.

Create message content

The message content requirements differ depending on the selected channel. Visit the following articles to learn about creating message content for the available channels:

• Create message content for the email channel.
• Create message content for the SMS channel.
• Create message content for the mobile push channel.

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.

• Generative AI in email subject lines. 
• Generative AI in the Sculpt editor. 
• Generative AI in message experiments.

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.

• Visit this article to learn more about message transports and how to set message header defaults for new messages.

Send a test

You can send a test message in order to check rendering in the inbox. Before a test message can be sent, the message headers and message content must be provided.

1. Choose Send Test at the top of the Message Creation pane.

2. Choose contacts to receive the test:

• Enter Contacts: Type or paste one or more email addresses separated by commas. This is convenient for sending test messages to frequently used test accounts.
• Search and select contacts: Search for contacts by keyword. This is useful for retrieving a list of contacts that match your criteria, such as those that have your email domain (@yourdomain.com).

3. When ready, click the Send Test Now button.

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 an Internal Render Error when trying to send test messages, it may be a result of badly formed links in your HTML. Be sure to check all links for any unnecessary spaces or characters in your URLs.

When sending multiple message tests, it's useful to have a unique subject line for each send because some email clients will group all messages with the same subject line within a message thread (Gmail, for example, does this). This could make it difficult for your contacts to see new messages immediately.

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

• Learn more about date and timestamp variables here.

Publish the message

Before a message is published, it's labeled as a draft message, and sending methods will be disabled.

1. After completing the message headers and message content, the message can be published by clicking the Publish button. The published message is the version that will be sent when a sending trigger is met.

2. You can work on another draft and send tests without affecting the published version. Once you're happy with the draft, click Publish again. The current published version will then be saved to the Past Versions tab.

• Learn more about content versioning here.

Enable the sending method

The sending method determines how the message will be sent. There are three sending methods:

• API: messages sent via API call.
• Event triggered: messages sent from an event trigger.
• Recurring: messages sent on a recurring basis.

Learn more about sending methods here.

Goals and tracking

Under the Settings section, you can configure Goals and Tracking for your automation.

Stats aggregation

Choose whether the aggregate message performance stats will be rolled up daily or hourly. After a message has been sent, you can view message aggregate performance under the message performance tab.

Options for daily and hourly stats aggregation can only be selected for event and API-triggered messages. Recurring message stats are always aggregated at the scheduled interval.

Link tracking

Choose whether to enable or disable link tracking for all links in the message.

Link tracking only applies to the email channel.

• You can disable link tracking for individual links using the data-crdl-notrack Smarty attribute, or conditionally at the message level using the setEmailLinkTracking Smarty utility.
• You can disable email opens tracking using the setEmailOpensTracking Smarty utility.

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 via links after the 30 day period.

Campaign alerting

You can to set up custom alerting for automated 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.

An alert will continue to send emails to the designated account until the alert is disabled or its conditions aren't met.

1. When creating a new message automation or editing an existing one, click Alerting under Settings and select 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.

Example use cases

• You have a daily automation that sends an average of about 1,000 messages per day. You could set an alert to notify you if the automation volume falls below 500 unique messages every 24 hours to help identify any potential errors with the automation.
• Receive an email alert whenever an SMS message automation exceeds 5,000 in total volume within one day.
• Notify an internal email alias if your weekly email newsletter to your full contact database falls below a total volume of 10.

4. Set how far back you want the alert to apply under Within the last. You can set the alert to go back as far as one day.

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

6. You can view details for your alert in the alert email or on the Account Monitoring page. 

7. To view alert details on the Account Monitoring page, select Automated messages in the categories dropdown, then select Alerts from the levels dropdown.

In the next article, you can learn about content versioning.