You can reply to the channel behavior of your contacts with this entry node.
- Replied to an email - You can respond to your contacts’ emails by sending automatic replies.
You can also define Trigger attributes and Last time the event happened (this template allows you to create conditions based on historical data) conditions used by Decision nodes based on the following attributes:
-
Event time- The time when the event happened. -
Reply category- The Reply email category of the contact’s mail. The following reply categories are available:-
Out of Office (payload ID:
7) - Important: We do not recommend selecting the Reply Category Out of Office to avoid creating email loops. The contact’s out-of-office messages may trigger repeated auto-replies and vice versa. -
Change-profile (payload ID:
8) -
Unsubscribe (payload ID:
9) - Important: We do not recommend sending auto-replies for the Unsubscribe category to avoid sending unnecessary messages to contacts who have unsubscribed from your marketing campaigns. -
Challenge Response (payload ID:
10) -
Contact-us (payload ID:
11) -
Unknown (payload ID:
12)
-
Out of Office (payload ID:
Use cases
The Replied to an email event comes in handy in the following case:
- You can respond to your contacts’ emails by sending branded automatic replies when you receive a change profile, contact or unsubscribe request. For example: “Thanks for your email. The requested changes will be applied in X business days.”
Sending auto-replies
Here is what you need to do to send automatic replies to your contacts:
- Create a Triggered Email reply that will be automatically sent to your contacts by the Interactions program.
- Create an Interactions program as follows:
a. Navigate to Automation > Automation Programs, click Create Program, select Behavior-focused journeys (Interactions), then choose Channel Engagement.
b. Double-click the Channel Engagement entry node and select the Replied to an email trigger event.
We do not recommend selecting the Reply Category Out of Office to avoid creating email loops. The contact’s out-of-office messages may trigger repeated auto-replies and vice versa.
c. Add a Decision node to your program, select the Trigger attributes template, choose the Reply Category attribute and define the criteria as required. In the following example, we’ve selected the Unsubscribe Reply Category.
Note that selecting Reply Category “Out of Office” is possible but not recommended to avoid creating email loops. The contact’s out-of-office messages may trigger repeated auto-reply, and vice versa.
d. Add the Send email node to your program and select your auto-reply.
Interactions uses Triggered Email mail streams to send messages to your contacts.
To avoid exploiting or misusing the service, make sure you add a reasonable timeout before sending automatic replies by using a Participation check node. We recommend setting it to at least 1 hour.
e. Add the required nodes to your program and activate it. This is how a simple auto-reply program looks like:
- Create an email campaign where the Use the Emarsys reply management feature is enabled.
Result: When contacts send replies to your campaign and their reply category matches the one you’ve used in the Interactions program, they will receive your auto-reply.