Follow-up messages follow-up-messages
A follow-up message is a predefined marketing delivery template that can be used in a workflow to send another communication to the recipients of a specific transactional message.
Let’s reuse the example described in the Transactional messaging operating principle section: a cart abandonment email is sent to your website users who added products to their cart, but left the site without going through with their purchases.
You want to send a friendly reminder to all the customers who received the cart abandonment notification but who did not open it after three days. They will receive a follow-up message based on the same data that was used in the first email that was sent.
Configuring an event to send a follow-up message configuring-an-event-to-send-a-follow-up-message
To send a follow-up message, you first need to configure accordingly the event corresponding to the transactional message that was already received.
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Use the same event configuration that you created to send an event transactional message. See Configuring a transactional event.
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When configuring your event, check the Create follow-up delivery template for this event box before publishing the event.
Once the event has been published, a transactional message and a follow-up delivery template linked to the new event are automatically created. The steps to send the follow-up message are detailed in this section.
Accessing the follow-up messages accessing-the-follow-up-messages
To handle an event in a workflow, a delivery template is required. However, when publishing the event, the transactional message that is created cannot be used as a template. Therefore, you need to create a specific follow-up delivery template designed to support this event type and to be used as a template in a workflow.
To access this template:
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Click the Adobe logo, in the top-left corner.
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Select Resources > Templates > Delivery templates.
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Check the Follow-up messages box in the left pane.
Only the follow-up messages are displayed.
Sending a follow-up message sending-a-follow-up-message
Once you created the follow-up delivery template, you can use it in a workflow to send a follow-up message.
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Access the marketing activity list and create a new workflow.
See Building a workflow.
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Drag and drop a Scheduler activity into your workflow and open it. Set the execution frequency to once a day.
The Scheduler activity is presented in the Scheduler section.
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Drag and drop a Query activity into your workflow and open it.
The Query activity is presented in the Query section.
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To run the query on a resource other than the profile resource, go to the activity’s Properties tab and click the Resource drop-down list.
note note NOTE By default, the activity is pre-configured to search for profiles. -
Select the event that you want to target so that you only access data from this event.
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Go to the activity’s Target tab, and drag and drop the Delivery logs (logs) element from the palette into the workspace.
Select Exists to target all the customers who received the email.
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Move the Tracking logs (tracking) element from the palette to the workspace and select Does not exist to target all the customers who did not open the email.
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Drag and drop the event that you are targeting (Cart abandonment in this example) from the palette into the workspace. Then define a rule to target all messages sent three days ago.
This means that all recipients who received the transactional message three days before the execution of the workflow and still have not opened it are targeted.
Click Confirm to save the query.
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Drag and drop an Email delivery activity into your workflow.
The Email delivery activity is presented in the Email delivery section.
You can also use an SMS delivery or a Push notification delivery activity. In this case, make sure you select the Mobile (SMS) or Mobile application channel when creating your event configuration. See Creating an event.
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Open the Email delivery activity. In the creation wizard, check the Follow-up messages box and select the follow-up delivery template that was created after publishing the event.
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In the follow-up message content, you can leverage the content of your event by adding personalization fields.
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Find the fields that you defined when creating your event by selecting Context > Real-time event > Event context. See Personalizing a transactional message.
This means that you can leverage the same content, including enriched data, that was used the first time the event was sent, to create a personalized friendly reminder.
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Save the activity and start the workflow.
Once the workflow is started, every customer that received your cart abandonment notification three days ago but did not open it will receive a follow-up message based on the same data.