Mailings: Advanced Mailings: Trigger Tab

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Triggered and Sequential mailings are a feature of ListManager Enterprise, and are unavailable for standard or Pro ListManager. Contact your account representative at sales@lyris.com if you'd like to upgrade to ListManager Enterprise.

The fields on the Trigger page allow you to create a mailing to be sent when a particular trigger event occurs. Triggered mailings are associated with a particular segment or with a particular automated message. A trigger is necessary to create a triggered or sequential mailing, and work in conjunction with triggered segments.

Note that the Trigger Tab replaces the Schedule Tab in standard mailings.

Trigger

Select a trigger from the drop-down menu. In order for triggers to appear here, they must first be created in Segments: New Triggered Segment.

Next run time

Enter the first (next) run time for the mailing. This is the first date/time that the triggered mailing will run, regardless of previous run times and run frequencies. This must be entered in YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS format, or click the calendar to select a date. If no time is entered, it will default to YYYY-MM-DD 00:00:00. The default is tonight at 23:59 (just before midnight).

Previous run time (optional)

This is the original time or date from which the mailing will begin to detect members that will receive this mailing the first time. This must be entered in YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS format, or click the calendar to select a date. If no time is entered, it will default to YYYY-MM-DD 00:00:00. In general, this field will be left blank, in which case the Run Frequency will be used to determine how long before the Next run time the trigger will start detecting trigger events. You may wish to enter a specific time, though, in case you wish to immediately send to members who have already met the requirements of the trigger in the last month, for example.

Run Frequency

Select how many days/weeks/months apart this mailing will run. Each time the mailing runs, ListManager will look for members who have met the criteria to receive a mailing, since the last time the mailing ran. The default run frequency is "1 day".

Time from trigger event

Select the number of hours/days/weeks/months/years before or after the trigger event the mailing should run. ListManager will see that the trigger event has occurred, and that the member(s) qualify to receive the mailing, but will not send the mailing immediately; rather it will delay it by the time specified here. For instance, if a member purchased an item on August 29th, 2003, you can then send the mailing 2 days after the purchase (the trigger event) rather than immediately upon the purchase. Then the setting would be "2 days afterwards". The "before" option is for future triggers that you may anticipate, such as a member birthday or join date anniversary. This would send the triggered mailing the set time prior to the upcoming event (i.e. birthday).

IMPORTANT NOTE Regarding Setting the Timing of Triggered Mailings

Keep in mind how the Run Frequency and Time from trigger event settings work together to determine the timing of triggered mailings. In general, the Time from trigger event setting is constrained by the Run Frequency setting. If you set both to the same time, the results can be unexpected. Here's an example.

Let's say you set Run Frequency and Time from Trigger Event both to one hour. Your trigger is "when a recipient opens their email."

At 11:59 a.m, someone opens their email. The Run Frequency setting is "check every hour," so at 12 noon, ListManager checks and sees that someone opened their email. Since the Time from trigger event setting is "send after one hour," and one hour has not passed, the triggered mailing is not sent. ListManager checks again at 1:00 p.m.; since more than an hour has passed since it found a qualifying event (the opened email), the mailing is sent.

However, let's say that the email was opened only two minutes later, at 12:01 p.m. The next time ListManager checks to see who has opened their mail is 1:00 p.m. When it does, it sees that mail was opened at 12:01 p.m., but since an hour has not quite passed, the Time from trigger event setting's criteria has not been met, so the triggered mailing isn't sent. ListManager checks again at 2:00 p.m.; by this time, more than an hour has passed, so the triggered mailing is sent.

To sum up, setting Time from trigger event to a particular interval doesn't mean a mailing will be triggered at precisely that interval. Results will generally be more predictable if Run Frequencyhas a lower setting than Time from Trigger Event.

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