service autopilot™ email activity · a large part of the email you do in the system will be what...

Service Autopilot™

EMAIL ACTIVITY

Table of Contents

Summary ............................................................................................................................. 3

Getting Started .................................................................................................................. 3

Creating Batch Emails........................................................................................................ 3

CRM>Marketing.......................................................................................................................................................... 4

Client List ....................................................................................................................................................................... 4

Dispatch Board ............................................................................................................................................................ 4

Estimates ....................................................................................................................................................................... 5

Invoice Screen .............................................................................................................................................................. 5

Where to See Email Activity ............................................................................................. 5

Email Activity Home Screen ............................................................................................. 6

Cumulative Stats ................................................................................................................ 6

Requests ......................................................................................................................................................................... 6

Delivered ........................................................................................................................................................................ 7

Opened ........................................................................................................................................................................... 7

Bounced ......................................................................................................................................................................... 7

Spam ................................................................................................................................................................................ 8

Avoiding the Spam Folder ...................................................................................................................................................... 8

Rejected .......................................................................................................................................................................... 9

Individual Cumulative Stats Screens ............................................................................. 10

Columns ....................................................................................................................................................................... 10

Errors .............................................................................................................................................................................................10

Definitions ................................................................................................................................................................... 10

Filters ............................................................................................................................................................................. 11

Actions .......................................................................................................................................................................... 11

Removing Bounced/Spam Emails ......................................................................................................................................11

Email Activity Main Screen Tabs .................................................................................... 12

Results ..........................................................................................................................................................................................12

Scheduled ....................................................................................................................................................................................12

Processing ...................................................................................................................................................................................13

Email Activity

Service Autopilot User Guide 1.1 Copyright© 2016 Proprietary Information – All Rights Reserved

Completed ..................................................................................................................................................................................13

Archived .......................................................................................................................................................................................13

Batch Email Statistics Dialog .......................................................................................... 14

Email Information ..................................................................................................................................................... 14

Created .........................................................................................................................................................................................14

Resource ......................................................................................................................................................................................14

From ..............................................................................................................................................................................................15

Subject ..........................................................................................................................................................................................15

Body...............................................................................................................................................................................................15

Attachments ...............................................................................................................................................................................15

Send Progress ............................................................................................................................................................ 15

Current Status ............................................................................................................................................................................15

Start and End Times ................................................................................................................................................................15

Emails Scheduled .....................................................................................................................................................................15

Emails Skipped ..........................................................................................................................................................................16

Emails Sent ..................................................................................................................................................................................16

Broadcast Stats .......................................................................................................................................................... 16

Email Status / Icons .................................................................................................................................................. 16

Total Sent ....................................................................................................................................................................................17

Delivered......................................................................................................................................................................................17

Opened ........................................................................................................................................................................................17

Unopened ...................................................................................................................................................................................17

Bounced .......................................................................................................................................................................................17

Spam .............................................................................................................................................................................................17

Dropped .......................................................................................................................................................................................18

Deferred .......................................................................................................................................................................................18

Links Clicked ...............................................................................................................................................................................18

Unsubscribed .............................................................................................................................................................................18

Additional Icons ........................................................................................................................................................ 19

Processing ...................................................................................................................................................................................19

Completed ..................................................................................................................................................................................19

Rejected .......................................................................................................................................................................................19

Individual Batch Email Stats .................................................................................................................................. 19

Tracking Individual Emails on the Dashboard.............................................................. 21

Email Activity


Summary

There are a number of reasons you may send email in Service Autopilot. Pro Members have

Marketing capabilities that allow for Email Blasts. But everyone has the ability to do Invoicing via

email, send out several Estimates at once, and email a group of Clients from the Dispatch Board

or Client List.

Whether you’re sending thousands, a handful, or just one email, being able to track your email

activity efficiently can mean the difference between making and losing money, keeping and

losing Clients, and keeping and losing your good standing with those Clients. Within the Email

Activity screen, you can see if your emails are being received, being read, bouncing, etc. and

more effectively manage your Client relationships.

Additionally, email sent to Clients, whether individually or as part of a batch, will appear on

Clients’ Timelines.

Getting Started

Everyone has access to the Email Activity screen, regardless of Member subscription level. There

is a Permission associated with it, however.

Go to Home>Settings>User Roles and Rights, and pick the Role

you’d like to edit. Under the second row of that Role’s CRM tab, look

for “Email Activity” on the far right. You need to check or uncheck at

least the “View Email Activity” box to have access to the screen.

Additionally, you can choose to give your users permission to remove

emails from the Spam or Bounce lists.

Creating Batch Emails

A large part of the email you do in the system will be what we call “Batch” Email. You can create

a Batch Email from a number of places in Service Autopilot. Invoicing and Marketing Email Blasts

are probably the most likely use cases, but you can also send email batches from the Client List,

the Dispatch Board, and the Estimates List.

Email Activity


CRM>Marketing

From the Marketing link in the CRM

tab in Service Autopilot™’s header, you

can send Email Blasts to Clients.

Client List

From the Client List, selecting Clients and mousing over

the “Actions” button allows you to send Marketing emails

to those selected Clients. This is different from clicking

into an individual Client’s Record and choosing to email

that Client. Those individual emails appear in the Client

Timeline and in the Email History on the Dashboard

screen (see Tracking Individual Emails on the Dashboard).

Dispatch Board

The Dispatch Board allows you to email

several Clients at once from the “Actions”

button in order to notify Clients of things

like scheduling changes based on

inclement weather.

Email Activity


Estimates

From CRM>Estimates, the Estimate List

gives you the option of selecting a number

of Estimates and sending them out at once

with an email. As with the Client List, this is

different from clicking into an Estimate and

sending that Estimate individually. Estimates

sent from the main list screen go out as

Batch Emails.

Invoice Screen

When you elect to send several Invoices out using the

“Actions” button in Accounting>Invoices, the resulting

Emails are considered Batch Emails. This is the case even if

you only select one Invoice to email.

Where to See Email Activity

The Email Activity screen is located under CRM>Marketing.

Email Activity


Email Activity Home Screen

Clicking on Email Activity opens the Email Activity Home Screen, which collects and lists all of

the batch and trackable individual email that has been scheduled and processed and allows you

to see individual batches as well as cumulative statistics for email.

Cumulative Stats

The boxes across the top of the screen display cumulative numbers for all of the trackable email

you have sent in the system. Clicking into each box takes you to a new tab for that specific

category.

Requests

When you send emails through Service Autopilot, you are essentially requesting that the system

deliver the email. The number in this box represents the total number of emails you have tried

to send through the system. When your application or server attempts to send an email to one

of your customers via Service Autopilot, we record that as a “request” to your Dashboard.

Email Activity


Delivered

A delivery is recorded when a request to send an email results in the email being

accepted by the receiving server. It is important to remember that the message may

never have reached the recipient’s inbox. Some users and some email applications

may filter email away from the inbox through rules they’ve set up. If that happens, the

email may sit unseen in a junk or other folder without being marked technically as spam.

Unfortunately, that is completely beyond our control.

If an email is indicated as delivered you can be certain only that it was not rejected in some

way by the ISP.

Opened

To help track “opens,” Service Autopilot inserts a small, transparent image into all

outgoing emails. When a client reads an email, that client’s application loads the

tracking image, which in turn registers the “open” event with Service Autopilot.

This is not successful across the board, however. Not all email clients load images by

default: Microsoft’s Outlook, Apple’s Mail.app, Mozilla’s Thunderbird, and Google’s Gmail are

among them. So, remember that there will be occasions where recipients may receive a message

and open it, but if they do not automatically download images, that message will not be

counted as opened because there is no way to track the event.

Bounced

A bounced message is returned to the server that sent it. Bounced emails are either a

permanent failure to deliver the email or a temporary failure, based on conditions

with the recipient’s mail server.

Hard Bounces - A hard bounce returns email to the sender because the recipient’s

address is invalid. This might occur because the domain name doesn’t exist or because the

domain does not recognize the recipient’s email address. If an email is on the bounce list, we

will automatically drop any future requests to this email address (see Rejected definition below).

Soft Bounces - A soft bounce is an e-mail message that gets as far as the recipient’s mail server

but is returned before it gets to the intended recipient. Frequently, soft bounces occur when a

recipient’s inbox is full.

Email Activity


IMPORTANT: Validate each recipient’s email address. Most bounces occur because the

addresses or domains are incorrect. Examples would include misspellings or typos like

[email protected] (instead of david), or [email protected] (instead of gmail.com), etc. Note

that gmil.com got through the rejection filter on our end because it follows proper format

-- .com -- even though the domain is wrong.

Spam

Spam is unwanted email This seems simple enough on the face of it, but it can be

very easy for a message to fall into this category, given the kinds of safeguards we

have had to put into place to protect from scams, malicious email blasts, and general

junk that gets sent out in the millions.

Since it’s so easy for a message to fall into this category that as a sender you need to

understand how and why emails can get marked as spam.

We’ve isolated some of the most common pitfalls that send emails to the Spam Folder and also

made suggestions for how to avoid them.

Avoiding the Spam Folder

1. High Frequency. This is the most common reason subscribers either hit the Spam

button or unsubscribe from an email stream. ISPs want to make sure that their users’

mailboxes don’t get crowded. In order to protect their users from email fatigue they may

start junking the messages.

Avoid this how? Make sure that you don’t send unnecessary emails. Think about the

quantity of email you are sending out and prioritize messages.

2. High Complaint Rate. If too many of their subscribers flag your mail as spam, ISPs will

take action. First, they will start sending your mail to the Spam Folder. If complaints

persist, the ISP may start slowing down delivery of your messages or even block them

(known as “throttling”).

Avoid this how? Keep an eye on your complaint rate if you want to reach the Inbox. The

complaint rate is based on how many messages per 1,000 get marked as Spam by a

recipient. Most ISPs want you to be at lower than .1%. That’s fewer than one of every

1,000 messages that you send out.

3. Lack of an “Unsubscribe” link. You need to give customers the ability to opt out of a

service. Not adding an “Unsubscribe” link to emails will only force a subscriber to hit the

Spam button in order to stop receiving emails from you.

mailto:@yahoo.com

mailto:[email protected]

Email Activity


Avoid this how? Add an opt-out link to your emails. Some studies have shown that you

can lower complaint rates by simply placing the “Unsubscribe” link at the top of your

emails and making it easy to find. You do yourself no favors by failing to put in an opt-

out link or hiding it in tiny text at the bottom of an email in the hopes that you’ll keep

more people on the list.

4. Sending to Inactive Users. People’s interests change all the time. Subscribers lose

interest and stop opening emails. Senders commonly respond to this by sending emails

to a wider group of users; however, this will only continue to hurt your deliverability. ISPs

monitor the responsiveness and engagement of their users. They can see whether

people open emails, click links, delete emails, or mark them as spam or not spam. Based

on these metrics, ISPs decide folder placement - whether the email goes to the Inbox or

if it gets junked.

Avoid this how? Track your own user engagement. Use the Email Activity screens in SA

to see who’s not opening email, etc. Also, have an appropriate policy for removing

inactive users from your distribution lists: before removing inactive users, try to re-

engage them. One great way to do that is through reconfirmation campaigns.

5. Inadequate Content. ISPs protect their users with the help of spam filters. Using the

wrong words or characters in your email can trigger spam filters and throw your email

into the Spam Folder. Remember: a spam filter is trying to remove commercial

advertisements and promotions.

Avoid this how? You want to avoid altogether or use very sparingly any words common

to such emails. Here are 100 Spam Trigger Words & Phrases to Avoid.

Rejected

Rejected emails are those that are removed from your outgoing list before being

sent. The system might remove them for a number of reasons, the most common

being the following:

Opt-Outs: The person to whom you are attempting to send an

email has requested not to receive Marketing or other Notifications via

email. S/He might have clicked an opt-out link, or you might have flagged

that client as “Do Not Market” in the Client Edit.

Invalid Formats: This would catch things like “fish@motorcycle” because

valid email formats need a dot-something. Emails that appear in the

correct format, even though they may have typos, will be bounced, instead

https://sendgrid.com/blog/email-reputation-and-email-engagement-metrics/

https://sendgrid.com/blog/putting-engagement-data-use-sunset-policies/

https://sendgrid.com/docs/Glossary/Email_Types/reconfirmation.html

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/30684/The-Ultimate-List-of-Email-SPAM-Trigger-Words.aspx

Email Activity


of rejected. So, [email protected] would make it through the rejection

step but probably get bounced after that.

Individual Cumulative Stats Screens

Clicking into a cumulative stats box opens a new tab for that specific category. Each screen will

contain a list -- defaulted to date order with the oldest at the top -- of all the emails that have

met that condition.

Columns

You can sort the screen by clicking on the arrows at the top of any column.

Errors

If there are any errors, the “Yes” in this column will be a link. Clicking on it opens a small dialog

detailing the specific error encountered when trying to deliver that email. There are too many

kinds of errors to list, but here is a sampling of what you might see:

Definitions

The definitions that you see in this

document also appear at the top of

each individual statistics screen.

Email Activity


Filters

These stats screens can get quite

large, given that they are

cumulative, so you may want to

filter down the emails you’re seeing

in order to isolate clients or emails

with errors, etc.

Actions

If you have only the permissions to view Email Activity, the

only available action for these screen will be to Bulk Create.

Selecting emails and clicking that link opens a dialog with the

several Bulk Create options.

Removing Bounced/Spam Emails

If you have the permission enabled to remove emails from

the Bounced or Spam lists, that option will also appear.

Clicking to remove emails from the Bounce List will

automatically remove those emails and refresh the list of

Bounced Emails. You may have a list of hundreds of bounced emails, and if you click on one

person’s email address to remove it, remember that you may have sent several emails to that

person, so removing one address might reduce your bounce list by a greater number.

Email Activity


Clicking to remove an email from the Spam List opens a confirmation dialog requesting a

reason for removing that address from the list. You must remove these emails individually.

Email Activity Main Screen Tabs

Results

This tab is automatically loaded when you open the Email Activity screen. It contains the full list

of batch emails that have been created, except those you have archived.

Scheduled

Depending upon the size of the batch you’re sending, the traffic on our servers, and the number

of other requests for email that are pending at the time of your request, you may see a batch

sitting under the “Scheduled” tab for a few minutes, much as you would a document in a printer

queue. As other Batch Email requests are processed, yours will move forward in the queue from

“Scheduled” to “Processing.” Your batch may be in this stage for only a few seconds or, during

times of heavy traffic such as Invoicing days, the batch may take longer to progress.

Email Activity


Processing

Emails that are processing are being sent. Again, the speed of this depends upon

traffic, the size of the batch, and upon how easily email addresses are verified. As

soon as email is finished processing, the batch moves to the “Completed” tab.

Completed

Emails under the “Completed” tab have been sent and all processes on our end have

been completed. Now, you can check on the status of those various emails by clicking

into an Email Batch line on the main screen.

Archived

The Email Activity screen is filled with historical data for your records. In order

to get a more streamlined view without having to use filters, you may decide

to Archive email batches that you perhaps sent out as tests or which no longer

apply to your company’s business. The “Action” button allows you to Archive

and also Restore Batch Emails. All Archived Batch Emails will sit under this tab.

Email Activity


Batch Email Statistics Dialog

Clicking a Batch Email line from the Home Screen opens a dialog with that specific Batch Email’s

information. This screen is broken into three distinct areas.

Email Information

This top left section of the popup contains basic

information about the selected email batch.

Created

This is the date and time stamp for the email.

Resource

The Resource listed is the User who created/sent the

batch.

Email Activity


From

Generally, this is your Company Email, which is automatically used for outgoing messages. If you

changed this for a specific batch, the alternate email would appear here.

Subject

This is the subject line of the batch and the name that the batch appears under on the Email

Activity Screen.

Body

From here, clicking on HTML will open another dialog containing the body of the email you sent

with any Personalization Fields in brackets.

Attachments

SA does not save attachments with individual emails. So, although you cannot open attachments

that you sent out with your batch, this field will list the names of any attachments that went out

with it.

Remember that Estimate emails always have a Quote attached and Invoice emails always have

an invoice attached, so those attachments will not be considered for this screen. Only

Attachments that you manually add will display.

Send Progress

The Send Progress portion of the statistics popup lets you know

in more general terms where in the process your batch email is.

Current Status

The Current Status will be one of four: Scheduled, Processing,

Completed, or Archived.

Start and End Times

This tells you when the batch began processing and when our

system finished sending it out.

Emails Scheduled

The total number of emails you originally intended to send when you hit the “Send” button

displays here. This is all-inclusive.

Email Activity


Emails Skipped

Skipped emails are any emails that did not make it out of the scheduled queue. The system will

skip, for instance, emails belonging to Clients who have opted out of Marketing Emails (if the

batch is coming from Marketing).

Emails Sent

If you take the total number of emails scheduled initially when you created your batch and

subtract those emails that were skipped, the remaining number represents all emails that were

actually sent from Service Autopilot. Sent emails are finished processing and ready to be

delivered.

Broadcast Stats

The Broadcast Stats section of the popup displays a breakdown of what happened with the

emails that went through the process.

The pie chart gives you a visual representation of the success rate of your batch and updates as

emails are delivered or bounced, etc. One thing to note is that once the emails have been sent

out on our side, we must wait for our email delivery service partner to get us the information on

bounced emails, clicked links, etc. If they get bogged down, your batch of emails might be

placed in a processing queue which will delay the updates on the Broadcast Stats portion of the

overlay.

Email Status / Icons

This pie chart is a visual representation of nine of the ten fields to its right. Total Sent is not

included. Hovering over the chart will highlight “slices.” The nine fields represent a series of

actions that can be taken regarding your emails. For more extensive definitions/discussions of

the basics, refer to the Cumulative Stats section above.

Email Activity


Total Sent

Although this is not a part of your pie chart, you can click on the number next to it to see an

unfiltered list of the emails that went out in the batch.

Delivered

Everything went smoothly and the email made it into the recipient’s inbox. Do not

mistakenly think each of these delivered emails was opened. We have no control over

rules that your clients or their email programs might have set up to immediately

move certain messages out of the inbox to other folders.

Opened

Your email was opened by the recipient.

Unopened

The message was delivered but hasn’t yet been opened.

Bounced

Bounced emails were neither opened nor received. You might have a bad email

address, or the intended recipient might have a full inbox.

Spam

This recipient’s email program has rejected your email as Spam, or the recipient has

marked the email as Spam.

Email Activity


Dropped

The recipient of a dropped email is on a suppression list of some kind, whether spam

or bounced, unsubscribed, or even an invalid email address. This email will not be

delivered.

Deferred

Deferred email cannot currently be delivered. This might be a server issue on the

recipient’s end that places the email in a holding pattern. Some deferred emails will

be delivered eventually, but others may end up being bounced.

Links Clicked

You sent a link within the email using one of our Personalization Fields. The recipient

clicked on that link – to a Form, to your Client Portal or an Estimate acceptance page,

etc.

Unsubscribed

We are still building this functionality into our email tracking on the Service Autopilot side, but

unsubscribed recipients would not receive an email. Service Autopilot determines which emails

belong to unsubscribed clients before sending a batch. Also, if a recipient were to click on a

(future) “Unsubscribe” link at the bottom of the email you send, that email would appear under

this category.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Some of your Clients or their email providers may have configured their email

accounts to prevent companies from gathering statistical information from emails. In this case, those emails will not return to us any stats.

Email Activity


Additional Icons

Processing

Emails that are processing are being sent. Again, the speed of this depends upon

traffic, the size of the batch, and upon how easily email addresses are verified. As

soon as email is finished processing, the batch moves to the “Completed” tab.

Completed

Emails under the “Completed” tab have been sent and all processes on our end have

been completed. Now, you can check on the status of those various emails by clicking

into an Email Batch line on the main screen.

Rejected

Rejected emails are those that are removed from your outgoing list before being

sent. See Spam section for further information.

Individual Batch Email Stats

You will notice that some of the numbers next to the above categories are clickable. Clicking an

individual, linked number redirects you to the Batch Email Status Screen, where you will see

which Client emails fell into a particular category.

Email Activity


Although the screen opens specifically to whichever category you clicked, the filters can be reset

or changed to see other statistics as well. Clicking the “X” on the left of the filter bar will give

you the entire list of emails in the batch.

There is also an “Actions” button with a “Bulk Create” option. Checking the boxes of emails in

the list and clicking “Bulk Create” opens a popup allowing you to do a number of things.

This way, if you have a Marketing Email that you know was delivered to X number of people, you

can create a follow-up To Do to check in with them. That is only one of the many ways you can

use this feature to help follow up with Marketing or other Email.

Clicking on the Client’s Name on this screen – notice that it is an underlined link – takes you

directly to the Client Page so that if you are looking at bounced emails, for example, you might

be able to call your Client to see if you’re using a bad email address. Clicking anywhere else on

an individual line will open the original email. The icons on the right side are visual indicators of

the status to their left.

Email Activity


Tracking Individual Emails on the Dashboard

For individual emails, you can still go to the Dashboard>Email History section.

Find this by going to Home>Dashboard.

Make sure you are on the “Company Performance” tab, which is

the far left tab on the Dashboard.

On the right side of this tab, you will see

the Emails section under the Company

Sales Pipeline graphic. From this Emails

area you can see individual emails you’ve

sent and their status.

service autopilot™ email activity · a large part of the email you do in the system will be what...

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