Triggered Emails in Email Studio

Overview

A triggered email is a message that's sent to an individual subscriber in response to a subscriber action. For example, sending a confirmation message after a customer makes a purchase is a triggered email.

A triggered email has two components: content and interaction. The triggered email interaction controls when the triggered email is sent. Pause the interaction to cause triggered messages to queue while you change the email content. Publish the interaction to begin sending emails again. When you define a triggered email interaction, you provide information about the message and its behavior that the interaction uses each time it’s triggered.

The definition of what triggers the interaction to send the email content is maintained outside of the application using API calls. The API uses the information created in the interface when an email is triggered. If events on your website trigger the email, those events must be defined using API calls outside of the application.

Use triggered emails to provide automated, personalized responses to your customers' activities on your website. Emails are trackable, targeted, and sent in real time.

• Define and send a message triggered by an event within the system or by an event outside of the system.
• Track opens, clicks, and emails.
• Capture subscribers to give the option to opt in to mailing lists.
• Target the content of emails using personalization, dynamic content, and AMPscript.
• Achieve high deliverability and scalability.
• Change content over time.
• Use auto-forward and auto-reply with messages processed by Reply Mail Management.

Send Classifications

When you define a triggered email interaction, you select a send classification. A send classification lets you define parameters for an email job in a central location and reuse those parameters for multiple email send definitions. For example, an administrator creates a send classification to use each time a catalog is sent because the parameters are the same each time.

Destination Management

You can select a subscriber list for the triggered send when you create the triggered email interaction. When a subscriber who isn’t already on the selected list triggers the interaction, you can add the subscriber to the list. When a subscriber who is already on the selected list triggers the interaction, you can update subscriber information.

If you use data extensions, you can select a data extension for the triggered send instead of a subscriber list. The data extension behaves the same way as the list, except that the required subscriber fields are based on the data extension instead of subscriber attributes.

Send Options

When you create a triggered email interaction, choose whether to track links in the email or suppress triggered send activity from reports. Use these options to prevent test triggered sends from affecting tracking.

You can choose to send the message as multipart MIME. Multipart MIME format delivers an HTML email message to subscribers whose email clients support HTML and a text email message to all other email clients. Use multipart MIME format for international sending because it allows character sets other than US-ASCII.

List Detective

When a subscriber triggers an email, List Detective scans the email address. List Detective protects deliverability by identifying bad or flagged email addresses. If an email address is identified as bad, the system doesn’t send the email message, so the send doesn’t appear in your tracking. If you collect the triggering email addresses in a data extension, List Detective prevents bad email addresses from being collected.

Priority

Choose the priority of triggered sends. Set this option for a triggered send definition and all emails sent using that triggered send definition receive the assigned priority.

Note To enable this function in your account, contact your account executive.

Retention Policy Support for Triggered Sends

When using data extensions as triggered send sources, build them using a Triggered Send Source data extension template. When a triggering API call is made, a row is added to the data extension for each recipient contained in the call. The triggering API call must include all required fields of the data extension that don't have a default value. Depending on configuration, the triggering API call must include all attributes that update the subscriber data.

The data extension used as a triggered send source supports automatic data retention policies. When defining a triggered send with a data extension source, specify how long to retain the data. Select a retention period ranging from 1 day to forever. The default is 6 months. The system deletes the data at the end of the retention period. The data retention policy doesn’t remove subscriber data. Only the data extension data is removed.

Each customer can delete data from the data extension and reimport data using AMPscript.

Note To enable this function for your account, contact your account executive.

Obscuring Data for Triggered Sends

This feature obscures any information permanently stored in your account (other than subscriber key) that personally identifies a subscriber, including email address and subscriber name. The system one-way hashes the information that comes into our system, and Marketing Cloud Engagement has the only hash key. The system encrypts and decrypts data. For future data reconciliation purposes, keep a copy of all subscriber records.

Note To enable this function for your account, contact your account executive.