Triggered Emails Guide

Audience

This document is intended for marketer, business managers, and others using the application interface to create the content and interactions. The information created in the interface is used by the API when an email is triggered.

Send Classification Information

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 might create a send classification that can be used every time a catalog is sent out to ensure that the appropriate parameters are used every time.

When you create a send classification you specify the Delivery Profile, Sender Profile, and CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) classification.

Content Information

When you create the triggered email interaction, you choose the email content to be sent when a subscriber triggers the interaction.

Destination Management Information

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

If your account has data extensions enabled, 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 fields that are required to add a subscriber are based on the definition of the data extension instead of on the subscriber attributes. See the Data Extensions Guide for more information about data extensions.

Send Options Information

When you create a triggered email interaction, you can choose whether to track the links in the email or suppress activity from this triggered send from reports. You might use these options to prevent test triggered sends from affecting your tracking statistics.

You can choose to send the message as multipart MIME. Multipart MIME format makes it possible for you to deliver an HTML version of the email message to subscribers whose email clients support it and a text version of the message to those whose email client does not support it. You should also use multipart MIME format for international sending because it allows you to use character sets other than US-ASCII.

List Detective

When a subscriber triggers an email, the List Detective tool scans the email address. The List Detective protects your deliverability by not sending the email to bad addresses. If the email address of the person triggering the email is identified as bad by List Detective, the system does not send the email message, so the send does not appear in your tracking. If you collect the triggering email addresses in a data extension, the List Detective prevents bad email addresses from being collected.

Asynchronous Processing

If your account has asynchronous API enabled, the system offers a feature to allow you to choose the priority of triggered sends. Priority determines the order and frequency in which items in this asynchronous queue will be processed. This process replaces the continuous/batch processing choices. Contact your account manager if you are interested in enabling this feature for your account.

You can designate the following priorities:

• High: Queued immediately.
• Medium: Queued every minute. It can take 0 to 1 minute to send the email. This is the default value.
• Low: Queued every 5 minutes. It can take 0 to 5 minutes to send the email.

You can specify a keyword to categorize the triggered email interaction. API calls can use the keyword to find one or more related triggered email interaction.

NOTE: When asynchronous triggered send processing is enabled, the system will validate required fields and email addresses before queuing the request. This will provide immediate feedback to callers of invalid requests.

Retention Policy Support for Triggered Sends

A data extension will be used as the source for a triggered send. 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 do not have a default. The triggering API call must include all attributes that, depending on configuration, update the subscriber data. A data extension that serves as a triggered send source must be built using a Triggered Send Source data extension template. See the Data Extensions Guide for more information.

The data extension used as a triggered send source will support automatic data retention policies. When defining a triggered send with a data extension source, the user specifies how long to retain the data. The default is six months. Users may select a retention period ranging from one day to forever. The system deletes the data at the end of the retention period. Subscriber data is not removed by the data retention policy; only the data extension data is removed.

Each customer may delete data from the data extension, as well as import the data back in using AMPscript. (For more information, see the AMPscript Guide.)

Obscuring Data for Triggered Sends

This feature obscures any information permanently stored in your account (other than the subscriber key) that would personally identify a subscriber. This includes email address and subscriber name. The system one-way hashes the information that comes into our system, and our administrator has the only hash key. Data is encrypted and decrypted by the system. For future data reconciliation purposes, customers are encouraged to keep a copy of all their subscriber records.

Please contact your account representative if you would like to activate the data retention or data obscuring features.