Personalized email messaging

Creating and sending standard personalized email requires that you create a recipient list in Unica Campaign and design an email message in the Quick Builder. However, personalized email that is sent as transactional email does not take information from a recipient list. For transactional email, personalization data must be included in the message request.

The diagram illustrates the overall workflow for sending personalized email messages and the major Deliver components that are involved in the process.


email workflow

Table 1. Workflow for personalized email
Description

1

Standard and transactional messaging.

Deliver supports standard outbound email campaigns that address large numbers of email recipients. Deliver also supports transactional email that addresses a single recipient in response to a transaction. Both types of email can be personalized.

2

Select and upload recipient data to address and personalize email messages.

For standard mailings, run a Campaign flowchart to create an Output List Table (OLT). Transactional email receives address and personalization information from your transaction management systems according to instructions contained in a WSDL.

3

Create an email communication in the Quick Builder.

The communication defines the appearance and behavior of the message that the recipient opens. The communication is based on a template that you create outside of the Quick Builder and upload.

4

Configure a mailing.

The mailing references an OLT and an HTML document that you create in the Quick Builder. For transactional email, personalization data is contained in the transactional email request.

5

Run the mailing.

You can run the mailing manually, schedule the mailing to run at a specific date and time, or schedule it to run after a scheduled flowchart run. Deliver generates each message by merging recipient data with the referenced document that defines the message. Each transactional email message is also based on the design of the referenced document.

6

Transmit the messages.

Deliver hands the messages off to various Internet Service Providers (ISP) for delivery. Deliver tracks and records ISP delivery responses, including failed delivery responses, and unsubscribe requests. Deliver deliverability tools and rigorous list hygiene can help you to improve message deliverability over time.

7

Recipients open and respond to your email.

The system detects and records message opens and link clicks. Recipients can click links in the message that point to your website or to web pages that Unica hosts for you.

8

Deliver tracks link clicks and message responses.

When it assembles a message, Deliver rebuilds each link to point to the hosted messaging environment. When the recipient clicks the link, the request goes first for tracking. The request is then redirected to the link target.

9

Download the contact and response data.

The Response and Contact Tracker (RCT) is installed with Campaign behind your corporate firewall. The RCT periodically requests the tracking data that Unica recorded.

10

Contact and response data is stored in the Deliver system tables.

The RCT stores the data that it receives in various system tables. The Deliver system tables are part of the Campaign database schema.

11

Standard reports.

View standard Deliver reports to analyze message transmission performance, delivery success, and recipient responses.