Respond to Incoming Emails

Goal

To send an automatic email response to contacts who reply to one of your messages.

Background Information

After sendout to a group of recipients, some recipients hit the reply button of their email client to respond directly to the message.

You can create an event-based automation to send an automated email reply to these contacts.

This automated response consists of a prepared message. You create the prepared message yourself. For example, you can inform customers that you do not read or respond to incoming mails to this address. You can invite them to contact you via a web form or a different email address.

Prerequisites

You must use two separate groups for this scenario. Otherwise, this setup can produce endless loops of replies. If a recipient has an out of office autoresponse message turned on, this autoresponse will trigger Mapp Engage to send an automatic response. This in turn results in another out of office message from the recipient's email client... and so on. Using two separate groups prevents this from happening.

1. Create a new group. This is the reply handling group. This group has no members. It is just a placeholder group.

2. Configure the group settings of the sendout group. In the group settings, select Initiate event-based automation from the drop-down list in the Replies field. This is necessary for every group in which this automation should apply.

3. Create a prepared message. For instructions, see Save Draft as Prepared Message.

Procedure

1. In Automations > Automations > Event-Based, click Create.

2. Enter a Name for the automation. A Description is optional.

3. Define Event

   Field	Entry
   Event	Message Reply Received (C)
   Group Name	Select the group. It is necessary to configure Reply Handling for every group to which this automation should apply.
   Subject / Body	Optional. Limit the automation to replies containing specific text, for example replies with "unsubscribe" in the subject line.

4. Define Job

   Field	Entry
   Job	Send Prepared Message to Contact (C)
   Message	Select the prepared message from the prerequisites.
   Contact	Select the Use Event Parameter check box so the reply is sent to the contact who triggered the event.

5. Optional: define a Delay if the reply should not be sent immediately.

6. Save and activate the automation.
   ⇒ The automation appears in the Event-Based overview. Status is Running if the start date is immediate, or Scheduled if the start date is in the future.