Many OptiPub clients are boosting their revenue with Triggered Sends.

This guide covers two ways to set one up: directly on a message, and with a Funnel that leverages the Opened and Clicked funnel events in combination with the Sent query condition. Either way, emails are delivered to the subscriber's inbox while they are actively engaging in their inbox.

In addition, triggered sends consistently achieve high open and click rates, which can improve your reputation and deliverability.

What is a Triggered Send?

A Triggered Send is an automated message sent to a subscriber in response to the subscriber opening an email or clicking an email link. Set one on a message for a single response, or implement a Funnel Strategy to send a series of them.

Triggered Sends on Messages

A single triggered send doesn't need a funnel. Set one on the message and OptiPub sends an auto responder to each subscriber who opens or clicks it.

Navigate to OptiPub > Messaging > Create Message

1. In Step 1, find the Triggered Send row under Configure your message. It is available for email only.
2. Choose On Open or On Click.
3. Select one or more Auto Responders. Each subscriber is sent one they haven't already received.
4. Optionally set After to wait a number of minutes before sending, up to 10,080 (one week).
5. Choose a Priority to decide which auto responder is tried first (see Priority).

How It Works

📘

Reuse one list on every issue

Subscribers only receive auto responders they haven't had, so the same list can go on every message. An engaged subscriber works through it one message at a time: the top priority auto responder after one message, the next after the following message, and so on.

Priority

Rates come from each auto responder's lifetime stats across all of its sends, the same figures shown on its page. An auto responder with fewer than 100 sends is tried before the ranked ones, so a new one gets a fair sample before its numbers decide its place, much like the sample in a reactive split test. Revenue figures refresh every 15 minutes.

Test messages trigger sends too when the test address is subscribed to the publication, which is an easy way to check one before a live send.

Changing It After Sending

Open the message and click Add or Edit on its Triggered Send card, which also shows how many have been sent. Changes apply to sends still waiting out their delay, and choosing None cancels them.

🚧

Use a funnel for anything more

A triggered send on a message sends one email per subscriber per message. For multi-step sequences, conditions, or listening to every message with a tag, build a triggered send funnel as described below.

Triggered Send Funnels

Target your Content

Funnel Trigger Events should listen for email Opened and Clicked events using the Message Tag or Auto Responder Tag event types.

Match Tags on the message you are listening on with similar tags attached to the auto responders you will respond with.

You want to follow up engagement with sending an auto responder that best compliments the content engaged with and reinforces the interest of your subscriber.

A Waterfall of Responses

Use the Email Sent rule in Query conditions before the Email Send action to ensure that new content is sent to the subscriber in each triggered send.

The waterfall of query and auto responder pairs creates a series of content for responding to subscriber engagement.

📘

Tag your Triggered Send Funnels

Tags can help prevent multiple triggered send funnels listening for the same engagement activity to avoid multiple messages being sent for the same open or click event.

1. Attach a general Tag for "Triggered Sends" to all your triggered send funnels.
2. Match related content tags across your Funnels, Messages and Auto Responders.

Review how to create a Tag.

Creating a Triggered Send Funnel

If needed, review how to Create a Funnel.

Navigate to OptiPub > Marketing > Funnels

1. Create a new funnel
2. Configure funnel options.
   1. Select a Publication, and Name the funnel.
   2. Enable Stop on Unsubscribe.
   3. (Optional) Tag the funnel.

Don't add listeners for both open and click, because the open will always happen before a click and you may trigger multiple sends.

3. Add aTrigger Event listener for Email Opened OR Email Clicked.
   1. Click the button '+' at the bottom right corner of the Event Grid.
   2. In the Event dropdown, scroll to the email section and select the Opened or Clicked event.
      1. Choose a type, Message Tag or Auto Responder Tag, and select Tags.

This step will check if the auto responder has been previously sent to the subscriber.

4. Create aQuery Condition Action for Sent Email on the Trigger Event.
   1. Click the button **+** to add a new Rule.
      1. In the Rule dropdown, scroll to the email section and select the Sent rule.
      2. In the Condition dropdown, select Auto Responder.
      3. In the Value dropdown, select the Auto Responder you will send in the next step.
   2. Fire the query action Immediately.

Send the auto responder if the previous query was false.

5. Create aSend Email Action on the false connector of the Query.
   1. Choose an auto responder to send.
   2. Enable Only once and Send Only If Active.
   3. Choose an appropriate Delay time.

6. Continue adding auto responders to the waterfall sequence.
   1. Create a new Query on the true connector of the previous Query. (Step #4)
   2. Create a new Send on the false connector of the new Query. (Step #5)

7. ActivateandSave the funnel.

Maintaining Triggered Sends

It is important to monitor the performance and content of your triggered send auto responders.

1. Use your highest performing auto responders in triggered sends.
2. When other auto responders are seeing increased success, add them to the funnel or replace the lower-performing content.
3. Update auto responders with outdated content or replace with auto responders that have up-to-date content