Sequences, segments, templates and fill-in fields

These four tools let your marketing email follow what happens in your CRM. Templates hold the emails, fill-in fields make each one personal, segments describe groups of people by rules, and sequences send a series of approved emails when something happens to a person.

All four are under Marketing.

Templates

Templates, at https://app.contactroll.com/marketing/templates, are emails you can reuse. Press New template and give it a Name, a Subject and a Message. Start an email from it copies it into a new email, so changing the template later leaves emails already made from it as they are.

Fill-in fields

A fill-in field is filled in for each person when the email is sent. Insert one with its button while you write:

• First name: {{first_name|there}}
• Name: {{name|there}}
• Company: {{company|your company}}
• Plan: {{plan|your plan}}
• Status: {{status}}
• Product: {{product|our product}}
• Their address: {{email}}
• Unsubscribe link: {{unsubscribe_link}}

The words after the | are the fallback, used when ContactRoll has nothing for that person. You can change them. The preview shows the email for a person you choose, and lists each fallback it would use.

Segments

Segments, at https://app.contactroll.com/marketing/segments, are groups described by rules. Press New segment, give it a Name, and add rules. Under How the rules combine, choose All of these or Any of these, and add groups of rules as needed. Rules can ask about:

• Their status, Their plan, Their product, Their company
• When they signed up
• An open case, A deal, Marketing consent, A list
• Something in your app, as your app or Stripe reports it
• Their lifecycle stage: trial, activated, at risk or churned

ContactRoll counts who is in a segment as you build it, and works it out again every time it is used. An email can go to a segment instead of a list, and the segment is asked again at the moment of sending.

Lifecycle stages

When your app or Stripe tells ContactRoll about a person, ContactRoll works out their lifecycle stage: trial, activated, at risk or churned. Stripe's word comes first where it has one. A person whose app reports sign-ins and who has not signed in for 14 days is at risk. The stage, its reason and its date show on the contact's page, and a company shows its people's stages.

Sequences

Sequences, at https://app.contactroll.com/marketing/sequences, send a series of emails to each person who joins. Sequences come with the Standard and Plus plans. On Free, segments, templates and fill-in fields work as usual, and an organization that moves to Free keeps its sequences to read, but they send nothing until it moves to a paid plan.

1. Press New sequence and give it a Name.
2. Under It starts when, choose what enrolls a person: their status changes, they join a segment, they are added as a contact, their marketing consent is recorded, a case of theirs is closed, a deal they are on is won, they confirm a sign-up, your app says something happened, or their lifecycle stage changes.
3. Optionally, under It also ends when their status changes to, choose a status that takes people out.
4. Under Add a step, choose a template for each email. Set its wait (days or hours after joining, or after the step before) and, if you like, the hour of your team's day it goes at, or the next suggested hour.
5. Submit each step's email for review. An Owner or an Administrator approves each one.
6. Once every step is approved, an Owner or an Administrator switches the sequence on: "On — it sends by itself".

A sequence enrolls people from events that happen after it is switched on. Each person is enrolled once and gets each step once. An unsubscribe or a suppression always ends a person's enrollment.

You can also give a sequence a goal under What it is for: a lifecycle stage reached, or something their app or Stripe says. Reaching it ends that person's enrollment. A step can be just for people at certain lifecycle stages (Change who it is for); others skip it and go on to the next step.

Switching a sequence off holds everybody where they are, and switching it on again carries on. Editing a running step makes a new version, which pauses that step until it is approved. Who it has enrolled lists each person and where they are.

Every sequence email follows the same rules as any marketing email: consent, suppression, unsubscribe and your sending limits.