For most marketers, this is no easy task. But alas, you are an email marketer, and even better, you are an email marketer using Bronto! Not only can you send relevant/timely messages in response to your customer’s actions, but you can do so automatically using behaviorally targeted automated message rules. Here’s how:

Setting Up Your Behaviorally Targeted Automated Message Rule

1. Go to Messages->Automated Message Rules.
2. Click the Create New Automated Message Rule link.



3. You will be brought to Step 1 of the create an automated message rule wizard. This four step wizard is designed to make creating automated message rules easy. Choose a name for your automated message rule.
4. Click the radio button next to the Behaviorally Targeted automated message rule type.
5. Specify the Type Settings for the automated message rule. You will need to choose the related message that the automated message rule will watch for. You will also need to choose the action or behavior that the automated message will look for in the related message. So for example, you could send a follow-up message to contacts who opened and clicked links contained in an email you sent to them regarding your Summer 2009 Sale.
6. Click Next.
7. You will be brought to Step 2 in the wizard. From here, you can pick the message that will be sent via the automated message rule in response to the action or behavior you choose to look for. You will also need to specify all the sending options for the automated message rule. These are similar to the sender options you specify when scheduling a regular delivery.
8. You can now click Advanced to continue on to Step 3 in the wizard, or click Verify Settings to bypass Step 3 and continue directly to Step 4 in the wizard. If you click Advanced, you can specify some of the advanced settings associated with automated message rules. After you are done on Step 3, you can click Verify Settings to continue to Step 4 in the wizard.
9. Once you are on Step 4, you can either click Save As Draft, which will save, but not activate the automated message rule (i.e. no messages will be sent via the automated message rule until you activate it), or click Save And Activate, which will save and activate the automated message rule.

So there you have it. By utilizing the power of a behaviorally targeted automated message rule, you can let your customer’s actions drive your email marketing efforts in an unobtrusive manner. Now all you have to do is sit back and let the automated message rule work it’s magic.

Have you used behaviorally targeted automated message rules in Bronto? If so, we’d love to hear about it in our comments section below.

John Gunther
Technical Writer/eLearning Specialist at Bronto

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Look forward to: Automated Messages, improved message scheduling workflow, a new calendar to help you better visualize how your email marketing calendar is shaping up, and more.

To be honest, I’m most excited about our new email automation features, so I thought I could take advantage of this blog post to expound on that a bit more…

Automation – it’s the panacea of the 21st century. The idea of robots doing our laundry, meals preparing themselves, and other Jetsonian wonders seem to be attainable goals. But as we approach the seemingly futuristic date of 2010 we haven’t achieved those wonders yet. However, there’s no need to fret as we have seen some advances in the world of automation. In this blog post I’ll focus on one of these advances: marketing automation.

For many of us there isn’t enough time in the day to get our marketing out the door, never mind fine tuning and growing out our marketing calendar. So, please welcome with open arms email automation, your time saver and new best friend.

Email automation allows you to execute on a campaign once and reap the benefits for weeks, months, or even years. By creating an automated message that keys off of recipient information you can easily send messages to people at the most relevant and impactful time.

It’s some what of a paradox that an automated campaign (executed without any human intervention) can provide some of the most relevant messaging that you send out. But this doesn’t happen by accident, such relevancy is the product of research and effort. You have to know what your customers are doing and what the next logical step is for them.

There are definitely risks involved with this type of communication, you do need to ensure that your data is accurate and up to date. If you don’t take this into account, you can end up sending out confusing messages. Bonnie Malone Fry over at ReturnPath recently wrote a great blog post about safe guarding and optimizing your automated email campaigns.

However, good data and a well planned automated campaign can have fantastic results. We know you see the value and time savings there, that’s why Bronto is introducing Automated Messages as a new feature in our Spring 2008 Release. We have built out an Automated Message wizard that walks you through the creation of several types of these campaigns, including Behavioral, Date Based, Recurring, and API triggered campaigns. With this addition, we’ve got you covered for those birthday emails, monthly traveler points summaries, purchase confirmation messages, and so much more.

For those of you who are using Bronto right now, stay tuned for more info. For those of you who aren’t, feel free to sign up for a free trial in May to check out the new features.

Adam Covati
Product Manager at Bronto

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