Customer Service Emails can be used to send personalised, non-promotional messages to customers. For example, Event cancellation notifications, messages about time / cast changes, or e-ticket delivery.
Once your emails are set up, anyone in your team can send a customer service email with a custom message directly from Spektrix without needing to log into Dotdigital.
What are Customer Service Emails?
There are two types of Customer Service Emails: Triggered and Scheduled.
Triggered: immediately send a notification to customers with tickets for a certain Instance.
Example use cases:
- Cancellation / closure messages
- Cast change notification
- Last minute travel updates
Scheduled: schedule a notification in advance of when you want customers with tickets for a certain Instance to receive a message.
Example use cases:
- Remind customers to bring warm clothes to an outdoor event
- Remind customers of venue details on the day of the event
- Update customers on details of meet and greets or merchandise pick up
You can also use either method to send e-tickets. You can either resend e-tickets on the day or delay the sending of e-tickets until a number of days before an Instance.
Anyone in your team can send a customer service email with a custom message directly from Spektrix without needing to log into Dotdigital. This could be useful, for example, if an Event is cancelled unexpectedly over the weekend when no one from the marketing team is in.
To do this, you would need to:
- Have a general Event cancellation message template set up in Dotdigital
- Give the Box Office team the email campaign ID from Dotdigital
If an Event is cancelled, someone in your team with Spektrix Admin Interface access can then trigger the email and use the Free text field to add any custom information, such as the reason for the cancellation.
We have created two templates for two of the most common use cases of Customer Service Emails.
Follow the instructions in the relevant article to get started:
How are Customer Service Emails delivered?
Customer Service Emails in Spektrix are sent as Transactional Emails in Dotdigital. This means they do not require the customer to have opted in to Contact Preferences.
Customer Service emails are delivered even if the customer has previously opted out of marketing emails or if they are suppressed.
Customers with email addresses which appear on Dotdigital's Global Suppression List will not receive Customer Service Emails.
TIP: Customer Service Emails are included as part of your Dotdigital allowance.
Customer Service Emails can only be used for need-to-know information about an Event.
You must not include any marketing content, such as advertisements, promotions, offers, or upsells in your email. This includes additional services like bars, restaurants, merchandise or other packages.
WARNING: Using a Customer Service Email to send marketing content is a compliance violation. Misuse of transactional emails could result in restrictions or loss of access to Dotdigital.
What can’t be included in Customer Service Emails?
Customer Service emails must remain strictly informational and transactional.
Do not include any of the following in Customer Service emails:
- Advertisements for events not directly related to the booking
- Promotions for merchandise, memberships, donations, or special offers
- Marketing messages about additional facilities or activities (e.g., bars, restaurants)
- Requests to sign up for newsletters or other marketing communications
Furthermore, the following Dotdigital features cannot be included in any Customer Service emails:
- RSS feeds
- Sharing Blocks
- Social links
- Dynamic Content blocks (Customer Service Emails only include the data that comes from the send, therefore, Dynamic Content blocks cannot access the data needed to power them)
- Forward to a friend links
- View in browser links
REMINDER: If you attempt to send a Customer Service Email containing prohibited content, your send may fail, or the content may be removed from your email.
Complaints
You must keep your customer data up to date to ensure that your Customer Service Emails are not sent to customers who have complained. As these emails are directly related to a customer’s booking, complaints are generally unlikely. However, if you do start to receive complaints, you should review your email content to ensure it is clear, accurate and appropriate.
You can monitor the number of complaints your Customer Service Emails receive in Dotdigital. To do this, follow the steps below.
- In Dotdigital, go to Settings > Transactional email:
- Click Complaints:
On the Complaints tab, you’ll then be able to view any customers who have submitted ISP complaints.
Unlike with other Dotdigital emails, customers who complain are not automatically suppressed. Instead, you will need to manually remove the email in Spektrix to stop the customer from receiving Customer Service Emails in future.
Setting up Customer Service Emails in Spektrix
You can schedule or immediately send a Customer Service Email from an existing Event Instance.
Scheduling a Customer Service Email
When setting up new Instances or editing existing Instances, you can set the Schedule Option in the Customer Service Email Schedule tab:
You’ll then be required to complete the following details to set up your Schedule:
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Schedule Options: choose whether or not to create a schedule. To create a schedule, select the Create scheduled send for Customer Service Email radio button. If you select Do not create Customer Service Email schedule send then no Customer Service Emails will be scheduled.
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Send Before Event Instance: choose the number of days and hours before the Instance start time you’d like the Customer Service Email to be delivered.
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Campaign ID: enter the campaign ID of your Triggered campaign in Dotdigital.
You can find the Campaign ID in your browser’s address bar when editing the email campaign in Dotdigital.For example:
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Free Text: enter any free text that you’d like to display in the email. This text will replace the @FREETEXT@ merge field in your email. There is no character limit for free text.
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Send to: choose Print at Home for e-ticket delivery or All for an event notification.
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Enable print at home after sending: Choose yes to automatically unsuppress Print at Home / e-tickets (system emails) after the schedule has been delivered. By default this option will be set to Do not change. If you choose Do not change this will not affect whether Print at Home tickets are suppressed or not.
-
Print at Home ticket design: If you are automatically unsuppressing Print at Home ticket delivery you can choose an alternative Ticket Design. By default this option will be set to Do not change. If you choose Do not change the ticket design set at Instance level will be delivered if unsuppressed.
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Print at Home PDF template: If you are automatically unsuppressing Print at Home ticket delivery you can choose an alternative Print at Home PDF template. By default this option will be set to Do not change. If you choose Do not change the Print at Home PDF template set at Instance level will be delivered if unsuppressed.
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Update Digital Pass Template Id: Choose Yes from the dropdown if you'd like the Digital Pass Template Id for the Instance to change after the schedule is sent.
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Digital Pass Template Id: If you choose Yes to Update Digital Pass Template Id, enter the Template Id of the Digital Pass you want the Instance to be updated with.
- Click Next or Save to confirm the changes.
Sending a Customer Service Email immediately
You can immediately send a Customer Service Email out for an existing Instance at any time.
To do this, you can use the Customer Service Email schedule wizard.
To use the wizard, follow the steps below:
-
Navigate to the Instance you want to send the Customer Service Email
for.
-
Click the Customer Service Email button at the bottom of the Instance Details page:
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Enter the campaign ID of your Triggered campaign in Dotdigital and click Validate:
-
If the Triggered Email you have set up is valid, you’ll see a success message:
-
Additional Info: enter any free text that you’d like
to
display in the email. This text will replace the
@FREETEXT@ merge field in your Customer Service Email.
-
Send Options: choose Print at Home
for
e-ticket delivery or All for an
event notification.
-
Confirmation: Confirm that there are no marketing communications in your email and click Send Campaign:
-
Summary: a message will display to let you know how many customers have received the email
For customers that are inactive or do not have a valid email address, you’ll be given the option to download a CSV containing their details. You’ll need to contact these customers by phone or post.
-
Click Finish to complete sending the Customer Service
Email.
Customer Service Email Failure notifications
You can choose to receive email notifications about failed Customer Service Email schedules. To do this, you’ll need to enter the email addresses you’d like to receive the notification in the Settings Interface.
TIP: To access the Settings Interface, you’ll need the Settings Administrator Role. If you don’t have this Role, ask the Settings Administrator in your organisation to add this Role to your User Account.
- Navigate to the Settings Interface
- Go to Configuration > System set up
-
Click the Customer Service Emails Schedule tab:
- Enter the email address to receive notifications. If adding more than one email address, separate each email address with a comma:
Troubleshooting errors
A Customer Service Email will not send if it contains unsupported content. For example, marketing content or view in browser links.
If your triggered email contains unsupported content, you’ll see an error message which reads:
Error: Campaign contains unsupported blocks. Remove any marketing information or view in browser links. Read What can't be included in Customer Service Emails for further guidance.
To resolve this error, remove any unsupported content and resend the email.
Reporting on Customer Service Emails
To report on Customer Service Emails in Dotdigital, go to Analytics > Dashboards>More Dashboards > Transactional API.
You will then see the Transactional email dashboard:
Here, you can view the number of:
- Transactional emails sent
- Number delivered
- Total opens
- Total clicks
When a transactional email is sent, a line per customer is generated in the table on this dashboard.
You can click the Download icon against any sent transactional email campaign to download and view the content for each customer.
Transactional emails are kept for 90 days. After this time, you can no longer download the campaign.
If you want to delete a customer’s data you can select the checkbox next to the record and then click DELETE. This will remove the customer’s email address from your transactional email reporting.
TIP: You must keep your customer data up to date to ensure that your Customer Service Emails are not sent to customers who have complained. Read the Complaints section of the Customer Service Email article for more information.