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 CEP 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 ​Automation​, create a new whiteboard.
  2. Drag an ​Event​ module and an ​Event-based job​ module onto the whiteboard.
  3. Drag and drop between the connection  buttons to connect the modules.

  4. Define the module settings as follows:

    Event Module

    Field

    Entry

    Name

    Enter a name for the module.

    Job

    Message Reply Received (C)​.

    Group Name

    You can limit this automation to replies in a specific group. Or, you can use one automation for all groups in the system. It is necessary to configure the ​Reply Handling​ for every group in which this automation should apply.


    Event-based Job Module

    Field

    Entry

    Name

    Enter a name for the module.

    Job

    Send Prepared Message to Contact (C)​

    Message

    Select the prepared message.

    Contact

    Select the ​Use Event Parameter​ check box.

  5. Click ​Next​.
    ⇒ The ​Whiteboard​ wizard opens to step two.
  6. Define the desired time frame and notifications.
  7. Click ​Activate​ to immediately activate the whiteboard. Only active whiteboards are executed by the system.
    ⇒ The whiteboard is saved and activated. The automation has the status ​Running​ if the start date is immediate and ​Scheduled​ if the start date is in the future.