Questions this guide will answer:

 

• How does Dynamic Reply work?

• Why should I use Dynamic Reply?

Who is it for?

Those of you who want to send one campaign but have each recipient on the list(s) receive their email personally from their own contact at your brand and have replies go back to each of them directly.

How does it work?

Personalise the Sender-name & sender-address prefix for each contact, making their email come from their main contact at your brand and have each contact’s reply go back to that individual to continue the conversation, as if it were sent by them directly.

Why is this useful?

This is popular for B2B senders where each contact on the list has an personal contact at your company; like an account manager or consultant. They may already exchange direct emails regularly with each other, so the campaign emails need to fall in line with that appearance and maintain the conversation link with the increased likelihood that a recipient will reply to this kind of campaign strategy.

Implementation

 
In order to use the Dynamic Reply feature, you need three extra things set-up on your account:

1. Unique custom-domain on your profile.

2. Dynamic-reply-domain on your profile.

3. Dynamic-reply fields in your list.

1. Unique custom-domain
If you only have one profile it is already unique and you can skip to number 2.

If you do have more than one profile and you are using the same custom-domain on more than one profile, we can help you set up a second custom-domain to keep that profile’s unique. Please contact support for more information.

2. Dynamic-reply-domain
To enable your campaign replies to be dynamic and go back to different people, you profile needs to hold your work email domain. If you want to use Dynamic Reply, just let us know and we’ll add your work’s email domain to your profile for you.

3. Dynamic-reply fields in your list.
Like any personalisation, in order to personalise the sender-name and sender-address each contact on your list needs to have those values.

This is simply two extra columns in your csv file: one for sender-name and one for sender-address then select accordingly during the list upload flow.

The sender-name column in your list is very straight forward, it is the name of the staff member who the email should be coming from. This commonly reflects the sender name from their own work emails, eg: ‘Firstname Lastname’.

The sender-address column in your list is the email address which each contacts’ email will come from. The prefix before the @ sign will reflect each staff member’s’ own work email prefix, eg: ‘firstname.lastname’ and the domain of the address with be your profile’s custom-domain, eg: emails.yourdomain.com.

Here’s an example snapshot of a list that could be used:

In the above example:

Your brand’s website is example.com
You have two staff members, who are account managers: Mary Scott and Dave Jones.
Mary’s email address is mary.scott@example.com
Dave’s email address is dave.jones@example.com

Your account has the custom-domain of email.example.com.
Meaning all of your campaigns come from something@email.example.com.

When you create your list, your column holding the dynamic reply sender-address is each account manager’s work address prefix, eg: mary.jones @ your profiles custom-domain eg: email.example.com.

Your spreadsheet could look like this…

 

Uploading the Dynamic Reply fields

Once you have your list set-up, you are ready to upload it into PureCampaign.

Follow the usual route to upload a new list:

Uploading your data

1. Go to the lists page by clicking “Lists”. On the lists page, click “Import contacts”

2. Give your list a unique name

3. Add your data list: drag & drop or click to browse your computer for it.

4. Then hit next for step2…

Matching your fields

In this step, you’ll choose your extra columns for use with personalisation and segmentation.

1. Select the column that holds the contact email address field first which reveals the rest of your data columns below .

2. To declare the column holding your desired Dynamic Reply sender name values, choose the option named: “Dynamic Reply Name” from far right dropdown.
This will automatically name the field correctly for you.

3. To declare the column holding your desired Dynamic Reply sender address values, choose the option named: “Dynamic Reply Email” from the far right dropdown.
This will automatically name the field correctly for you.

4. When you’ve finished configuring your data columns, choose Next to continue, then Finish on the final step once you’ve reviewed the import details.

You will get the usual list upload confirmation email. If any of the contacts in the list had an incompatible sender-address value in the Dynamic Reply Email field, they will have been rejected individually and you can see them when you click through the rejected contacts link from the email.

Scheduling a Dynamic Reply campaign.

Presuming you have your profile set-up fully for Dynamic Reply and you have uploaded a list and chosen the fields correctly, enabling dynamic reply is achieved with one click.

1. Choose ‘schedule a campaign’ from your dashboard or campaigns page

2. Select your message then click Next.

3. Select the list (or a segment of the list) containing your Dynamic Reply fields and click Next

 

Replies

Referring back to the examples above: Joe Bloggs will have received your campaign and the email would have come from: “Mary Scott <mary.scott@email.example.com>”.

When Joe replies, the reply is sent back to: mary.scott@email.example.com.
PureCampaign receives it, finds that it is from a dynamic reply enabled campaign on your profile.
It then forwards Joe’s reply to mary.scott@example.com.
Mary then receives Joe’s reply and replies back to Joe from her own work inbox and continues the conversation.

Technically, PureCampaign has taken the address the reply was sent to (mary.scott@email.example.com) and swapped its domain (email.example.com) for your profile’s dynamic reply domain (example.com).
Making the initial from and reply address of: mary.scott@email.example.com into a staff member’s real address: mary.scott@example.com.

FAQ

Q: What if not all of my contact records have dynamic reply values?
A: Don’t worry. When the Dynamic Reply campaign goes out, if any individual contact in your list does not have compatible field values, they will automatically use your profile’s default settings.

Q: Can I still use Dynamic Reply if I choose more than one list in my campaign but not all of them have Dynamic Reply fields?
A: Yes. As long as one of your lists or segments has Dynamic Reply fields, you will be able to enable it in your campaign. Any contact without compatible fields will use your profile’s default settings.

Q: Why is there a check box in my message settings to enable dynamic reply?
A: Some users prefer to state their intention to use Dynamic Reply when they make the message, to ensure they use it in their campaign. So you are able to ‘pre-enable’ dynamic reply in a message.
When you schedule a campaign and you choose a message with Dynamic Reply pre-enabled and you have at least one list with compatible fields, you will find that Dynamic reply is already selected when you get to that last step of the campaign setup.
You can also do this with Subject Line Selector.

Q: What happens if one of my contacts, later down the line, sends a new email to the Dynamic Reply sender address, eg: mary.scott@email.example.com; does Mary still get the email, as she would from a campaign reply?
A: As long as the profile is still configured for Dynamic Reply, PureCampaign will forward the email back to the right place, eg: mary.scott@example.com.

Q: If have gone into the edit list page, what does this error mean? 

A: This is not an error. This is just information to ensure that you do not change the spelling of either of the dynamic reply fields and stop it from working.

This also acts as a confirmation that you have spelled the correctly is you add the fields after you have uploaded.