Your CRM enables your ISO to set up threaded follow-up email sequences for Status Triggers, with customizable email templates and the ability to set a specific number of days between follow-up emails in the sequence.
To understand the value of threaded email follow-up sequences, it is important to first learn the benefits of Merchant Central’s Status States and Status Triggers.
What are Merchant Central Status States and Status Triggers?
The CRM’s Status States feature ensures that ISOs can define where leads are in the funnel, to ensure that everyone interacting with a lead knows what step to take next in order to move that lead further along the buyers’ journey.
Leads are moved through different status states, which are fully customizable to suit your ISOs specific needs.
Status states live within status categories, which can also be customized along with the status states to build a buyer’s journey tailored to your business and audience.
Status Triggers are an enhancement to status states that enable users to create triggered actions as leads progress through different status states or at a specified time interval.
With Status Triggers, you can set the following tasks to be performed automatically when a status state changes or a set time interval has passed:
- Notify a user of the status change
- Change to another status
- Assign or unassign users to a lead
- Send an email to the lead’s contact
Threaded Email Follow-Up Sequences
The threaded email follow-up sequences feature enables users to automatically trigger threaded follow-up emails after a certain amount of time passes.
In the past, each email that was sent based on a status state change would have its own subject line and email body. For example, a first email would be sent based on a status state change from qualifying to closing.
An ISO could set up a follow-up email to be automatically sent after 3 days, but it wouldn’t be “threaded” into the original email. The emails would be arriving in an ordered sequence as intended, but they would appear as an entirely new email with a new subject line.
Now, emails in the same sequence can be threaded into the original reply and linked together in one place, allowing the recipient to get the full story even if they missed the previous email in the sequence.
The recipient of the email no longer has to comb through emails that are days old in order to understand why they are receiving the most recent reply because they can just scroll to view the previous emails in the sequence.
Once the recipient replies to the email thread, Merchant Central automatically stops future threaded follow-ups so no unnecessary emails will be sent.
The CRM also has the ability to detect autoresponse emails (such as vacation responders etc) which will not cause the threaded follow-ups to stop.
New Status Triggers With Email Follow-Up Sequences
Below are the steps to add new status triggers with threaded follow-up email sequences.
Step 1: Open the Status States Customization Page
Navigate to the Status Statues Customization page by clicking Manage > Administration > Leads > Status States and Triggers.
On the Status States Customization page you will find all of your current status categories, and you can add or remove statuses here.
Find the status category you would like to update, and click Add/Remove Statuses:
Step 2: Configure Status Triggers
In the next section, you will see a list of all the statuses created for that specific category.
Find the status you are updating and click Configure Status Triggers:
Step 3: Add New Status Trigger
In the Manage Status Triggers section you’ll find two different sections for triggers based on status age and triggers based on status change.
To create an entirely new status trigger, click Add New Trigger in the top right.
Select Notification by Field, then choose the field containing the email to which you’d like to send the automatically triggered email.
Next, select the Email Template you would like to use for the first email in your triggered sequence then choose whether you’d like the trigger to count business days only:
Below the Count Business Days option, you’ll see the Enable Threaded Follow-Ups checkbox.
Click the checkbox to create your first threaded follow-up for your new Status Trigger.
Now you can select the Email Template for your follow-up and designate the number of days that you’d like to wait before sending it:
You can add additional emails to the sequence by clicking Enable Threaded Follow-Up again.
This will create another threaded follow-up, which you can once again customize to your preferences.
Repeat this process for as many emails as you’d like to add to the sequence, then click Add to finalize your new threaded email follow-up sequence:
Once your ISO receives a response to an email in the threaded sequence, the sequence will be stopped and no additional emails will be sent.
Email Follow-Up Sequences for Existing Status Triggers
Below are the steps to add threaded follow-up email sequences to existing status triggers.
Step 1: Open the Status States Customization Page
Navigate to the Status Statues Customization page by clicking Manage > Administration > Leads > Status States and Triggers.
On the Status States Customization page, you will find all of your current status categories, and you can add or remove statuses here.
Find the status category you would like to update, and click Add/Remove Statuses:
Step 2: Configure Status Triggers
In the next section, you will see a list of all the statuses created for that specific category. Find the status you are updating and click Configure Status Triggers:
Step 3: Edit Your Status Trigger
Find the specific trigger that you’d like to add a threaded follow-up email sequence to, and click on the Edit Trigger icon to the right of the trigger.
This will bring up the Edit Custom Notifications popup, which is where you can add the threaded follow-up email sequence:
Step 4: Add Your Follow-Up Email Sequence to the Trigger
Now it’s time to set up your follow-up email sequence based on the selected status trigger.
First, click Active Follow-Ups to see the options for adding follow-up email sequences.
Underneath Add New Follow-Up, you can select the amount of time you’d like to pass between the first triggered email and the first follow-up email in the new sequence.
Next, select the email template that you’d like to use for this specific follow-up.
You can also review the email template to ensure that it fits your purpose.
If you would like to create an entirely new email template for this particular sequence, check out the Email Templates Knowledge Base article.
Edit Custom Notification
If you only want to set up one follow-up email in the sequence for the selected trigger, click Add Follow-Up and your new follow-up email sequence will be saved to the trigger, as seen in the table below Active Follow-Ups.
To add additional follow-ups, follow the same steps: set the amount of time you’d like between the previous follow-up and the newest one, select the email template you’d like to use, and click Add Follow-Up once again.
When you’re finished adding threaded follow-up emails for this trigger, click Save to complete the process.
Threaded emails based on status triggers are a powerful tool for every ISO that uses Merchant Central to accelerate growth.