Automatic Email Delivery is a feature in Tivian Communicate XI (CXI) that simplifies campaign management by allowing users to schedule and send personalized emails to targeted audience groups.

It uses Postmark, a secure transactional email service, to ensure reliable delivery. The feature enables personalized greetings, content targeting, and detailed engagement analytics.

Setup involves configuring email settings, creating a targeted audience, and conducting tests before full implementation. This tool enhances communication strategies by providing insights into audience engagement and allowing for more efficient campaign management.

About

Managing campaigns and various communication over a period of time is simplified when Automatic Email Delivery is set up. Scheduling your campaign emails ahead of time allows you to easily manage other aspects of your campaigns. You have the option to send emails immediately or schedule them to be delivered at a future date from Tivian Communicate XI (CXI). Once your emails have been delivered, you will be able to view the segmented analytics, allowing you to gain deeper insights into how each audience group is behaving and pinpoint which groups need extra help or guidance.

The Automatic Email Delivery feature must be enabled for CXI to do the following:

• Send scheduled emails from CXI on your behalf directly to your Targeted Audience distribution groups
• Personalize your message greeting for each recipient by their first name
• Specified filters for your engagement analytics (such as group, location, job role)
• Content targeting for audience subgroups
• Required to use the Communicate Messages™ feature
• Additional engagement tracking (such as emails opened)

How it works

Tivian uses a secure transactional email service provider, Postmark, to ensure that emails get delivered securely and reliably. CXI emails appear as if they came directly from a sender within your company. The Tivian team will work with your IT team to configure the email and security settings.

You will also be required to create a Targeted Audience via an HRIS Connector, Public API, or CSV file. From this Targeted Audience, you can then tailor emails to specific distribution groups. Once you send emails to distribution groups, you will have additional filters that allow you to look further into the data analytics to see how specific distribution groups are engaging with the content experience.

Put us on your Safe Senders list

Be sure that you or your IT team has reviewed the Getting Started Checklist to ensure that CXI email is put on your company safe sender’s list and will not be caught by firewalls or other security measures.

Set up

Before following the steps below, create a Targeted Audience. Read the Creating and Managing Audiences to set up your Targeted Audience.

1. In the Preferences section of your selected Communicate Journey, go to the Audience preferences.
2. Select the audience, or distribution group, that will be receiving automatic emails by making it the Active Audience.

1. Scroll down to Email Preferences.
2. Click on the pencil icon next to Manual.

5. Select Automatic Delivery, then click Next.

6. Include the name and email address of the sender for this campaign’s email messages. The sender must be a person or an email alias at your company, with an existing email address.

7. Then click Next.

8. You will receive a notification saying that your verification is pending. Click Done.

9. The sender email address will receive an email from the Transactional Email Service, Postmark, requesting approval to send emails on the sender’s behalf. If the sender will be someone else, notify them ahead of time. Reply emails will also go to the sender’s email. If you need replies to go to a different address, let your Tivian team know the Reply-To address to use.
10. The sender must click the Confirm this Sender Signature button in the Postmark email to provide permission for CXI to send automatic emails. A sender address will only be required to provide confirmation once.

11. Once you have confirmed the sender’s signature, a Postmark window confirmation will appear. (You may close the tab.)

12. Go to the Preferences section of your Communicate Journey. Under Email Preferences, the Automatic option will show as pending.

13. Click the pencil icon next to the Automatic option again. Click Next.

14. The sender and email address will already be populated. Reverify that these are the correct sender and email address you will use. Then click Next.

15. After you receive a confirmation pop-up window that the Automatic Email Delivery set up is complete, click Done.
16. Go back to Email Preferences, in the Preferences section and confirm that your email delivery is set to Automatic.

After you set up Automatic Delivery for your campaign, you can switch back and forth between Manual and Automatic Delivery at any time, without needing to redo your setup steps. You can also edit the Automatic Delivery preferences to change the sender if needed. If you change your active audience to a manual audience, it will default back to Manual.

Technical setup

To take advantage of Automatic Email Delivery and ensure the emails reach your intended audience, two configuration updates will need to be completed by your IT team, or whoever administers your company email preferences.

1. It is recommended the DKIM key is added to your domain’s DNS for the emails to be viewed as legitimate and authenticated emails rather than spoofed or phishing emails. The DKIM key is designed to ensure messages aren’t altered from the sender to the recipient. To further aid in the authentication, DMARC can also be included in the DNS update. The DMARC allows you to set up policies to authorize who can send emails for your domain based on the DKIM key.
2. The Email Firewall Rule addition allows emails received from the Postmark servers to reach your intended destinations.

Both of these configuration updates are completed by your IT team with the help of our Tivian specialist. Please review and share the IT Automatic Email Delivery Setup Guide article with your IT team.

Testing

Before you send an email to your intended audience, it’s important to run through a set of tests to make sure that emails will get delivered to employees correctly.

Note:

If the recipient emails are different from the “From” email domain or you will be sending emails to multiple domains, please inform your Tivian specialist. By default, we limit recipients to be in the same domain as the sender. This is a security precaution we put in place for your CXI platform. If there is a reason to send to multiple email domains, Tivian will override this security precaution on your platform.

Sending a Test Email to One or More Recipients

1. Go to the Campaign section and select an existing email or create a new one.
2. Click on the preview to the right of the edit window.

3. Click Enter Emails at the top of the preview.
4. Enter the email(s) you would like to send a test email to.

5. Check to see if the email was received. If it was not received within a minute or two, contact CXI support at support@guidespark.com to check if the email was rejected by your company’s email server.

6. If the email was successfully received, check to see if the “From” address looks correct and is not displayed as “sent on behalf of.” If this appears or if it was sent to your Spam folder, contact CXI support to troubleshoot the issue.

Test send to an audience

Once you have confirmed that the test email worked, test an email with a larger test distribution group to ensure it is sent correctly to each recipient.

1. First create a test Targeted Audience distribution group, using a few other colleagues (from HR, IT, etc.) you can coordinate with to send a test email to. When creating this list, we recommend naming it something like “Test Audience” so that you don’t send your test to the wrong group.

2. Create a test email on the timeline, in the Campaign section. You can designate any valid URL as the destination if your content has not yet been published.
3. Schedule the email’s delivery date.

4. Select External Link from the Destination drop-down menu and enter your link.
5. Open the Actions tab and click the Send Now button to send the test email immediately.

6. A pop-up window will appear, with the distribution group name and number of members. If it is correct, click Send. If it is not, go into the Preferences section and select the test distribution group in the drop-down menu.

7. Contact the members of your small test audience to confirm that they have all received the email correctly. Consider the following questions:

• Did the test email reach everyone in the test audience?
• Did the email go to each recipient’s primary Inbox?
• Did the email display correctly for each recipient as coming directly from the designated sender?
• Did each recipient receive the images in the email without having to click a button to load them?

If the response to any of these questions is “No” then this is a sign that additional steps will need to be taken by Tivian with your IT team to ensure these issues are fixed.

8. If your test email was received without any of the listed issues, go to the Preferences section and switch the Targeted Audience to the distribution group you will be using for your campaign.

Scheduling emails

Once you have confirmed that the test email was correctly received, you can begin sending email messages via Automatic Email Delivery.

1. Create a new email or select an existing email. If you need assistance, read the Create an Email article for instructions.
2. Review the information within the email to ensure it is ready to send.
3. To send an email
   • Day of:
     • Click Send Now.
     • A confirmation pop-up will appear. Click OK. The email message will then be sent to all of the audience members of that distribution group.
   • At a later date:
     • Schedule it and adjust the reminder as needed.
4. For each email you send via Automatic Email Delivery, you will need to switch on Approved to Send in the bottom right corner of the edit window. You can approve the message at any time before the delivery date. Unapproved messages will not be delivered.

Reminder Emails

If you scheduled a reminder for your automatic email, a reminder will be sent to the sender and notification recipients, on the date you assigned it, before the automatic email is scheduled to be delivered. Take this opportunity to review your message and approve it if you have not done so. Unapproved messages will not be sent.

Please be aware that notifications for messages linked to unpublished content assets will not be sent.

Tracking results

You can view the engagement analytics in the Analytics section and see how your distribution groups have interacted within the Communicate Journey. By separating your audience groups and using the filters, you can gain better insight into specific areas of engagement, including emails opened and users reached. This will help you determine which emails are receiving the most engagement and which emails and subjects could use improvement.

Automatic Email Delivery strengthens your communication strategy and provides a temperature check for each of your distribution groups. Look for the email icon to locate the email message analytics.

FAQ

What are the key benefits of using Automatic Email Delivery?

Automatic Email Delivery allows for scheduled email sending, personalized greetings, content targeting for audience subgroups, and detailed engagement analytics. It also enables the use of the Communicate Messages™ feature and provides additional tracking capabilities such as emails opened.

How do I set up Automatic Email Delivery?

To set up Automatic Email Delivery, create a Targeted Audience, go to the Preferences section of your Communicate Journey, select the active audience, choose Automatic Delivery in Email Preferences, enter sender details, and confirm the sender’s signature through an email from Postmark. Your IT team may also need to configure DKIM keys and email firewall rules.

How can I track the results of my email campaigns?

You can view engagement analytics in the Analytics section of CXI. This includes metrics such as emails opened and users reached. You can use filters to gain insights into specific distribution groups’ engagement, helping you determine which emails are most effective and which might need improvement.