How to automagically add, unsubscribe and delete contacts via (almost) any ATS, CRM or ERP

Collect feedback and reviews on autopilot? No problem. Simply schedule a task that's triggered by an action within your ATS, CRM or ERP. Let this task send an email with the contact you'd like to be added, unsubscribed or deleted, and you're good to go!

How does this magic work?

Within Ratecard we can understand, filter and map JSON requests that are sent within the email body. Therefore, if your ATS, CRM or ERP supports (a) setting up custom email templates with variables and (b) scheduled tasks triggered by actions within the application, we can help you to collect feedback and reviews on autopilot, and set it up within minutes.

Step 1: Set up your email template

The first step to automating the process of adding, unsubscribing and deleting contacts, is creating an email template that contains a JSON request with (a) an action, and (b) the contact information of the contact(s) to be added. A few rules to abide to:

• Use "beginratecard" before and "endratecard" after the JSON request
• Set up your JSON request correctly
• Define the action to be performed. We support "create", "unsubscribe" and "delete"
• Describe the contact's properties next, e.g. "firstname", "lastname", "email", and "phone"

You can find an example of email templates for adding a contact, unsubscribing a contact, and deleting a contact below. If you've set up your email template, make sure to continue with step 2.

Example 1: Add a contact

beginratecard
[{
"action" : "create",
"contact" :
{ "firstname" : "Jeroen",
"lastname" : "Sakkers",
"email" : "jeroen@ratecard.io",
"phone" : "+31612345678" }
}]
endratecard

Example 2: Unsubscribe a contact

beginratecard
[{
"action" : "unsubscribe",
"contact" :
{ "firstname" : "Jeroen",
"lastname" : "Sakkers",
"email" : "jeroen@ratecard.io",
"phone" : "+31612345678" }
}]
endratecard

Example 3: Delete a contact

beginratecard
[{
"action" : "delete",
"contact" :
{ "firstname" : "Jeroen",
"lastname" : "Sakkers",
"email" : "jeroen@ratecard.io",
"phone" : "+31612345678" }
}]
endratecard

Step 2: Find the address to send your email to

Now that you've set up your email template, it's time to find the address to send your email to. Go to your address book, and click on the group you'd like to add, unsubscribe or delete contacts to and from. Next to the name of the group and the action buttons you'll find the group's address, e.g. {groupid}@group.ratecard.io. Click on the address to copy it to your clipboard, and make sure you'll send the email to this address in the "To", "CC" or "BCC" field.

Figure A: Go to your address book to find the group's address

Step 3: Schedule a task that automatically sends out your email

This is the last step in collecting feedback and reviews on autopilot via (almost) any ATS, CRM and ERP. After you've set up your email template with the action and contact information (see: Step 1), and found the group's address to send this email to (see: Step 2), you can now schedule a task triggered by an action within the application you use. This is set up differently for every application.

A few examples:

• Add a new applicant once (s)he's registered on your website
• Add a customer once (s)he's received or paid his/her first invoice
• Add attendees of a(n online) meeting once the meeting invite is sent out
• Unsubscribe attendees of a(n online) meeting once it's cancelled
• Delete a contact once (s)he's asked to be deleted from your database
• Delete a contact once the legal ground for GDPR purposes has expired

Step 4: Set up a feedback campaign for your audience

Once you've made sure contacts are automatically added, unsubscribed and deleted to the right groups, you can set up (a) feedback campaign - if you haven't done this already, of course. Set up your first campaign, and you'll collect your first feedback soon enough!

Bonus #1: personalisation and reporting via smart data

You can add custom data as a smart field, by using the custom tag name provided within the group you've set up for this. In the example below (see: Figure B), you can use "team_members" as the key in the key/value pair for adding this data to your JSON request, or "company" for the company field.

You can use these smart data to (a) personalise your feedback request per email/SMS, and your feedback form. Also, you can (b) use the smart data to filter, tag en customise your feedback reports.

Example 4: Add smart data to your request

beginratecard
[{
"action" : "delete",
"contact" :
{ "firstname" : "Jeroen",
"lastname" : "Sakkers",
"email" : "jeroen@ratecard.io",
"phone" : "+31612345678",
"company" : "Ratecard",
"team_members" : "jeff@superboss.com" }
}]
endratecard

Figure B: Edit your group to add, edit and/or find smart fields

Bonus #2: add filters, limits and rules to take control

Last but not least, you can also add filters, limits and rules to your group (see: Figure C) to maximise your control over how your contacts are handled within your Ratecard account. This way, you make sure you'll never send too many messages, and can filter which contacts will be added to your group.

We offer these group limits:

• Don't add a contact to a group, if it already exists within the group
• Don't add a contact to a group, if it already exists within any other group
• Send a maximum of X feedback request per [select a period]
• Only add a contact to a group if the smart field tag name %tagname% is equal to a certain value

Figure C: Edit your group to set filters, limits and rules