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), andfound 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",
"datetime": "20211231T235959",
"datetime2": "20221231T235959",
"external_id": "12345",
"external_type": "candidate",
""source" : "ATS"}
}]
endratecard

Explanation of specific fields:

a.) Date-/timefield:

The "datetime" field is the date/time on which the candidate started working for the customer. For example, on December 31, 2021 at 11:59 PM. Within Ratecard, a - negative or positive - delay can be added to this date/time, so that the feedback will always be requested automatically at the right time.

We support the following formats for this field type:

- I. DD/MM/YYYY HH:MM:SS, e.g.31/12/2021 23:59:59

- II. YYYY/MM/DD HH:MM:SS, e.g. 2021/12/31 23:59:59

- III. DD-MM-YYYY HH:MM:SS, e.g. 31-12-2021 23:59:59

- IV. YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS, e.g. 2021-12-31 23:59:59

- V. YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS+TIMEDIFF, e.g. 2021-12-31T23:59:59+00:00

- VI. YYYYMMDDTHHMMSS, e.g. 20211231T235959

b.) User field:

The "team_members" field is the person responsible (the main contact person) of the relevant contact person. If desired, we can personalize the outgoing messages from that person. Below you can find an explanation how to structure the value of this field. 

You can read the value of this smart field as follows:

- I. E-mail address of the user: use the e-mail address of the user as it is known in your Ratecard account as a value, so that we can match on this unique value, e.g. support@ratecard.io;

- II. Full name of the user #1: use the full name of the user as it is known in your Ratecard account as the value, e.g. "Support Ratecard";

- III. Full name of the user #2: use the full name of the user as it is known in your Ratecard account as the value, e.g. "Ratecard, Support".

c.) Source data:

The fields "source", "external_type" and "external_id" ensure that Ratecard knows what the source of the contact is. This is important for the origin of the contacts themselves, but also ensures that the contact can be matched when data is giving back to the source (e.g. for adding a tab via an embed or updating custom attributes in the ATS, CRM or ERP) to be matched with the correct record in the source database.

Based on the variables that the source system uses for this, you can fill this data in the following way:

- I. external_type: with this you indicate what the type of record is called within the source system, e.g. "candidate" or "customer";

- II. external_id: indicates what the identifier (or id) of the record is within the source system, e.g. "ID-001", "39104" or "xua-6f2-s33-x68-q91";

- III. source: here you can enter the name of the source, e.g. "Carerix" (we process this automatically)

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