Set a last contacted/emailed date for customers

We were in the process of integrating this solution and ran into this issue, which caused us to go with another system. I find it difficult to believe that such a robust system would lack basic functionality as keeping track of last contacted date. This is important functionality, because we could risk customer relations by emailing them too much.

Here’s what we wanted to do:
1) segment customers (create a marketing list) based on criteria:
– products ordered
– last ordered date
– last contacted date (so we don’t annoy them and get classified as spam)
2) send an email campaign to that list
3) update their last contacted date for future reference in campaigns

We cannot figure out the last contacted date issue – I believe I read this as part of your functionality – but it’s pretty basic – which is why I think we are missing something.

The last contacted date should be assigned at the account or email level – irrespective of any marketing list.

Any input would be appreciated. We are not afraid to do things programmatically but would like to do it in the system if possible.

Topic

[Artem LiubeznyiSpectator]

Hi Tom,

Please tell us which version of OroCRM you were integrating. We have added tracking of the last contact date & time in our most recent 1.8 version that has been released at the end of August.

We keep track of this date for every account, contact, and customer record—basically anything that has emails or phones as attributes; in addition you may configure what counts as a “contact” event on the entity level. Date & time of the last contact is available in reports and segments, and you can specifically check for the last incoming and outgoing contact attempts.

We do not include marketing emails in this calculation by default though, but it should not be hard to customize if needed.

[tomjParticipant]

Wow – that was quick! We are running the most recent version: 1.8.
Yes, the system definitely does keep track when we send an individual email to a customer.

We just can’t figure out how to do it across the entire list of customers we are sending the marketing email to.

You mentioned that we would be able to customize this? Can you point us in the right direction?

[tomjParticipant]

Artem, can you please point us in the right direction regarding updating the last contacted date after running a campaign?

It’s still early enough for us to correct the issue and continue to use OroCRM – but we can’t use it unless it keeps track of this on a marketing level. It could impact us negatively by causing multiple emails going to same users – this is a huge concern for us because of legal issues regarding “spam” and being blacklisted by mail servers for no reason other than a repeat email.

If you point us to the set of files or functions we need to modify on the code side, or point us to the correct methodology on the back end, we’d be able to fix the issue and move forward.

Again, it seems like we’re missing something simple.

[Artem LiubeznyiSpectator]

Hi Tom,

It is definitely simple and totally achievable. I asked our dev team for help with customization details. Thanks for your patience!

[Dmitry KhrysevMember]

Hi, Tom.
Last Contacted at date and contacted times are stored in scope of MarketingListItem entity, which is a representation of contacted Entity in scope of MarketingList.

When you are sending email campaign MarketingListItem will be created automatically, contacted times and last contacted at will be also filled. [Source code]

Contacted times and Last contacted at are available in reports as virtual fields for you entity if there is Marketing List for it.

If you want to use marketing lists in your code, take a look at MarketingListProvider which has helper methods for fetching current marketing list entities with additional data joined.

[tomjParticipant]

Thank you Artem and Dmitry! It seems like this may be the info we were looking for!

Also, I wanted to pass along something we found if it helps you (or others in the OroCRM community):
When using plain HTML for emails and img SRC=”http://example.com/images/some-image.png” this img tag gets “eaten” (half removed) when sending to recipient by the regex located in the processEmbeddedImages function which is in this file:

github.com/orocrm/platform/blob/master/src/Oro/Bundle/EmailBundle/Mailer/Processor.php#L267

(We just short circuited the function because we do not have need for inline images – but it could be modified to check for external “http” (or invalid base64) and strip/not strip based on that info.)

[amcastrorParticipant]

Hi Artem,

Can anyone elaborate on how to configure what counts as a contact? I browsed through the Lead configuration but I couldn’t find anything.

Also, in a Lead I can see that contact count is 2, but I don’t know where those contacts come from. There are no emails associated.

Thanks a lot!

[Artem LiubeznyiSpectator]

By default, calls logged and emails sent/received are counted as “contacts.” By default it’s only these two, but a developer can create custom contact activities that will also be counted towards times contacted.

If there are no emails, maybe you’ve logged two calls towards this Lead?

[amcastrorParticipant]

Hi Artem,

Creating those activities must be done at code level? Or can be done through the user interface? Can you point me to some documentation?

I’ll check if there are any calls, but I don’t remember doing that.

Thanks a lot.

[Artem LiubeznyiSpectator]

Only at code level. Please refer to the Activity bundle on GitHub.

[Author]

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