Creating Custom Notifications

Instead of using an out-of-the box notification, you can customize the look and feel of these notifications in Constant Contact's Lead Gen & CRM.

Choose a trigger, develop the notification, and let Lead Gen & CRM do the work.

This article will detail how to create and apply custom email notifications.

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Article Contents

• Understanding Notifications
• Creating Notifications
• Merge Variable Breakdown
• Applying Notifications

Available With:

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Advanced	✓
Ultimate	✓

Toolbar:

Email

Users:

Administrators	✓
Company Managers	✓
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Sales Managers
Salespersons
Jr. Salespersons

Understanding Notifications

There are two different types of notifications:

• Notifications display information about the lead and action group.
  
  
• Form notifications display lead information and information submitted by a form. This notification template includes two additional merge variables: Form Name and Form Data. These merge variables are not available in the regular notification template.

Lead Gen & CRM provides a stock set of notifications and form notifications that provides the necessary information about who has done what when interacting with your tasks.

However, you may want to personalize these emails to your tastes. You can use these notification types to create customized email notifications. 

Note: Lead Gen & CRM users that have not opened an email or logged into the application for 180 days will have their system notifications suppressed. This includes VisitorID, billing, and automation-based notifications.

Creating Notifications

You can create email custom notifications as necessary.

To create a custom email notification, do the following:

1. Click Email in the left toolbar.
2. Click Email Templates.
3. Click the Custom Notifications folder.

   

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4. Hover one of the two notification types. Click the + icon.

   

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5. Enter a name for the notification.
6. Click Add Email.

   

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7. Double-click the content block to open the email designer content editor. Enter text as desired.

   

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8. Click Merge in the editor toolbar. Select the desired merge variable from the drop-down menu that appears. Repeat as necessary.
9. Click Save.

   

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For example, the default notification email template has the following text and merge variables:

Hey {$recipient!"there"},

We are notifying you because {$firstName} {$lastName} triggered the task {$taskName} and was placed on the workflow {$workflowName}.

The merge variables in this email template will change based on:

• The user receiving the email
• The name of the individual who triggered the specific automation
• The automation itself
• Which workflow the individual was associated with

Next, create an action group to apply the notifications. Notification emails will come from notification@marketingautomation.services. The address cannot be changed within the notification action group, however, you might consider a modified workflow and custom email solution if you want a different From address.   

Merge Variable Breakdown

The available merge variables are as follows:

Applying Notifications

Once you have created a custom notification email, you will need to apply it to an action group in order to send it.

To apply a custom email notification to an action group, do the following:

1. Click Automation > Action Groups in the left toolbar and create or edit an action group.

   

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2. Under Start, Click + Add > Action.

   

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3. Select one of the following Notification actions:
     •    Send a notification to email
     •    Send a notification to user

   

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4. Enter the email or the user.
5. Click the Use Custom notification checkbox.
6. Select the desired custom notification.
7. Click OK.

   

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8. Add necessary triggers, actions, time delays, and action groups below the inserted notification action to complete the workflow.

   

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Note: Custom notifications cannot be used with post back lead info alone. That notification action will need to be paired with either of the send a notification actions to send custom notifications.

Notification emails will come from notification@marketingautomation.services. The address cannot be changed within the notification action group, however, you might consider a modified workflow and custom email solution if you want a different From address.