Tracking email interactions with contacts

Training course

You can use the Interaction Log content item to track your organization’s email communications with your contacts. This content item displays useful information about each email your organization has sent a contact, such as date, type, subject and owner.

To view more detailed information about the email interaction, you can click the subject line link to view the email in preview mode and download any attachments sent with the message. You can also click the owner link to access the account page of the staff member who sent the email message.

You can also select to resend a communication or download a communication as a PDF that can then be printed.

Note: If the email subject line was blank, a View message link displays in the Interaction Log.

An instance of the Interaction Log titled Communications is already included by default on the Participation tab of the staff account page, but you can add the content item to any page on your website. If the content item is placed on the member account page, contacts can view the emails sent to them.

The Interaction log, titled Communications, is a table with one row per communications, including columns for the date the communicaion was sent, the communication type, subject, and owner.

You can create queries that use the InteractionLog or InteractionLogEvent business objects as a source to report on email interactions with contacts.

  • The InteractionLog business object contains one record per recipient that reports the last notification type, date, and time of the communication.
  • The InteractionLogEvent business object contains one record per notification for each email queued, delivered, dropped, opened, clicked, bounced, unsubscribed, deferred, and reported as spam.

    • Joining the InteractionLogEvent business object to the InteractionLog business object should be done using the CommunicationLogRecipientKey.

    Note: You must have an Advanced Email license to gather data for the following types of responses: Opened, clicked, bounced, unsubscribed, deferred, or reported as spam. With the Advanced Email license, these statuses will only be included for communications where Advanced Email was selected.

Viewing email interactions with a contact

  1. Find and open the contact's record.
  2. From the Participation tab, scroll down to the Communications table. This table is built using the Interaction Log content item and lists your staff’s email interactions with the contact.

    3. Note: An Interaction Log content item is included by default on the Participation tab of the staff account page, but you can add the content item to any page on your website that is focused for a specific contact.

  3. (optional) Click the Subject link to view the email in preview mode.

    4. Note: File attachments sent with a message can also be downloaded from the preview. Click the attachment link to download the file. If you want to print an attachment, download the attachment and save it as a PDF first. WebP file types must be downloaded from the Communications log (Participation tab) separately from other types before it can be printed. It will not download with any other communication attachments. The downloaded file includes PDFs and images, but excludes WebP files.

  4. (optional) Click the Owner link to view the account page for the staff member who sent the email message.
  5. (optional) Click the Expand icon next to the communication to view further details.

Resending communications

Do the following to resend a communication:

  1. Open the contact's record.
  2. From the Participation tab, scroll down to the Communications table.
  3. Click the Subject link to view the email in preview mode.
  4. Enter a recipient email in the Send another copy to field. You can resend a copy of the email to the original recipient by default, or you can specify a new recipient.
  5. Send the communication. A Successfully sent the communication message is displayed.

    6. Expand the communication row in the Communications table. A resent communication will be marked Copy sent.

    Expanding a specific communication row from the interaction log allows you to view when the communication was resent, as marked by Copy sent.

    Note: If the communication was dropped due to an incorrect or missing email address for a contact, you can resend the communication once you have added or corrected the contact’s email address.

Downloading communications

Do the following to download a communication:

  1. Open the contact's record.
  2. From the Participation tab, scroll down to the Communications table.
  3. Click the Subject link to view the email in preview mode.
  4. Download the communication. The email is saved as a PDF file. You can maintain a copy of the communication for your records, or print the communication.

Note: If your communication contains attachments, the attachments will be added to your downloaded PDF. For example, if you have a one-page email with a four-page attachment, you can expect a downloaded PDF to have five pages. Any attachment file types will be downloaded as PDF enabling you to print the attachments.