With Email, you can send targeted emails to all your users and leads. Whether you customize a pre-made template, or import your own HTML, the emails you send will look great. A/B testing and goals let you optimize your email performance and ensure effectiveness.
Create and send an email
First, go to Proactive Support from the main menu and click + New message in the top right corner.
Then, choose Email as your content type.
You can also choose to start with a pre-made template by picking this content type from the left sidebar.
Tip: You’ll find email templates for many use cases, like re-enaging inactive users, reminding people about items in their cart, and they’re all completely customizable.
Before composing your email, you’ll see these options on the left to define who it’s sent from, and which Inbox you’d like replies assigned to:
You can also choose which email list you want to send this email to based on your customer's subscription type:
Then you can customize the style of your email, including:
Email template - choose from Plain, Personal, Company, or Announcement.
Body Background - Select the background for the body or border of your email.
Content Background - Select the background color that will appear behind your email content or text.
Links - Select the colour and style (italic and/or bold) of any links in your email content.
If you need a more customized layout, you can import your own HTML email:
Now, it’s time to write your message content
The simple composer lets you create personalised messages that look great, with speed and confidence. It’s quick to style your text, insert images, and easy to add a call-to-action — all with a few simple clicks.
To format text, add links and HTML simply select some text and the options will display:
Undo/Redo
If you've like to revert a change you've just made, simple use the undo or redo buttons in the top right:
Change the text formatting
Use the options on the left to change the text style (Paragraph, Heading 1, etc.):
Select from 4 font options:
Center text alignment or keep it on the left:
And customize the text color using the color picker or enter the hex color code:
Add rich content to your messages
Insert rich content into your email by hovering over the composer and using the + icon on the left, including:
Text
Image/GIF
Button
Divider
Spacer
Social links
File
Code
Emoji
Bulleted list
Numbered list
HTML
Most email clients do not properly support embedded videos. Gmail, for example, will show them as attachments at the bottom of the message. For this reason we don't allow embedding videos in Intercom emails.
Having said that, if you create an image with a video thumbnail and then add a hyperlink to the image, when a customer clicks on the image it will open the video in a new tab.
If you've added an image/GIF or button, you can click on it within the composer to bring up a left sidebar with settings and adjust the dimensions, alignment, etc. 👇
Preview
Once you’ve drafted the message, you can preview how it'll look on mobile by clicking on "Mobile preview":
Or send yourself a test by clicking on "Preview" and sending it to your own inbox:
You must give your email a Subject before you can send a test to yourself.
Note: To include emojis in emails or subject lines you can either Copy + Paste the emoji in or you can use your machine's emoji keyboard.
Most email clients like Gmail or Yahoo don't tend to have issues with receiving emojis, however, Outlook and iPhone/iPad occasionally convert the emoji symbols into the word you are looking to show (i.e. 😊 as * grinning *)
A/B testing your message
To ensure that your content is performing as well as it can be, you should A/B test your message. Intercom makes it easy to create and send two versions of a message to see which is the most effective. Read all about A/B testing here.
Set up Rules
First, decide if if you want your email to be triggered automatically and target the audience.
Triggers - Allow you to automatically send repeatable messages based on when customers match event or date based rules.
Audience - Allows you to choose who will receive the message either when an event or date based rule is matched, or when you set your email live.
For example, if you wanted to re-engage customers by sending an ongoing email any time a customer is inactive for more than 90 days, you could add a trigger for "Last seen if it's 1 day after the date" and then add an audience rule for "Last seen more than 90 days ago":
Note: To use event or date rules, the audience must be Dynamic and not Fixed. Learn the difference between these audience types and when to use them here.
You can also send one-off messages that will only send to customers who match your audience rules right now, by selecting a "Fixed" audience:
Important: The audience preview for email messages won't look the same as when you're targeting the same users with a chat or a post message, or if you are filtering them in Contacts.
With email messages, we automatically exclude users that:
Don't have an email
Have unsubscribed from you
Have marked your emails as spam
Have bounced any emails you've sent to them
The users that are excluded from receiving email messages can be found within your Contacts by using the same filters in your message and then additionally adding Email has any value and Unsubscribed from Emails is true or Marked email as spam is true or Has hard bounced is true.
Choose frequency and scheduling
When you've finished setting up who will receive your message, you can choose to start sending the email as soon as you set it live, or on a custom date and time you decide.
Setting a goal and tracking with Google Analytics
Every message you send should have a goal, but open and click rates will only tell you so much. Goals are the true measure of how a message is performing.
To add a goal, choose the attribute or event for the result you want to measure from the dropdown under “Goal and UTM tracking”:
Example: if your goal is to get people to log in to your app, you could use the goal “Web sessions is increased” and any user who logs in after receiving it, will contribute to this goal's total.
You can set a goal using any data you track in Intercom, whether it's an event or a user/company attribute.
And that’s it. Your message is ready to send!
Note: This button will change depending on your Rules and Frequency and scheduling.
"Schedule to set live" - will appear if you've chosen to schedule it for a time in the future. This means the email will automatically send on the date and time you selected.
"Set live" - will appear if you have added event or date based rules for the audience. This means the email will send automatically only when those rules are matched.
💡Tip
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