IMPORTANT NOTICE to End Users Utilizing SmartCRM in TAM

What is TAM SmartCRM?

A new feature introduced in Version 11.6.x that allows digital marketing based on sales activity at the POS and Ecommerce. This feature allows you to set up a digital marketing email or email campaign based on a customer availing themselves of a particular product or service (SKU) in your organization.

Once a patron purchases a SKU, a predetermined email or campaign of emails have been set up in TAM to be sent on a specific schedule defined by you.  The email is also user definable and will contain placeholders for key system data to be inserted.  This placeholder data could be customer, merchandise, ticket, event, membership, or donation related.

Examples of typical uses of SmartCRM:

1. A patron purchases a particular SKU and you would like them to receive a coupon for a related or future purchase.
2. A patron returns a particular SKU and you would like them to fill out a survey for why the item was returned.
3. A patron purchases a membership and you would like the following campaign to be sent:
   1. Promptly send a “Welcome New Member” email.
   2. Remind them of the pending expiration of their membership 60 days before expiration and provide a link to their e-membership portal (on eTAM) for electronic renewal.
   3. Remind them of the pending expiration of their membership 30 days before expiration and provide a link to their e-membership portal (on eTAM) for electronic renewal.
   4. Notify them that their membership has expired on the date of expiration and provide a link to their e-membership portal (on eTAM) for electronic renewal.
4. A patron gives a donation and you want to send the following campaign:
   1. Immediately send a thank you email.
   2. Email a donation receipt for tax purposes (7 days after the donation is made).
   3. Solicitation email of another donation for the same fund 180 days after the initial giving.
5. A patron purchases an event ticket(s) in advance online and you would like the following campaign to be sent:
   1. Immediately send a confirmation of their participation in the event purchased.
   2. Send a reminder email of the event 3 days before the event start date.
   3. Send a reminder email of the event 1 hour before the event start time.
   4. Send a survey link of participation 1 hour after the close of the event.
6. Though not technically SmartCRM, loyalty customers often receive their reward certificates by email. This also creates a very large volume of digital marketing messages.

TAM’s SmartCRM™ automatically accomplishes all of these tasks and the milestones and emails sent are designed by you.

In implementing this exciting capability, you can imagine the number of emails that are generated on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis.  As a result, our Help Desk has come across a number of sites that have had issues where getting the emails that TAM has sent are never delivered to the recipients.

In these cases, patrons have reported not receiving the emails and the organization had not received any bounce back notification from their email service provider (ESP).

After some research, we have found that many ESPs set hidden limits on the number of emails that can be sent per minute, hour, day, week, etc.  Once these limits are met, all following emails are ignored by the ESP and not sent.   In some cases, those emails ignored do not bounce back nor are you informed of the failure to send, let alone that they are not delivered.

If your organization manages its own email server/website (i.e. for us, tamretail.com), it is less likely you will have these restrictions, as these restrictions are settings enforced by an ESP or created when the Email Server is set up.  If your organization is paying for an outside service such as Comcast, or using a free email service like Yahoo, you likely will or are experiencing this problem.

WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT ALL SMARTCRM USERS RESEARCH WITH THEIR ESP ANY EMAIL SENDING LIMITATIONS THAT EXIST.  ALSO, ENSURE THAT YOUR SMTP SERVER REPORTS ANY UNDELIVERED EMAILS.

As this problem is outside of TAM, we cannot be held responsible for any undelivered digital marketing sent by SmartCRM.

This problem is not widespread but we thought it well worth bringing it to our valued community’s attention.

If you’re not using TAM’s SmartCRM and would like to learn more about it, contact your account representative or email us at sales@tamretail.com.