Tag: emails

Forbidden Message Categories for SMS

Post author By Rita
Post date May 4, 2023

Forbidden Message Categories for SMS: Certain types of message content may be subject to restrictions even when your use case is not forbidden.

Forbidden Message Categories for SMS and MMS

The following messaging use cases are not allowed on SMS or MMS in the US or Canada. And we have also provided some suggested alternatives for conducting certain forbidden use cases.

Category	Examples	Notes
High-risk financial services	Payday loans Short term high-interest loans Third-party loans (e.g., auto, mortgage) Student loans Cryptocurrency	“Third-party” means originating from any party other than the one which will service the loan.
Third-party lead generation services	Companies that buy, sell, or share consumer information.
Debt collection or forgiveness	Third-party debt collection Debt consolidation Debt reduction Credit repair programs	“Third-party” means originating from any party other than the one who is owed the debt. For example, a hospital could send messages regarding bills for its own patients, assuming they provided opt-in to receive that messaging. Third-party debt collectors may send transactional messages that consumers have directly opted in to; however, they cannot use SMS as a channel to collect a debt.
“Get rich quick” schemes	Deceptive work-from-home programs Risk investment opportunities Pyramid schemes	This is different from outreach about employment as a result of compliant opt-in practices, messages from brokerages to their members, investment news alerts, or other investment-related messages.
Illegal substances/articles	Cannabis (United States) CBD (United States) Fireworks	Cannabis is federally illegal in the United States. Cannabis businesses will not be permitted to use SMS/MMS messaging in the US, regardless of message content. CBD is federally legal, but is subject to varying legal restrictions across US states, so US carriers do not permit messaging related to CBD. Fireworks are a regulated product and US and CA carriers do not permit messaging related to fireworks.
Prescription drugs	Drugs that require a prescription	Offers for drugs that cannot be sold over-the-counter in the US/Canada are forbidden.
Gambling	Casino apps Gambling websites	Gambling traffic is prohibited in the US and Canada on all number types (Toll Free, Short Code, Long Code).
“S.H.A.F.T.” use cases	Sex Hate Alcohol Firearms Tobacco	While tobacco and alcohol traffic is prohibited on Toll Free, it is allowed on Short Code, or Long Code, as long as proper age gating procedures are in place. Firearms and vaping-related traffic is prohibited.

What to do if your use case is listed as forbidden

If your use case is listed above as forbidden for SMS and MMS messaging, you may be able to reach out to your leads by Email. It’s also an option for many of the above use cases.

For example, cannabis- or CBD-related messaging may be conducted via email, as long as you have proper age gating in place and are sending toward recipients in a locale where the substance is legal.

In addition, calling is not subject to the same carrier restrictions as SMS.

Sending forbidden SMS content through aNinja

If you send SMS or MMS messages with forbidden content through aNinja, our upstream telephony carrier automatically filters your SMS content and suspends your account.

Which means that your texts will not go through. And subsequently, you receive an error code 30002 on outgoing SMS attempts: account suspended.

Sending Cannabis or CBD-related messaging

Messaging Policy forbids sending messages about anything that is illegal in the jurisdiction where the message recipient lives. This policy affects messaging related to cannabis (marijuana) and cannabidiol (CBD) in the United States, as well as many other countries.

SMS and MMS

The United States

SMS or MMS messages related to cannabis are not allowed in the United States. As federal laws prohibit its sale, even though some states have legalized it. Similarly, messages related to CBD products are not permissible in the United States, as certain states prohibit its sale. The Messaging Policy is reflective of the US carrier rules in this area, and there are no exceptions to this policy.

Our upstream telephony provider defines a cannabis-related message as any message which relates to the marketing or sale of a cannabis product, regardless of whether or not those messages explicitly contain cannabis terms, images, or links to cannabis websites.

Canada

Cannabis is not an illicit substance in Canada, nor is CBD. Messaging that deals with age-restricted content (such as cannabis, but also including alcohol, gambling, etc.) is generally allowed in Canada, but may be subject to scrutiny by Canada telecom authorities. If you intend to send cannabis-related traffic in Canada, it is crucial that you have proper age gating in place for your messages, to avoid compliance risks. Please note: Cannabis and CBD-related traffic is prohibited on Toll-Free Numbers.

Other countries

Cannabis and/or CBD products are illegal in many countries around the world. Per our upstream telephony provider’s Messaging Policy, sending messages about cannabis in these countries is a violation of their policy. In countries where cannabis is fully legal, message traffic is permissible unless forbidden by local carrier rules. If the our upstream telephony provider is aware of relevant restrictions, these will be published on the SMS Guidelines page for the country in question. If you are unsure whether your use case is legal or compliant in a given country, we recommend you seek qualified legal counsel.

WhatsApp

Cannabis-related messaging is not allowed over WhatsApp, as WhatsApp’s rules prohibit drug-related use cases.

What to do to unblock the account

You want to email support@aninja.com and we’ll communicate with the carrier to see if it is recoverable.

And definitely, you want to change your text templates to align with the AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) and TOS (Terms of Service). Refrain completely from any reference to terms like gummies, puff, vape, delta, and any other terms that could be scanned by the telephony carrier.

Please check this link for recommendations to increase the deliverability of your text messages

Email-sending limit

Post author By Rita
Post date March 23, 2022

Every email server has an Email-sending limit and it predefines how many messages it allows you to send each day.

aNinja was designed to make sending and receiving Emails easy, using your Email server.

Through aNinja, you can send a bulk email sequence to all your leads, or a group of leads that you pull out using a Smartlist.

Bulk Email sequences stopped sending out

When you’ve reached the daily Email-sending limit allowed by your Email server, it stops sending Emails from your account.

The daily sending limits of the different Email service providers

Godaddy Workspace

500 SMTP relays per day

GSuite

10,000 sent Email messages per 24-hour period. However, this can be lower if your Google Workspace account is still in a trial-like period.

Gmail

2,000 sent Email messages per day

Office 365 / Outlook

Daily recipients: 5,000

Maximum recipients per message: 500

What to do to send a large bulk of Emails

The best recommendation would be to connect aNinja with a Transactional Email service provider (such as Sendgrid). You’ll then be able to send 10K to 1M+ eventually Emails without affecting your Email provider.

Moreover, Sendgrid adds Unsubscribe links to the Emails you send through it. It also tracks spam scores and notifies you.

SendGrid is usually used to send out bulk email sequences and it works well with aNinja.

Connecting Sendgrid with aNinja

To connect Sendgrid with aNinja:

Create a Sendgrid account (so you get an API key that we place in aNinja). You can start with a free tier or their basic tier.
Authenticate your outgoing domain DNS (we can assist with this).

Please let us know if you’d like to Integrate with Sendgrid. Leave us an email at support@aninja.com. We’re more than happy to assist you!

Syncing your Godaddy email into aNinja

Post author By Rita
Post date February 17, 2022

Syncing your Godaddy email into aNinja automatically syncs all email communication between you and any contact in aNinja.

Once your GoDaddy email is linked to your aNinja account, you can easily send, receive and check messages directly from your aNinja account.

You can also use aNinja features to automate your emails and target your leads with your best campaigns and sequences.

In this article, we’re going to show you the steps to syncing your Godaddy email into aNinja.

1- Enable and enforce MFA

First, please click this link to enable and enforce MFA

https://www.godaddy.com/help/enable-or-disable-multi-factor-authentication-32039

2- Create an App password

Now, the App Password option will show-up at the top of the page when you follow here these steps:
https://www.godaddy.com/help/create-app-passwords-40980

3- Add the App password

Lastly, choose “Add method” to add the App password.

Note: After that, please wait 1-24 hours of the propagation time (this is a Godaddy constraint).

As a result, you are now able to send automations to your leads and target them with your email sequences.

Have any specific questions on the syncing process? Please leave us an email to the Support team at support@aninja.com. We’re always happy to assist you!

Schedule your email

Post author By Rita
Post date February 10, 2022

In this article, we show you how you can schedule your email to delay the delivery to send it at a later time and date.

To reach out to your lead, you can send them an email via aNinja.

Create an email, but don’t send it. Choose the time you want to send the email.

Scheduling an email to be sent later

On the lead view, click on the Email from the toolbar.
Compose the email you want to send.
Your email is auto-saved every few seconds so you don’t lose your work.
Next to the Send button, click the arrow to choose the date & time.
Then, hit Schedule > Send.
Therefore, on the set date & time, the system sends your email to your lead.

Rescheduling an email

On the lead view, locate the email in the history section and click Reschedule.
Then, choose the new date & time and hit Schedule.

Cancelling a scheduled email

On the lead view, locate the email in the history section and click on Cancel.
As a result, your email will be cancelled.
You can cancel the scheduled emails only from the web app but we don’t have it on the mobile app yet.

Checking the status of the scheduled email

You can see the scheduled emails only on the date they’ve been created. They don’t get rendered again when sent.

So, to check them, go to the lead view. In the history of interactions, go to the date when the scheduled email was created.

The status of the email is on the right bottom of the email.

Scheduled for day & time: The email is still not sent until the day & time are due.
Success: On the set date, the system sent the email successfully.
Cancelled (was scheduled): This is an email that you cancelled.

Know when leads read your emails

Post author By Rita
Post date February 4, 2022

Sending emails to your leads allows you to reach out to them with your campaigns, nurture them and trigger their interest in your products. It is also important for you to know when the leads read your emails.

Email tracking

Tracking your emails allow you to know when leads read your emails and identify how often they view them.

This way, you can always know when it’s time to follow up or feel how interested they are in your proposals!

Accessing the email tracking

When on the lead view, click on Emails from the interactions toolbar.
On the right side under the email that you want to track, check the status of the email. Also, the time that it was opened and how many times, and the machine IP address that was used.

Notifications on incorrect lead contact data

Post author By Rita
Post date January 27, 2022

The Lead contact is the lead info saved in the Lead View (email addresses, phone numbers, URLs). When the lead is created, the contacts are saved as entered/provided.

The system uses the lead contacts to send your emails and texts. This means, in case the lead contact was incorrect, your outbound will surely not reach the lead.

Notifications on unsent emails outbound

You receive an email notification that the email address of this lead is incorrect and your outbound did not reach them.

Notifications on unsent texts outbound

You can see an error message in red in the lead history.

Note: You also receive an error message after you send a text if the primary phone number is a landline number.

You can handle the outgoing SMS with an error code through triggers. e.g. mark as “do not contact” the lead with a landline number.

aNinja Centralized Inbox

Post author By Rita
Post date January 7, 2022

The aNinja Inbox is a centralized view of all your incoming communication emails, texts, voicemails, missed calls, open tasks, and the chatbot conversations too.

Accessing the Inbox

On the left sidebar, click on Inbox icon.

Inbox activities

You should be able to work exclusively from your aNinja Inbox.

From your Inbox items, you can:

Make calls
Send emails
Send texts
Handle tasks
Create a lead from the unknown numbers of the missed calls.
Also, listen to the voicemails left by the callers.
Lastly, view the chatbot conversations that were left by your website visitors in your imbed Chatbot.

Dynamic Inbox

The Inbox badge in the sidebar dynamically updates to show you how many Inbox items are available.

Concluded Tasks

Ultimately, all items of the aNinja centralized inbox should be completed on daily basis. However, if that was not possible, you can report them to the next day. Just toggle all the remaining items of the inbox and click on future in the toolbar.
The Inbox badge in the sidebar will show a green checkmark when all your Inbox items are done!

Task Management

You can also bulk mark inbox items as done / not done.

Answering a Lead from the Lead view (send/reply to an email, or send/reply to text) will automatically mark previous inbox items of the same type (e.g. email/text) as done.
Admin users can view inbox items for other team users, as well as filter them by type.

aNinja Reports

Post author By Rita
Post date January 7, 2022

Get reports on the workflow of your latest activities and interactions that you’ve made in aNinja in a certain period of time. aNinja reports are simple, understandable, and provide you with a detailed view of your business performance.

When every user can see his reports, admin users can see all users reports and stats.

On the top right of the Reports page, you can select the period and the user.

Accessing Reports

On the left sidebar, click on Reports icon.

aNinja reports

Below are the reports provided by aNinja:

Workflow Summary (ASR)
- See All Steps Reached across the workflow.
Workflow Summary (LSR)
- See the Last Steps Reached across the workflow.
Leads
- See stats of leads created and Via API.
Opportunities
- See figures of the Opportunity statuses.
- On the right corner of the Opportunity report, see details of leads’ opportunities. Inside the report, you can export stats into a CSV file.
Emails
- See stats of all sent and opened emails, and the open rate.
Texts
- See stats of incoming and outgoing texts.
Calls
- See stats of outgoing calls and their total duration.

History of Interactions and Activities of a lead

Post author By Rita
Post date January 7, 2022

aNinja brings you the history of all interactions and activities made for a lead in the lead view.

What’s the history of interactions and activities

Once the creation of a lead in your aNinja account, the system saves all the interactions and activities that you make to this lead, in the history section.

Moreover, they are listed in ascending order. So, the users and team members are kept in the loop of the actions performed on this lead.

In the history section you can view:

Calls made and durations.
Emails sent & received with this lead.
Notes that are left by any team member so any other user stays updated on any relevant info.
Texts sent to this lead.
Tasks assigned and their statuses.
Workflow steps changes.
Chatbot conversations initiated by this lead.
Triggers

Accessing the lead history

From the lead view, in the middle right of the page, you can see all the interactions and activities of the lead.You can also filter activities and interactions that appear in the history section from “All Interactions” dropdown:

Including: Calls, Chatbot Conversations, Emails, Email Sequences, Notes, Text Sequences, and Tasks.

Troubles in sending Bulk Email Sequences

Post author By Rita
Post date December 7, 2021

If you overpass the daily limit of your email provider, you will face troubles in sending bulk email sequences

Ech email provider imposes a daily email sending limit.

Having troubles sending your email sequences

You might need to check the following:

If your email provider supports this large amount of emails you are sending. When you overpass the daily email sending limit, this may involve the disruption of your outbound emails.
Also, check if your email account is properly synced.
- If not, then, you’ll have to do the “Connect / Re-authorize” step to properly connect the email account.
Lastly, make sure you are sending an unsubscribe link with your bulk. This prevents considering it as spam or being delivered to the junk mail of the recipients. Learn how to avoid your emails being marked as spam.

Still unable to re-launch your email sequences

For a large number of daily emails, we highly recommend you process your run through our transactional email processor SendGrid. You can enable it directly from your aNinja account > Settings > Global Settings.

Or send us an email at support@aninja.com. We’re happy to assist you.