Launching Text Sequences

Launching text sequences typically refers to the process of sending a certain number of text messages to one or a group of recipients all at once, using an automated messaging system.

Those messages are typically pre-written (text templates) and scheduled in sequences in advance. And, ultimately, aNinja takes care of launching  those text sequences at the designated time or interval.

However, it is important to ensure that the messages comply with applicable laws and regulations, to avoid your messages being marked as SPAM.

Text sequences can be sent individually to a single lead, in Bulk to a group of leads, or to all the leads at once.

Creating text sequences

  • First, prepare the text template(s) that you want to include in the sequence.
  • Then, go to Settings > Automations > Text Sequences

Launching a Text Sequence to a single lead

Launching a Text sequence to a single lead is done from the lead view

  • ( + ) Active Text Sequence,
  • Or from the Toolbar > Text dropdown > Text Sequences

Launching a bulk text sequence

After creating templates and sequences, you can launch bulk sequences to your leads.

Follow links in the article above to get full instructions.

Or, browse aNinja Knowledge Base for more articles.

Re-launching expired or cancelled text sequence

In-queue text sequences expire if they were not sent for over 36 hours past the intended launch time of the sequence step. To re-launch expired or cancelled text sequence, follow the instructions in this article.

Re-launch expired or cancelled text sequence

If the sequence expired (not sent for over 36 hours past the intended launch time of the sequence step) or was cancelled, and you want to continue sending the steps to the leads, you want to:

1- Cancel the Bulk sequence:

  • Just click on the X next to the Bulk text sequence in the Dashboard Widget “Bulk Sequences”

2- Create a Smartlist with the leads that did not receive all the text sequence steps, by typing this query in the top navigation bar:

text.cancelled.bulksequence.id=[TYPE HERE THE BULK TEXT SEQUENCE ID]

Note!

This query identifies leads who have not received ALL the steps before the sequence expired or was cancelled. And relaunching the sequence for these leads would result in resending the steps from the beginning.

3- Save the results as Smartlist.

4- Then launch a new text sequence for this Smartlist

  • Select the Smartlist from the dropdown next to the top navigation bar.
  • Click on Launch Text Sequence on the top right

Save “Do Not Contact” list as Smartlist

When leads are marked as do not contact, they are added to the do not contact list. And automatically the system stops all the sequences they are included in. You can save the “Do Not Contact” list as a Smartlist and export the results as CSV file.

Marking leads as “Do Not Contact”

When leads reply to you asking to stop receiving from you, you want to honor their request.

You can handle the stop incoming texts through triggers to automatically add those leads to the do not contact list; or you can manually mark the leads as do not contact. Then, they will automatically be added to the do not contact list afterward, and all the sequences they’re included in will stop.

Smartlist query for “Do Not Contact” list

  • To extract the list of the leads marked as do not contact, type this query in the top navigation bar:

contact.donotcontact=true

  • This query fetches all leads that have at least one contact marked as “do not contact”.

  • Afterward, the system brings you the results in the Leads View.
  • Lastly, click on Save as Smartlist to save the “Do Not Contact” list as Smartlist.Saving "Do Not Contact" list as Smartlist

Note!

Don’t forget to save the results before leaving the page to avoid losing the search. Otherwise, the leads view displays all the leads you have in your account.

Exporting results as CSV

  • After saving the “Do Not Contact” list as Smartlist, click on Smart Lists next to the top navigation bar. And select the Smartlist to view the results in the Leads View.
  • Then, scroll all the way down and click on Export as CSV

Creating a Smartlist from Bulk Import list

After importing contacts in a CSV or Excel file, you can directly  start by creating a Smartlist from the Bulk Import list.

Creating a Smartlist from Bulk Import list

  • In Settings > Bulk Import, locate the list that you’ve just imported in Previous Bulk Imports.
  • Under Records, click on the blue number (which is the number of leads in this list). This redirects you to the leads view where you can see all those leads.
  • On the top navigation bar, you can see the query that was used to execute this process. Something like e.g.: lead.bulkimport_id=12. 12 represents the serial number of the bulk import.
  • Copy this query.
  • Click on Smartlist > Add Smart List
  • Give a name to the Smartlist
  • Paste the query in “Search query”.
  • Save it for later re-use.

Launching sequences for this particular list

Sanitizing or cleaning the contacts file before import

Saving the right data in aNinja allows for easy searching, powerful Smartlists, and the ability to automate your emails and texts.

Here are the essential steps to take and the common mistakes to avoid when importing your Leads into aNinja.

Sanitizing or cleaning the contacts file before import

To successfully import your contacts file, you want to remove unnecessary fields and characters.

  • Have your data saved in an Excel or Google sheet file as a dataset* and work on sanitizing it there.
    • Start your table at cell A1.
    • Always reserve the first row for the headers.
    • Make the contact name in the first column (A) of your sheet.

*dataset:

  • Remove unnecessary columns and rows. You don’t want to bloat your CRM with data that you’re not going to use.
  • Remove duplications. You don’t want to be sending the same email or text sequence to the same leads. That would be annoying for the leads and extra charges for you.
  • Trim spaces. Though we don’t save contact items with empty or just spaces values, your data would look tidier using the proper spacing.
  • Remove weird and unnecessary characters to avoid receiving errors when uploading the file.
  • Remove hyperlinks from the email or the URL addresses. Save them as text.
  • Convert the phone numbers to Numbers.
  • Delete the empty columns and rows. They might contain hidden data.
  • Rename your file headers according to aNinja fields. This helps you choose the correspondent aNinja field to map.
    • For the custom field values, simply prefix them with “Custom.” in the header.
      e.g. Custom.Location for a header of a column with the location.

Headers are in the first row (1):

Check the mapping rules to name your headers according to aNinja’s fields.

  • Lastly, save your file as CSV or Excel as aNinja supports these 2 formats.
    • A CSV file has commas in between the values of each column. If there is no comma separating the values of the columns, the CSV file is not valid. And you’ll not be able to import your file to aNinja. So, you want to check the export options that generated this file to make sure the comma is there to have a valid CSV.

Now your file is clean and ready to import to aNinja.

Have any specific questions about sanitizing or cleaning the contacts file before import? Feel free to leave us an email at support@aninja.com. We will happily assist you.

Segmenting leads in the bulk import using Custom fields

Segmenting the leads you are importing means separating them into different lists that can be more manageable. One way to do it is using custom fields.

aNinja was designed to allow sending a large number of texts and emails. However, before sending your outbound, you might want to check the daily email sending limits allowed by your email provider.

You might also want to check the text sending limits that you registered for in your billing plan with aNinja.

That’s why aNinja recommends you segment your contacts before importing them to avoid any issues.

Segmenting leads before the import

One way to do it is using Custom fields.

Inside your CSV editor / Excel / Google sheets, etc.. and before uploading:

  • Add a column to your bulk import, and name it Custom.batch
  • Fill the cells of this column with e.g. 1 for the first 1000, 2 for the second batch of 1000, etc…

Importing the segmented CSV file

  • Import that CSV to aNinja and map the Custom.batch column to an aNinja Custom.batch field.
  • Now, all the contacts in the CSV file are saved in your aNinja account, with the number of the batch as a custom field.

Identifying the leads by batch number

  • In the top navigation bar, search for e.g. Custom.batch=2
  • You will get the leads that have 2 in the custom field,  shortlisted in the leads view.

Now you can send them Bulk texts sequences, Bulk email sequences, and even powerdial them.

Lastly, save that query as a Smartlist for a faster access in the future.

Where does the imported data appear

After the import, you can search your aNinja CRM for the imported leads. You can also search for any custom field, opportunities, and any other info that you have imported.

  • Lead’s contacts appear in the leads contact section in the lead view
  • Opportunities also appear in the opportunity section in the lead view
  • The company’s info appears on the top left of the lead view, in the Company section.
  • Custom fields appear in the custom field section of the lead view
  • Lead Search is a field that also appears in the bottom left of the lead view. Specifically, these are info/links on the lead or the organization found in Google search.

Email-sending limit

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!

Creating a Widget for every workflow step

To better identify the leads in the step they have reached in the workflow, consider creating a widget for every workflow step.

Creating a widget for every workflow step

On the Dashboard Widgets “Workflow summaries LSR” and “Workflow Summary ASR”, you can see the leads that reached every step of the workflow.

  • From the Dashboard widget “Workflow Summary LSR” / ASR, click on the dynamic number in blue next to the workflow step.Creating a Widget for every workflow step
  • It shows you the leads that have reached that step.
  • Go ahead and save this query / Smartlist.
  • Name it with both the workflow name and the step name. Therefore, you will be able to recognize the leads in it. Example: LSR/New Leads/In-process.

See the Workflow step in a Widget

  • Go to your dashboard and click on the little gear on the top right.
  • Enable the Smartlist that you’ve just created to show as a widget on the Dashboard.
  • Repeat the above for all the steps in your workflows. As a result, you can have a widget for every step of your workflows shown on the Dashboard.

aNinja Activities Logs

It’s important to have a clear understanding of all the activities and interactions that occur on your aNinja account. aNinja provides a helpful solution in the form of activity logs reports, allowing you to conduct audits whenever necessary.

Specifically, the logs report feature provides a comprehensive overview of all incoming and outgoing calls, emails, and texts, and the triggers you’ve launched. Additionally, you can easily view the failed leads API injection.

Accessing aNinja Activities Logs reports

Activities Logs

  • Calls
    • You can see the details of the incoming and outgoing calls, including the lead ID, duration and date of the calls.
    • You can also listen to the recordings of the conversations.
  • Emails
    • Here are saved all the details on the incoming and outgoing emails, including the sequences and their statuses.
  • Texts
    • You can see the details of the incoming and outgoing texts, including the sequences and their statuses.
  • Audit Log
    • As an admin user, this option allows you to see the activity of the users in searching for leads using smartlists or from the top navigation bar, and the lead view that the users opened.
  • Failed leads API injection
    • You can identify any leads that failed to import into your aNinja account via API for duplicate emails.

Changing the Lead’s Status in the Workflow

Changing the Lead’s status in the workflow represents the lead’s position in the Sales/Marketing pipeline until you turn them into a customer.

Changing the Lead’s Status in the Workflow

  • Search for your lead in the top navigation bar
  • Type any info you have on your lead (name, company, phone number, email, custom fields, etc…) and aNinja will bring the results to the leads view. Click on the lead and you will be redirected to their lead view.
  • Then, when in the Lead View, on the top of the page, you can manipulate the status of the lead in the workflow. This allows you to keep a close follow-up on the lead’s progress from prospect to closing.Changing the Lead's Status in the Workflow

Activities using the workflow steps