webhook for "message received" event

Why do we need to receive a webhook once a message is "received"?

With a "received" webhook we would be notified as soon as a message was accepted by the receiving mail server. Our business processes are mainly interested if a message could be delivered or not. For this reason the "received" event is important as it clearly indicates if message delivery was successful.

The existing "sent" event is not sufficient

The "sent" event indicates a message was rendered successfully in Episerver Campaign and the recipient mail server was attempted. There are many reasons why message delivery may still fail.

If a message was rendered correctly but could not be delivered or if there was a rendering error does not make a difference for the end result - it's more relevant during troubleshooting and monitoring of the involved tech stack.

Goals

• we receive response- & interaction-data within seconds

• we process suppression events (unsubscribe, spam-complaint, bounces) close to real-time

• we replace existing response export-jobs

  • as currently used for closed loop interface (kms)

  • as used to provide data for our datalake / big query

• with webhooks we can process response data immediately in order to trigger subsequent steps - e.g.

  • customer master data updates

  • re-calculation of next best offer / next best action

  • trigger for follow up communication within the same or an alternate communication channel

Background and strategic fit

• event-driven communication has increased through the last years and became the key-driver for more relevance and personalization in CRM strategies

• event based communication and decision making requires interaction data to be available near real-time

• all communication channels need to deliver interaction data near real-time to fuel customer profiling and allow consistence communication across all channels

Requirements

event trigger

• event sent as soon as message dispatch was successful (recipient mail server answered with "ok" smtp status code)

standard payload included in all webhook events

• mailing group ID (client- / mandator-ID)

• mailing ID

• encoded mailing2userID (mailId)

• recipient ID

• recipient list ID

event-specific payload

• smtp status code (e.g. "250")