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Proactive Outreach

Updated: 11/06/2024

Overview

8x8 Proactive Outreach is a set of packaged solutions that helps your business remove the reactive nature of the customer service department with one-to-many messaging capabilities for all your business needs.
The 8x8 Proactive Outreach Notify and Interact solutions allow you to communicate directly to your customers at scale, using messaging channels as SMS and WhatsApp. Depending on your subscription type, you can reach out to your customers either by using an online campaign manager (multi-channel sender) that is part of 8x8 Connect or a set of scalable API solutions.

About Proactive Outreach

Proactive Outreach includes three packages: Notify, Interact, and Alert. These packages are part of the "Proactive Outreach" solutions designed for outbound messaging. Both are intuitive, scalable, web-based solutions delivered as part of 8x8 Connect, enabling businesses to send mass SMS or WhatsApp messages for various use cases, such as reminders, promotions, service announcements, emergency alerts, and more.
With Proactive Outreach - Interact, you can:
  • Use the API to send messages programmatically.
  • Define messaging flows using the Automation Builder.
  • Route inbound conversations back into your Contact Center for agents or bots to handle.
  • Build and send personalized and targeted SMS and WhatsApp campaigns using Multi Channel Sender, a web-based tool.
With Proactive Outreach - Alert, you can send out instant, mass outbound SMS notifications for sharing time-sensitive, critical information like weather warnings, IT or power outages, school closures, and others.
These features provide a comprehensive and flexible solution for managing customer communications effectively.
 
 

Features

Take advantage of these capabilities in Proactive Outreach:
  • Intelligent message routing to ensure that your messages are delivered
  • Auto adaptation adapts messages, phone numbers, and Sender ID formats to ensure successful delivery
  • Advanced reporting and analytics track your SMS performance and expenditure, as well as delivery receipts for all messages
  • SMS scheduled campaigns and templates via 8x8 Connect’s easy-to-use template management
  • 8x8 Automated Fallback to resend undelivered or unread messages via SMS or another messaging channel to ensure deliverability
  • Access to a robust network of over 160+ direct mobile network operators in over 190 countries

Log in to Proactive Outreach

You can easily log in to Proactive Outreach using your 8x8 Connect credentials.
Your credentials and accompanying details are sent to you via email. In the email, check whether you should use an 8x8-assigned username and password, or your existing company credentials (also called Single Sign-On).
To log in:
  1. In your preferred browser, enter https://connect.8x8.com/.
  2. Enter your email address and password or click Login with SSO to sign in with your SSO credentials.

     
     
  3. Click Login.
Notes:
See inviting or adding a new user on Connect for more details on how to invite a new user on 8x8 Connect. See setting up your SSO on Connect to learn more about setting up SSO for your organization.
After logging in to 8x8 Connect for the first time, you are prompted to enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA).

Tour the Interface

Proactive Outreach allows you to effectively and efficiently navigate through Templates, Messages, or Contacts to reach out to customers in an easy way.
The primary features of the app visible in your navigation menu are as follows:

Sender

The Sender or Multichannel Sender is the 8x8 Connect tab that enables you to initiate WhatsApp chats and send SMS messages to your audience.
Note: Learn more about how to send SMS using the Multi-Channel Sender or how to send WhatsApp messages using the Multi-Channel Sender.

Campaigns

The Campaigns are scheduled notifications and other important information that is broadcast through SMS or WhatsApp messages to your audience. In the Campaigns you can search, filter the list by channel type, status, or date range, or create a new campaign. You can create a Campaign by clicking Create new campaign or by going to the Sender menu.

Automation

The Automation tab allows you to create and manage or choose a template for business flows for your messaging campaigns, like automatically unsubscribing users who replied to your bulk SMS that they would like to opt out of.
Note: Your Proactive Outreach - Notify plan allows you to create one opt-out automation for your campaigns using a predefined template. With your Proactive Outreach - Interact plan you can use all the features and functionalities of the Automation Builder.
To learn more about automating your messaging campaigns see Automation Builder.

Contacts

Contact Management is a feature inside 8x8 Connect that allows you to manage the contacts in bulk, by grouping or blacklist them for use in messaging campaigns.
To learn more about how to manage contacts in 8x8 Connect see Contact Management.

Templates

The Templates tab allows you to save time by creating and organizing messaging templates that can be customized for any of your campaigns.
Select Create new template to prepare your future messages and save them for later.

SMS

In the SMS section, you will find the Dashboard, Reports, and Logs items corresponding to the sent SMS campaigns.
The Dashboard section provides an overview of the sent SMS messages in the current week, as well as the delivery rates and destination countries.
In the Reports section, you can create and export a report of the delivered SMS messages corresponding to your defined filters like date range and country. You can also customize the columns in the report, limiting them to only the columns you are interested in.
In the Logs section, you can see the details of each sent SMS, and dive deep into the analysis of each message—see the destination country, the operator, the formatted message, and many more. You can also send a copy of the logs to your email address.

Messaging Apps

In Messaging Apps you will find the Dashboard, Reports, Logs, and WhatsApp Templates which allow you to create reusable message templates. Businesses must use message templates for sending notifications to customers. This allows users to send just the template identifier along with the appropriate parameters instead of the full message content for review and approval by Meta (Facebook).

API Keys

In the API keys tab, you can view, create, and manage any API keys associated with your account. These are key tokens used to authenticate against all 8x8 APIs and are required for accessing all services provided by your package. Learn more about API keys here.

Sending an emergency SMS using Proactive Outreach Alert

To send a mass SMS alert, navigate to Campaigns and click Send Alert in the upper right side of the screen.
Note: Only 8x8 Connect Admins will see the Send Alert button in the UI. Users with limited permissions will not be able to send mass emergency alerts.
After that, select the emergency template you'd like to send to your recipients list.
Once the template is selected, then select your recipients list. Upload a .csv file or seelct contacts loaded into 8x8 Connect either by choosing them individually, selecting groups they're a part of, or typing a number.
Once all recipients are added, review your selection and confirm sending in the next screen.
Click Continue to continue sending the alert. Finally, confirm the list of recipients, the destinations where your message will be sent, as well as a preview of your message on the right side. Once reviewed, click Send Alert Message to finish sending your emergency alert.

Webhooks

In the Webhooks tab, you can create and manage your webhooks. Webhooks in 8x8 Connect are used to automatically send you information, such as delivery receipts and incoming messages. You can find more information about webhooks here.
Your Proactive Outreach plan comes with a default webhook setup for managing inbound messages from your audience who wish to unsubscribe from your messaging campaigns.
Note: If your inbound messages are routed back into your Contact Center tenant via a webhook, do not delete the webhook and API key that is provisioned.

Numbers

In the Numbers tab, you will see your allocated Virtual Numbers (VN), which are part of your plan for receiving SMS programmatically. These numbers are typically used to allow customers to unsubscribe from your campaigns easily. This feature not only provides your audience with a simple way to reach you via SMS but also enables you to build keyword automation to process conversations programmatically.
Note: Messages will be retrieved in the SMS logs section and sent via webhooks to a callback URL of your choice upon receipt. As part of your Proactive Outreach plan, you’ll get access to a Virtual Number allocated to your account and enabled so that your customers can reply with STOP to your messages.

Pricing

Proactive Outreach has a simple pricing structure, composed of:
  • A monthly platform fee
  • A committed monthly spend that will offer a discount percentage off the list price for all messages sent every month
Note: 8x8 Connect admins will be able to see the pricing details of their respective plans by accessing the Pricing module from the left navigation bar.

Users

In the Users tab you can manage users, change their permissions, remove users and invite new ones.

8x8 Contact Center

Administration

To set up your agent routing in 8x8 Contact Center, see our guide here.

Agent Experience

To see the experience of an agent accepting interactions in response to Proactive Outreach messages, see our guide here.