Reaching dormant customers
A reactivation run is ordinary outreach to people who are already relationships, so it passes the same compliance gate, the same autonomy rule and the same send boundary as any other message. The order matters: suppression and do-not-contact are checked before a draft exists, the relationship record supplies what makes the message specific, and only then does anything go out.
Compliance is checked before there is a message#
Suppression, unsubscribe, complaints and do-not-contact are checked in one place before any outreach. That single check is why a reactivation list does not need cleaning by hand: an address that unsubscribed two years ago is still suppressed, and the draft for that person is never written rather than written and then held.
The Connect Assistant cannot clear a do-not-contact entry. Its rights are deliberately narrower than a person's, and this is one of the two things it may not do at all. If somebody asks the Assistant to put a contact back on the list, the honest answer is that a person has to do it and their name will be on the decision.
A dormant customer is a relationship, not a prospect#
The distinction decides which machinery runs. Prospecting is research about an organisation Connect does not know; reactivation is a message to somebody whose history you already hold. prospect_identity_resolution exists to stop an existing customer being prospected, so a lapsed account should never appear as a cold discovery — and if it does, that is a duplicate record rather than a compliance decision.
- Customer 360 answers what this person bought, asked, complained about and promised, across every channel, in one view.
- Timeline puts it in order, so 'went quiet after the second support case' is visible rather than inferred.
- Memory carries the durable things — a preference, a constraint, a
block:<channel>directive that must be respected even though the address is not suppressed. - Knowledge supplies anything about your business that the message asserts. What Knowledge does not support does not get said.
Segmenting is done on the Data grid, over the same records the services own — filter, group, save the view, act in bulk. The grid is not a second CRM; every change it makes goes through the service that owns the record, so a stage moved there is the same event as a stage moved anywhere else.
Which channel can actually carry it#
| Channel | Status | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Available | Gmail, Microsoft Graph or any IMAP/SMTP mailbox. Bounded by the workspace's daily allowance rather than by a sending speed. | |
| Available | Provider-dependent. Templates, session windows and delivery reporting are whatever the configured provider supports; Connect exposes them and does not simulate the rest. | |
| Phone | Available | The most expensive option per contact and the most likely to be answered. Budget refusal is asked before the call is placed. |
| SMS | Foundation | Inbound, STOP and suppression work. Outbound depends on a provider that carries SMS, and the live carrier carries none. |
In India, commercial SMS additionally requires DLT registration with the telecom operators — entity, header and template registration. That is a process with the operators rather than a setting in Connect, and no amount of configuration substitutes for it.
What stops a run#
- The autonomy mode
- On
ask_before_sendevery message waits for a person. Ondraft_onlythey are written and not queued at all — the mode to use for a first pass, because it shows what Connect would say to fifty dormant customers without anybody having to say no fifty times. - The daily allowance
- Work is held rather than dropped when the allowance is spent, and Needs You shows the refusal. Nothing is silently skipped.
- A suppression discovered mid-run
- The individual send fails at the boundary and the reason is recorded against that contact. The run continues.
- The voice budget
budget_refusalis asked before an outbound call. A refused call is a recorded refusal, not a silent no-show.- A block directive
- A
connect_memoryrow taggedblock:<channel>holds across channels and across future conversations. It is not a suppression and it is not cleared by clearing one.
Where the money goes#
Email reactivation is close to free per message and the cost is the drafting: one model call per person, grounded in that person's record. Phone reactivation is the opposite — audio tokens dominate, a Live session is re-billed for its entire context every turn, and a hundred calls is a real number rather than a rounding error. The sensible shape is usually email or WhatsApp first, and calls only to the people who answered.
Questions#
Can Connect send a reactivation SMS campaign?
Not on the live carrier, which carries no SMS at all. Outbound SMS is provider-dependent: with a provider that carries it, and in India with DLT entity, header and template registration completed with the operators, the channel works. The Phone screen states the readiness rather than offering a thread that cannot send.
Will Connect contact somebody who unsubscribed a long time ago?
No. Suppression, unsubscribe, complaints and do-not-contact are checked in one place before any outreach, and age does not expire an entry. Clearing one is a human decision recorded against a person, and the Assistant cannot do it at all.
How does it decide what to say to somebody it has not spoken to in a year?
From the relationship record — Customer 360, the timeline, and memory at the four tiers — grounded in Knowledge for anything about your business. It will not invent an offer, a discount or a price to restart the conversation; safe_sales refuses commercial terms Knowledge does not support and escalates instead.