Sometimes you need to take particular actions for different groups of customers. Handling these exceptions can be difficult as your company grows. Without an automized system working on your behalf, it's easy to make mistakes.

With Missive, companies can create groups within their contact books. These are very useful tools for segmentation. But even more helpful is the ability to create workflows using these groups or individual contacts as conditions to trigger automatic actions.

It might sound a little cryptic. So let me break it down a little. Imagine you have a group of highly-select customers that require special attention and faster service. Instead of always having to be alert for when they contact you, with Missive, you can designate a group for them and then let it alert you when someone from this select cluster makes contact.

The previous is an example of our powerful contact-based rules. We're going to explore three scenarios (instructions included) on how you too can leverage this feature.

But first, let's learn how to create contact groups.

1. Click on your name
2. Go to Contacts

1. If you don't have one already, create a Contact Book.

1. Create a contact
2. Create and add a group

1. Repeat for other contacts

PROTIPYou can add contacts to a group directly from the email viewer. Click on the email address > Add to Contacts > Add Group

Scenario 1

Your top 20% of customers bring 80% of the revenue. You signed a strict Service Level Agreement and they expect the best treatment.

Group name: VIP customers

Actions: Notify Sales Team when they email + label as VIP + display 15 minute SLA post

Scenario 2

You're dipping your toes into the German market and you've hired Hans to help. He's bilingual, so he can answer emails in English and German. You need to have them translated automatically since you don't speak the language.

Group name: German customers

Actions: Assign messages to Hans + translate them to English using a webhook

Scenario 3

Your business (Company Inc) is consulting to the sales and legal teams at Acme Inc. Both teams email you to john@company.com. You need the lawyers' emails to be directed to your own legal team and forward a copy to another outsourced firm.

Group name: Acme Inc (Legal team) customers

Actions: Move messages to the Legal Team Inbox + forward them to the outsourced firm.

Bonus

Trash spam or undesired emails in the future by adding them to the contact groups Spammers.

Group name: Spammers

Actions: Trash emails