Recipient Interactions Overview
Recipient Interaction is a TargetX Communication Planner feature that writes engagement activity for each email element back to Salesforce, so you can report on opens, clicks, bounces, and more from a single record per recipient per send. It is the Communication Planner equivalent of Email Broadcast Member (EBM) data, with behavior tailored specifically to tracks and elements.
What is Recipient Interaction?
Recipient Interaction is a Communication Planner object that stores engagement activity (open, click, bounce, fail, spam, opt out) for each recipient when Recipient Interactions is enabled on a track. One Recipient Interaction record is maintained per recipient per element execution; new activity updates the existing record rather than creating a new one.
Impacts on Storage
Recipient Interaction records store only engagement data for specific sends, and each record is continually updated with the latest activity. This update‑only approach significantly reduces storage usage compared with traditional Email Broadcast Member data used by other TargetX tools.
When Records are Created
Recipient Interaction records are created and updated according to these rules:
- A record is created the first time a recipient has any of these activities for an email element: Open, Click, Bounced, Failed, Spam, Opt Out.
- No Recipient Interaction record is created for “Sent only” events (a send with no tracked activity).
- After the record exists, all subsequent qualifying activities for that recipient and element update the same record (counts, dates, and Status).
Setting up Recipient Interactions
- Existing clients using TargetX Communication Planner can use Recipient Interactions immediately.
- New clients implementing the Communication Planner will need to request that recipient interactions be enabled by support when configuring their TargetX Communication Planner instance.
Recipient Interactions for Parents
If you wish to record parent interactions, you can. There are a few steps the admin needs to complete to enable upsyncing of parent data.
- Navigate to Setup and select Object Manager.
- On the Recipient Interactions object: TX_CommPlanner__Recipient_Interaction__c
- Create a new field: lookup.
- That field must have an API name of Relationship__c and looking up to the TargetX custom object: Target_SRMb__Family_Relationship__c)
- Save.
Parent interactions will be recorded and associated with the Relationship object.
- Sync occurs only if the RM/Base packages are installed; if they are not, Relationship V1 is not synced.
- Relationship syncing applies only to “Parent” relationships when sending to Contacts + Parents or Parents only, where Parent is defined as Mother, Father, Legal Guardian, Parent, or Other.
General Status Rules
Each Recipient Interaction includes a packaged Status field, so the feature works out of the box without custom configuration. The Status value is automatically updated as new activities occur, using these rules:
- Status should always reflect the most recent activity date, except for how Open and Click are handled:
- If both Open Date and Click Date have values, Status is always set to Click.
- If Bounced, Failed, Spam, or Opt Out occurs after a Click, the Status is updated to the activity with the latest date (for example, from Click to Spam if spam is reported later).
Examples
- If the most recent date field is Bounced_Date__c, Status becomes Bounce.
- If the most recent date field is Failed_Date__c, Status becomes Fail.
- If the most recent date field is Spam_Reported_Date__c, Status becomes Spam.
- When a recipient opts out, the Opt Out date is stored, and the status is set to Opt Out.