Case 03 · Marketing · Automation · CRM
A mass email about money needs a person to validate it before it goes out.
My email work sits closer to sales operations than to newsletters: follow-up segments for people who didn't buy, collections campaigns with human validation, operational notices and a single template measured by delivery events. Here I separate what is built from what has been sent.
- Project
- Email: follow-up, segmented sends and operations
- Context
- Car dealership, ZoDesk, auto repair shop and educational store
- By Antonio Duque
- Reviewed against the code and documentation on
01
Context and need
People who request a quote and don't buy, who offer their car and aren't closed, and customers with outstanding balances get lost if someone has to remember to write.
At the same time, a badly run mass send damages the domain's reputation and can say wrong things about money. It needed precise segments and brakes.
02
My responsibility
- I defined the segments, the business rules (who receives what, when, with which validation) and the measurement, and directed the build in each system.
- For the educational store I prepared subscriber capture; I did not run commercial sends from it.
03
Strategy and decisions
- Distinguish three families: commercial campaigns, operational emails and reports. Each has its own risk and measurement.
- Segment by real CRM and website behavior, not purchased lists or volume.
- Brakes by design: dry run by default, one email per source record and never two emails to the same address within 30 days.
- Protect the domain: a bounce or spam complaint flags the address and turns the case into a phone call.
04
What I built
- Dealership sales follow-up with three segments approved in July 2026: people who requested a quote 3 to 10 days ago and didn't buy (and whose car is still available), people who offered their car and weren't bought from, and pre-approved people who didn't buy.
- Tracked WhatsApp buttons in those emails, carrying the car reference to keep the trail.
- A ZoDesk collections campaign: audience from receivables, grouped by customer, with to-review, validated or excluded status; segments by debt age, broken promise and email availability.
- A single Resend sending gateway with an HTML template that works in Gmail and Outlook, and a signed webhook that records deliveries, opens, clicks, bounces and complaints.
- Operational emails: appointment reminders, credit application packages to banks, internal overdue-task notices and payment reminders in the workshop system.
- Native subscriber capture for the educational store, without duplicates, with source page and export.
Real screenshots
Screens from the real system. ZoDesk ones come from its demo mode, with an invented dealership; those marked “Live” are public pages captured on November 14, 2026.
05
How it works
- System
- Team
- System
Source
CRM, website forms or receivables, depending on the send.
- System
Segment
Behavior rules and a time window; anyone recently contacted is excluded.
- Team
Validation
Dry run or human review before sending; in collections, only validated cases.
- System
Send
One template through one sending channel, logged per recipient.
- System
Measurement
Delivery events and WhatsApp clicks tracked with their reference.
- Team
Action
Bounced addresses move to the team's call list.
Demo
Segments and brakes
Segments and brakes defined in code
Diagram
Sales follow-up
- Requested a quote 3–10 days ago, didn't buy, car still available.
- Offered their car 5–14 days ago and wasn't bought from.
- Pre-approved in the last 60 days and didn't buy.
Segmented collections
- Only cases validated by a person.
- Debt age: 0–30, 31–90 or 90+ days.
- Broken payment promise or no email (moves to a call).
Safety brakes
- Dry run by default and test samples.
- Never two emails to the same address within 30 days.
- Bounce or complaint: never written to again.
06
Tools and what they do
- Resend
- Transactional and bulk sending with signed delivery events.
- Brevo and a Google relay
- Sending transports with automatic fallback on the dealership site.
- Laravel and FastAPI
- Segments, rules, scheduling and send logs.
- Google Sheets
- Receivables source for the collections campaign.
- WordPress
- Subscriber capture for the educational store.
Available evidence
- Segment code with dry run by default, per-address limits and send logs.
- A webhook with signature verification, time tolerance and once-only event processing, with automated tests.
- An email template with its own tests.
07
Current status
- Built
Dealership segmented sales follow-up
Built with dry run and test samples; not scheduled, and I don't publish sends or results.
- Built and tested
ZoDesk segmented collections campaign
Built and tested; no document confirms real rounds in production.
- Connected
Sending channel and delivery events
Resend connected in ZoDesk with a signed webhook.
- Built
Operational emails (appointments, credit, internal notices)
Built inside their modules.
- Proposal
ZoDesk welcome and nurture sequences
Documented in a site audit; not implemented.
- Built
Educational store subscriber capture
Ready; the link to the external list is optional and not confirmed.
“In production” is only used when the project’s documentation confirms it. “Built and tested” means automated tests exist, not that it is in use. “Proposal” is a documented idea, not something built.
Next steps
- Schedule the sales follow-up as a small pilot and measure WhatsApp replies, not just opens.
- Implement welcome sequences on the same channel and webhook.
- Verify own sending domains where the test sender is still used.
08
Lessons learned
Useful segmentation comes from the CRM: what the person did and what didn't happen next.
No bulk send should be repeatable by accident; the per-recipient log matters as much as the template.
Email must never take down operations: if it fails, it is logged and retried.
Related services
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CRM and sales follow-up
CRM Consulting and Implementation
I design the sales process before touching the tool: stages, assignment rules, alerts and loss reasons, connected to the website and channels.
Sales pipeline
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Connected cases
Automated email reports and alerts
Reports that arrive on their own, calculated live, written for their reader, with a clear next step.
ZoDesk, a full-funnel ecosystem
From first contact to contract, collections and operations: the system that connects the pieces of the other cases.
Monitoring and action dashboards
Dashboards that don't stop at the number: every out-of-range indicator suggests a concrete action.