raia Control User Guide
Move from Reactive Support to Proactive Engagement at Scale
Overview
raia Control represents a fundamental shift in how organizations approach customer engagement—moving from reactive support that waits for customers to reach out, to proactive engagement that initiates conversations at scale. While raia Chat enables agents to respond to inbound inquiries across channels, Control enables those same intelligent agents to conduct outbound campaigns that engage customers, prospects, and employees through personalized, automated conversations. This transformation moves organizations from monologue (one-way email blasts and drip campaigns) to dialogue (two-way conversations that adapt based on responses).
Control serves as the campaign orchestration engine that connects AI agents to contact lists, configures messaging and timing, launches campaigns across SMS and Email channels, and tracks results in real time. The platform enables organizations to conduct outreach at scale while maintaining the intelligence, personalization, and conversational capability that characterizes effective engagement. A single agent can conduct thousands of simultaneous conversations, each personalized to the recipient and adaptive to their responses—achieving the reach of mass marketing with the effectiveness of one-on-one communication.
How raia Control Works
Campaign Creation and Configuration
Campaign creation in Control begins with connecting an AI agent that will conduct the conversations. Users select from agents created in raia Command, choosing one whose knowledge, skills, and instructions align with the campaign objectives. The agent brings its full intelligence, including trained knowledge from raia Connect, configured skills, and defined behavior patterns. This connection ensures that campaign conversations benefit from the same quality and consistency as reactive support interactions.
Once the agent is connected, users configure the campaign mission—the specific objective and approach for the outreach. The mission defines what the agent is trying to accomplish (qualify leads, schedule appointments, collect feedback, re-engage customers, promote products), how it should approach conversations (tone, messaging, value proposition), what information it should collect (responses to specific questions, stated preferences, objections), and what constitutes success (appointment scheduled, interest expressed, feedback provided, purchase completed). The mission provides strategic guidance that shapes how the agent conducts conversations while allowing flexibility to adapt to individual responses.
Contact List Management
Control accepts contact lists through CSV or Excel file upload, supporting up to 10,000 contacts per upload for efficient processing of large campaigns. The upload interface provides field mapping capabilities where users specify which columns contain required information (phone number for SMS, email address for Email) and optional data (name, company, account details, custom fields). This mapping enables personalization where agents can reference recipient-specific information in conversations, creating more relevant and engaging interactions.
The platform validates uploaded contacts, checking for proper formatting (valid phone numbers, email addresses), identifying duplicates, flagging opt-outs (recipients who have previously unsubscribed), and verifying required fields. Validation results show successful uploads, warnings for issues that should be reviewed, and errors for contacts that cannot be processed. Users can review and correct issues before launching campaigns. Contact management includes segmentation capabilities where lists can be organized by criteria, enabling targeted campaigns to specific audiences.
Message Configuration and Personalization
The initial campaign message serves as the conversation starter that introduces the agent and establishes the engagement. Users configure this message through Control's interface, with support for personalization variables that insert recipient-specific information (name, company, account details, custom fields). The message can be crafted to align with campaign objectives—a lead qualification campaign might ask about current challenges, an appointment scheduling campaign might offer specific time slots, a feedback campaign might request input on recent experiences.
Beyond the initial message, users configure follow-up behavior that determines how the agent continues conversations based on responses. Automated follow-ups can be triggered by various conditions including time-based (send follow-up if no response after X hours/days), response-based (different follow-ups for positive, negative, or neutral responses), action-based (follow-up after specific actions like link clicks), or goal-based (continue conversation until objective is achieved or maximum attempts reached). This automation enables sophisticated nurture sequences that adapt to recipient engagement while maintaining conversational authenticity.
Campaign Launch and Execution
Once configured, campaigns are launched with specification of timing and pacing parameters. Users can choose immediate launch (start sending immediately) or scheduled launch (begin at specific date/time). Pacing controls determine how quickly messages are sent, with options for throttling to respect rate limits, spreading sends over time windows to manage response volume, or sending in batches with gaps between groups. These controls ensure compliance with platform limits, prevent overwhelming response handling, and enable testing with small groups before full deployment.
During execution, Control manages the entire conversation lifecycle for each recipient. The initial message is sent through the configured channel (SMS via Twilio, Email via Mailgun). When recipients respond, the connected agent processes the message using its knowledge, skills, and instructions, formulating appropriate responses that advance the conversation toward campaign objectives. This back-and-forth continues until the objective is achieved, the recipient stops responding, or maximum follow-up attempts are reached. All conversations occur in parallel, with the agent handling thousands of simultaneous interactions without degradation in quality or response time.
Key Benefits
From Monologue to Dialogue
Traditional outbound marketing operates as monologue—one-way broadcasts that deliver messages without enabling response or conversation. Email newsletters, promotional blasts, and drip campaigns send the same content to everyone, hoping some percentage will take action. This approach suffers from low engagement (5-10% open rates, 1-2% click rates), no personalization (everyone receives identical messages regardless of needs or interests), no adaptation (can't respond to questions or objections), and no relationship building (transactional rather than conversational).
raia Control transforms this monologue into dialogue by enabling real two-way conversations at scale. Recipients can ask questions and receive intelligent answers, express objections and have them addressed, request specific information and get personalized responses, and engage in natural back-and-forth that builds relationship and trust. This conversational approach achieves dramatically higher engagement (40-60% response rates), better qualification (conversations reveal true interest and needs), increased conversion (addressing objections and questions in real-time), and stronger relationships (dialogue builds connection that monologue cannot).
Scalable Personalization
Personalization has long been recognized as critical to effective marketing and engagement, but traditional approaches struggle with scale. Human-conducted outreach can be highly personalized but reaches limited audiences. Automated systems can reach large audiences but offer only superficial personalization (inserting names or basic variables). The tradeoff between personalization depth and reach has forced organizations to choose between effectiveness and scale.
Control eliminates this tradeoff through AI-powered conversations that deliver deep personalization at unlimited scale. Each conversation is adapted to the specific recipient based on their responses, questions, and engagement. The agent references recipient-specific information from the contact list, adjusts messaging based on expressed interests or concerns, answers questions with relevant knowledge, and pursues conversation paths that align with individual needs. This personalization operates at scale—thousands of recipients each receive conversations tailored to them, achieving the effectiveness of one-on-one engagement with the reach of mass campaigns.
Proactive Revenue Generation
Most organizations operate reactively, waiting for customers to express interest, ask questions, or report problems before engaging. This reactive posture misses opportunities including customers who would buy but don't know about offerings, leads who need nurturing but receive no follow-up, at-risk customers who could be retained with proactive engagement, and dormant customers who could be reactivated with the right outreach. The result is significant revenue left on the table—often 20-40% of potential revenue that could be captured through proactive engagement.
Control enables proactive revenue generation by systematically engaging customers and prospects at scale. Lead nurturing campaigns maintain contact with prospects who aren't ready to buy immediately, keeping your solution top-of-mind and providing value until buying conditions emerge. Re-engagement campaigns reach out to dormant customers with relevant offers or updates, reactivating relationships that would otherwise remain inactive. Upsell campaigns inform existing customers about additional products or services that address their needs. Renewal campaigns proactively engage customers before contracts expire, reducing churn and ensuring continuity. This proactive approach captures revenue that reactive postures miss.
Operational Efficiency and Cost Reduction
Traditional outbound engagement requires significant human resources—sales development representatives for lead qualification, account managers for customer outreach, customer success teams for proactive engagement. These roles are essential but expensive, with costs including salaries, benefits, training, management overhead, and turnover. The linear relationship between reach and headcount limits scalability and creates pressure to reduce outreach when budgets tighten.
Control dramatically improves operational efficiency by automating the outreach process while maintaining conversational quality. A single agent can conduct thousands of simultaneous conversations, achieving the reach of dozens or hundreds of human representatives. The cost structure shifts from variable (proportional to volume) to largely fixed (platform subscription), enabling unlimited scaling without proportional cost increases. Organizations report 60-80% reductions in cost per conversation while achieving higher engagement and conversion rates. This efficiency enables outreach at scales that would be economically impractical with human-only approaches.
Key Features
Multi-Channel Campaign Support
Control supports campaigns across SMS and Email channels, enabling organizations to reach audiences through their preferred communication methods. SMS campaigns leverage text messaging's high open rates (98% of SMS messages are read) and immediacy (most read within 3 minutes) for time-sensitive or high-priority outreach. Email campaigns provide richer formatting, longer content, and professional context appropriate for detailed information or formal communication. Multi-channel campaigns can combine both channels, starting with SMS for immediate engagement and following up via Email with detailed information.
Channel selection is configured per campaign based on objectives, audience preferences, message content, and urgency. The platform handles channel-specific considerations including SMS character limits (automatically managing message length), email deliverability (proper authentication, reputation management), opt-out management (respecting STOP requests and unsubscribes), and compliance requirements (TCPA for SMS, CAN-SPAM for Email). All conversations appear in raia Copilot regardless of channel, enabling unified oversight and intervention.
Intelligent Conversation Management
Control's conversation management capabilities ensure that campaigns maintain quality and effectiveness throughout their lifecycle. The platform tracks conversation state for each recipient, understanding where each interaction stands relative to campaign objectives. This state awareness enables intelligent decisions about follow-ups (when to send, what to say), escalations (when human intervention would be valuable), and conclusions (when objectives are achieved or further outreach is unlikely to succeed).
Conversation threading maintains context across multiple messages, ensuring that follow-ups reference previous exchanges and build on established rapport. The agent remembers what information has been shared, questions that have been asked, and responses that have been provided, creating coherent multi-message conversations rather than disconnected broadcasts. Duplicate prevention ensures that recipients don't receive multiple concurrent campaigns or redundant messages. Frequency capping limits how often any individual recipient is contacted across all campaigns, preventing over-communication that damages relationships.
Automated Follow-Up Sequences
Follow-up automation represents one of Control's most powerful capabilities, enabling sophisticated nurture sequences that adapt to recipient engagement. Time-based follow-ups send messages after specified periods of no response, with configurable delays (hours, days, weeks) and maximum attempts. Response-based follow-ups trigger different messages based on recipient responses—positive responses receive one path, objections receive another, questions trigger informational responses. Action-based follow-ups respond to specific behaviors like link clicks, document downloads, or form submissions.
The platform supports complex follow-up logic with conditional branching, where conversation paths diverge based on multiple factors. A lead qualification campaign might have different sequences for qualified leads (schedule demo), unqualified leads (nurture for future), and unclear leads (ask clarifying questions). Follow-up timing can be optimized based on campaign analytics, identifying the delays that produce highest response rates. All follow-ups maintain conversational tone and context, avoiding the robotic feel of traditional drip campaigns.
Real-Time Campaign Analytics
The campaign dashboard provides comprehensive visibility into execution, performance, and results. Execution metrics track messages sent, delivery rates, bounce rates, and opt-out rates. Engagement metrics measure response rates, conversation rates (recipients who engage in multi-message exchanges), and average messages per conversation. Performance metrics assess objective achievement rates (appointments scheduled, leads qualified, feedback collected), conversion rates, and time to conversion.
Real-time updates ensure that campaign managers see current status without delay, enabling rapid response to issues or opportunities. Conversation drill-down allows clicking on any metric to view underlying conversations, facilitating analysis and learning. Comparison capabilities enable evaluating different campaigns, messages, or audiences to identify what works best. Export functionality allows data to be extracted for integration with CRM systems, business intelligence tools, or custom reporting. These analytics inform optimization decisions, demonstrate ROI, and identify opportunities for improvement.
CRM and System Integration
Control integrates with CRM systems and other business applications to create seamless workflows that span campaign execution and business processes. Webhook capabilities enable sending campaign results to external systems in real-time, such as creating leads in Salesforce when prospects express interest, updating contact records in HubSpot with conversation outcomes, triggering workflows in Zapier based on campaign events, or notifying sales teams in Slack when qualified leads emerge.
API access enables programmatic campaign management, where external systems can create campaigns, upload contacts, launch execution, and retrieve results. This capability supports integration with marketing automation platforms, custom applications, and business intelligence systems. The platform can also pull data from external systems to enrich contact information, personalize messages, or inform conversation logic. These integrations create unified workflows where campaigns are not isolated activities but integrated components of broader business processes.
Compliance and Opt-Out Management
Control implements comprehensive compliance features that ensure campaigns respect regulations and recipient preferences. Opt-out management automatically processes STOP requests in SMS and unsubscribe requests in Email, immediately removing recipients from active campaigns and suppressing future outreach. The platform maintains suppression lists across campaigns, ensuring that opted-out recipients don't receive messages even from new campaigns. Audit trails document all opt-out requests and actions taken, supporting compliance verification.
The platform supports compliance with regulations including TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) for SMS, CAN-SPAM for Email, and GDPR for European recipients. Compliance features include consent documentation (recording when and how consent was obtained), time-of-day restrictions (avoiding early morning or late night messages), frequency limits (preventing excessive contact), and data retention policies (automatically deleting data after specified periods). These features reduce legal risk and ensure respectful, permission-based engagement.
Team Collaboration and Permissions
Control supports team-based campaign management with role-based access control and collaboration features. Roles define permissions for different team members—Campaign Managers can create and launch campaigns, Analysts can view results but not modify campaigns, Administrators have full access including settings and integrations. Permissions can be granted at various levels including campaign-specific (access to certain campaigns only), agent-specific (campaigns using certain agents), or organization-wide.
Collaboration features enable multiple team members to work together on campaigns including shared campaign drafts (multiple people can contribute to configuration), approval workflows (campaigns require review before launch), commenting and discussion (team members can discuss strategy and results), and activity tracking (seeing who made what changes when). These capabilities enable efficient teamwork while maintaining appropriate controls and oversight.
Getting Started with raia Control
Organizations beginning with Control typically start with a well-defined, low-risk use case that addresses a clear business need and has measurable success criteria. Common starting points include lead follow-up campaigns that engage prospects who have expressed interest, customer feedback campaigns that collect input on recent experiences, event promotion campaigns that drive registration or attendance, or re-engagement campaigns that reach out to dormant customers. The focused approach allows teams to learn the platform, establish best practices, and demonstrate value before expanding to additional use cases.
The typical campaign workflow begins with defining objectives and success criteria—what are we trying to accomplish and how will we measure success. Next comes agent selection and mission configuration, ensuring the agent has appropriate knowledge and instructions for the campaign. Contact list preparation involves gathering recipient information, ensuring data quality, and mapping fields appropriately. Message crafting includes writing the initial message and configuring follow-up logic. Finally, testing with a small group validates that everything works as expected before launching to the full list.
Success with Control comes from treating campaigns as ongoing programs rather than one-time sends. Organizations that achieve the greatest value continuously analyze campaign results to identify what works, refine messaging and timing based on response patterns, expand contact lists systematically, test variations to optimize performance, and integrate campaigns with broader business processes. The platform's analytics and integration capabilities make this continuous optimization sustainable and impactful.
Conclusion
raia Control represents a fundamental transformation in how organizations approach customer and prospect engagement. By enabling intelligent, conversational outreach at scale, Control moves organizations from ineffective monologue (broadcast messaging) to effective dialogue (two-way conversations). The platform's combination of AI intelligence, automation, and analytics creates sustainable competitive advantage through superior engagement that drives measurable business results.
Organizations using raia Control report dramatic improvements in engagement rates, significant increases in conversion and revenue, substantial reductions in cost per acquisition, and enhanced customer relationships through proactive, personalized communication. The platform's integration with the raia ecosystem ensures that campaign conversations benefit from the same quality, intelligence, and oversight as reactive support interactions. As customer expectations for personalized, relevant engagement continue to rise, Control provides the infrastructure necessary to meet those expectations at scale while maintaining operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
Last updated