Quick and Easy Email Campaigns

If you are planning on sending an email campaign to your contacts, here is a quick and easy guide to take you through the process.

Step 1 - Are your SMTP email server settings complete in the database area you are sending the email from?

To find this out you need to go to the Menu and select Setup > Database Areas then choose the Area and select the Email Server drop down.

If these fields are blank you will need to populate them with the details from your SMTP provider, for example:

You can test these settings by clicking on the icon on the right next to the SMTP Password field.

Step 2 - Are your bounce settings within the database area set up?

To access this you will need to go to the Menu and select Setup > Database areas then choose the Area and select the Email Campaign Settings drop down.

You will need to add the settings here for the Inbox that the bounce emails are going in to, these will be available from your email provider.

If you are using SendGrid or Mandrill as your SMTP Server then you will not need to set this up as bounces are tracked within SendGrid and Mandrill.

Step 3 – Is your document ready for sending?

In order to comply with the 'Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications' in Europe and the 'CAN_SPAM Act of 2003' in the United States, all marketing emails must have an unsubscribe link on them. To add this within your document you need to highlight the part of the text you want transforming into a unsubscribe link and then select area unsubscribe from the Campaign Links drop down menu:

This will add the unsubscribe link/s to the document.

Step 4 – Creating an email campaign

You will need to go to Menu, Tools > Email/SMS campaigns > Campaign Scheduling. This will bring up the email campaigns list page. To create a new email campaign you will need to click on the button on the left and the following pop up will appear:

You just need to add a new campaign name and click 'save'.

Step 5 – Adding contacts

Before the email campaign can be sent you will need to add contacts which is done using the assign function. You will need to filter the data first to only display the accounts you would like the emails to send to (if you would like to send to the entire area then you will not need to filter). You then need to go to the assign function by using this button:

This will bring up the assign options to choose from. You will need to set the options as follows:

Once you have chosen the 'add records to existing campaign' this will display a drop down list where you can choose the email campaign you have created.

Click (Apply) and the contacts will be added to the email campaign you have selected and you will be directed to the email campaign list page.

Step 6 – Setting up the email campaign

Now you have added your contacts to the campaign, you will need to edit the campaign and get it ready for sending. If you click on the desired campaign it will drop down the steps for that campaign. Then click on the button to the right hand side.

This will bring up the details for the email campaign. From here you can add the subject line for the email, add the document and schedule the send date and time:

When you add the document, if there are links in there, this will prompt a pop up informing you to 'save and generate links at the end', just click OK.

You can also send a test email to yourself before sending to check the formatting of the email body by clicking the which will bring up a pop up box where you can add a test email address (at the bottom):

Please note that this is a formatting preview so any links, images and merges will not always load correctly. The best way to get a true representation of what your Customers will see we suggest creating another Campaign, creating a test Account and then sending yourself the Email as you would for your Contacts.

Once you have this all set up you need to click the 'save and generate links' button, the page will refresh you back to the email campaign list' page and the campaign is scheduled for sending.

Click here to view a video guide covering this topic