In this article, you will learn the difference between an email blast and a loyalty campaign. You will also learn how to customize email campaigns which can then be used as templates for future campaigns.
An email blast campaign is an email newsletter that is sent to a group of your customers at some future date. For example, you could create an email campaign named April Newsletter and send it to your customer database. This is a one-off newsletter.
Follow the below steps:
to achieve this. Once you have entered all your campaign content, click Next
The process of creating a loyalty based campaign is similar to one-off campaigns explained about. The difference is that loyalty based campaigns enable you to automate communication to a group of subscribers on a one-by-one basis. Instead of setting a specific date of publication, you set Delivery Days. For example a Delivery Day of 0 for birthday campaigns means when a customer birthday is reached, the campaign will be sent to them the same day (on their birthday).
When configuring a birthday campaign, you could also set a Delivery Day of -30 which means the message will arrive in their inbox 30 days before their birthday, to let them know about special birthday sales and promotions. And then you could set up another campaign with a Delivery Day of 0 which wishes the recipient happy birthday on the actual day of their birthday.
A positive Delivery Day, such as 5 means your campaign is sent out 5 days after the relevant anniversary date.
For example, if you update the Anniversary 1 date for a customer for 12-months from now, and setup a campaign of this type with a Delivery Day of 0, they'll receive the email campaign when the future date (one year from today) is reached. If you had set the Delivery Day to 5, then the recipient would have received your campaign 5 days after this future date was reached.
For Email Series campaigns, you can create a series of newsletters by creating follow ups to the first email. This is done by right-clicking the campaign you wish to copy, then changing the Delivery Day(and other details, as desired). A typical campaign join series might go out at Delivery Days 0, 7, 14, 21, 28 and so on.
There are many different options when sending a loyalty-based campaign. Choose from one of the following:
Enables you to send each subscriber a personal happy birthday message, which they'll receive automatically on their birth date - this is specified in the CRM entry of the contact receiving the newsletter. This strategy creates a personalized experience for the visitor and encourages them to visit the site again.
You can draft a set of email newsletters that share a common theme, and then send them sequentially to subscribers. For example, imagine a scenario where the business has written a series of newsletters which encompass eight issues and each new message builds upon the information provided in the previous newsletters. In a one-off campaign, you'd need to set the date to specify when each issue is sent out to the list of recipients. One-off campaigns are great, until you acquire a new customer that subscribes when you are already up to issue #7, meaning that the subscriber will jump in the series, missing out on issues 1 through 6. The first newsletter they receive might not make much sense, causing them to unsubscribe.
In these situations, you can set up an email series, which is a set of campaigns that allow you to automate the process of sending a series of newsletters to recipients. Each series begins with issue #1 as the visitor is subscribed to the list. This ensures they'll never miss an issue in the series (unless they choose to unsubscribe before all of the newsletters have been delivered).
You can set up an email series campaign that includes 0 day, 7 day and 14 day delivery days. When each person subscribes, they'll receive issue #1 immediately. Then, issue #2 will be sent to their inbox 7 days after they subscribe, and issue #3 will be sent 14 days after they subscribed. If a second person visits the site a month later and subscribes to a recipient list using the sign up form on your website, they'll receive the same issues at the same intervals, relative to the date that they've subscribed. This process is repeated for every person that subscribes to the recipient list attached to these campaigns. It provides a seamless experience for all subscribers.
The system supports up to five anniversary-based campaigns. These anniversary campaigns all work the same way, but you can specify the type of anniversary date for each of the five different campaigns. Each subscriber can be set up to receive email messages for up to five anniversary dates.
To set this up, follow these steps:
Click Save to save the anniversary settings. Repeat with other customer records, as desired. You can also collect anniversary dates using web forms that visitors submit online, rather than manually entering the dates yourself.
When you create an email newsletter campaign you can choose to send it in either HTML or Text format. HTML emails are aesthetically much more pleasing. They are easier to read and can include images. They have a higher impact and can be much more effective in delivering your messages to your customers.
Please note that you can only run reports on HTML-based email campaigns. Statistics, such as who opened your email and which links they clicked on, are only tracked for HTML newsletters. These statistics are not available if you send your email in text format. However, unsubscribe and bounced reporting is available for both HTML and text emails.
Despite these considerations, there are a number of reasons why you might decide to send a text formatted email. First of all, it is possible that not all your recipient's email clients support HTML emails. This has become less of an issue over time as email clients become more saavy, but some mobile email clients still do not support HTML formatted emails. When you send HTML emails from the site, the system automatically includes a text version. This is helpful, because if a recipient doesn't support HTML formatting, then they will automatically receive the text version of the newsletter.
Another reason you might choose to send text formatted emails has to do with spam filters.
HTML formatted emails are often mistakenly considered to be spam by email clients. It's not unusual for up to 20% of your recipients anti-spam software to consider your email newsletter to be spam and deliver it to the spam folder, where the recipient is unlikely to ever see it. You can ask your recipients to add the email address you use as your "From" address to their contact list, but it's impossible to enforce this, because it is up to the subscribers to add you to their list of contacts.
To delete a campaign you need to go to E-mail Marketing, right-click on the campaign you want to delete and then select the Delete option (the last item in the right sidebar).
Spam is a major issue affecting everyone on the internet. We take strict preventative measures in this solution to ensure we curtail the explosion of spam. The following are some of the measures we take:
You must be the legal owner of the from email address that you use to send out your newsletters with. If your email address is not verified we will automatically send you a verification email when you create your next campaign. After you have clicked on the verification link that was emailed to you, you will then be taken to a confirmation page. Simply click the Confirm button and you will now be verified to send from this email address.
Double opt-in is a process which verifies a customer's subscription to your lists. Generally customers will subscribe themselves to your lists by entering their details in your subscription form on your website. However it's important to verify that the person who subscribed did not enter somebody else's email address. This verification is done by sending an email to the email address used during subscription which will contain a verification link. When the customer clicks on this link it's then considered that they have given their permission to receive email newsletters from you.
Regardless of how many campaigns a customer is subscribed to, if they unsubscribe from a campaign they are considered unsubscribed from all your campaigns. For this customer to receive any future email newsletter campaigns they will need to grant their permission to you again.
You can send a request to them by viewing their subscription details under their customer record.
When you add or import customers into the system for the first time you will not need to request their permission. In this scenario you undertake that every customer added or imported has given their prior permission to receive email newsletters from you. But again if they unsubscribe from a campaign then you will need to request permission from them to resume your communications.
However, if you determine that it is absolutely necessary, you can bypass the double opt-in process. After making this change, subscribers that enter their email address into a subscription form are automatically subscribed. They will not receive a confirmation message or have any method to confirm that they intended to subscribe to receive your email campaigns and newsletters.
Follow these steps:
After making this change, any subscriber that enters their email address into the subscription form will automatically be added to the recipient list -- they won't recieve the follow-up confirmation message first.
You are able to completely customize your email campaigns. This means you can put the Unsubscribe link in any part of your email. Refer to our customization section to learn more. However if you decide not to include this link on an email newsletter then the system will automatically append this to the bottom of your email. If a customer unsubscribes from a campaign, they will not receive any future campaigns unless they sign up as a recipient again.
There are 2 ways in which customers can be unsubscribed from an Email Campaign. These methods are described below:
If for some reason customer emails you and asks you to unsubscribe them from the email marketing you can do this in the Admin Console. Select CRM >Customer > Search and locate the customer's contact details. Then, click Subscriptions and click the Permanent Permanent Unsubscribe button.
That will permanently opt-out that customer from email marketing. If they want to be removed from a particular list you simply need to click on Edit and untick the box next to that marketing list and click Save.
It's important to unsubscribe any bounced email addresses, because the system automatically disables them for 45 days and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) look for messages that are sent to these addresses. ISPs could choose to block your emails (blacklist your domain name) if you have too many bounced email addresses. To learn how to unsubscribe bounced addresses, see Unsubscribing email addresses that have bounced.
Please note that every email newsletter has to have an unsubscribe link, if you do not add the unsubscribe tag to your email, the system will add one as this is required.
You can provide a link for to your customers that will allow them to remove themselves from a single marketing list or all marketing emails from your site.
To accomplish this, insert one of the below tags into your newsletter:
| {tag_unsubscribe} | Hyperlink to enable recipients to opt-out of all future newsletters. This tag is mandatory. NOTE: you can customise the link text that tag renders using this method {tag_unsubscribe,YourCustomText} |
| {tag_unsubscribelist} | Hyperlink to enable recipients to unsubscribe from the list associated withthiscampaign. The customer will continue to receive other newsletters.NOTE: you can customise the link text that tag renders using this method {tag_unsubscribelist,YourCustomText} |
Note: For anti-spam measures, if a recepient of a campaign marks the email as 'spam' in their email client, this contact will be opted-out from receiving newletters from your site. Similar to the unsubscribe process.
Once a customer clicks on the unsubscribe link within the email campaign, they will be taken to a unsubscribe confirmation page which can be customized (refer to the Customizing Email Campaigns section below. The customer will then need to click the Confirm button on the confirmation page and will then be successfully unsubscribed.
When a customer subscribes to a Email Campaign list, they will be taken to a subscription confirmation page. This page is used for the customer to confrm that they would like to subscribe to this list and can be customized via Site Manager >System Pages > Subscription Confirmation Request.
This page must have the {tag_confirmation_form} as this will render the confirmation button for the customer. You can customize the text in this button as below:
{tag_confirmation_form,"Confirm"}
Where the text "Confirm" can be replaced by your own text.
Once the customer has confirmed their subscription, they will be taken to the subscription confirmation/approval page. this can be customized via Site Manager >System Pages > Subscription Confirmed.
By default, a system message is displayed whenever a recipient chooses to unsubscribe from a campaign. When a customer first clicks the unsubscribe link, they will be taken to the unsubscribe confirmation page, this can be customized viaSite Manager >System Pages > Unsubscribe Confirmation.
Once the recipient clicks the confirm button, they will then be taken to the unsubscribe confirmation/approval page. This can be customized via Site Manager >System Pages > Unsubscribe Confirmed.
You can also configure the newsletter subscription form to go directly to a page that you designate. This page can be hosted with your online business or on a third-party hosting provider.
To do this, you'll need to append the following code to your web form's action URL.
For example, find this line of code:
action=/CampaignProcess.aspx?........
And change it to:
action=/CampaignProcess.aspx?........&PageID=/Results.htm
Another technique is to return the subscriber to the same page where the subscription was submitted and display a confirmation message next to the subscription form. To do this, update the action URL again.
In this case, change the end of the action URL to:
action=/CampaignProcess.aspx?........&PageID=Origin
And then place {module_url,error} on the page that contains the web form, where you would like the results to display....and this is the location where the confirmation message will appear.
It is possible to customize the unsubscribe link by placing your custom text inside the unsubscribe tag, such as:
{tag_unsubscribe,YourCustomText}
Note: If you customize the text displayed by adding {tag_unsubscribe}, the "Unsubscribe" link will automatically be appended to the bottom of your newsletter.
When you add the {tag_unsubscribe} to your campaigns, the system will only display the word Unsubscribe in your campaign. This approach enables you to append your own words around this to customize the unsubscribe option, such as:
If you wish to be removed from this campaign please {tag_unsubscribe} here.
You have the option to edit your Campaigns via the admin of your site or via FTP. This is not only useful for editing the content of Email Campaigns but also backing up these Campaigns.
To access your Email Campaigns via FTP, you will first need to connect to your site via an FTP client. Once you have connected, navigate to the folder _System > Campaigns. Here you will see the following folders:
To edit a Campaign, simply access the relevant Campaign, download this locally and make the changes. Once you have made the adjustments, re-upload the file into the same folder, ensuring the name of the file has not been edited.
Note: There are a number of items to keep in mind when working with Email Campaigns via FTP:
Copyright 2004 - 2011 Business Catalyst