Quick email marketing application manual

The Dashboard

After login you start on the application dashboard. This is the place from where you have easy access to the most used tools in the application. The dashboard is always accessible through the Home menu item.

If you want to start sending your email campaigns immediatelly folow these four easy steps:

  1. Create contact list - you can set up your mailing list here / categorize your contacts.
  2. Create email content - set up email HTML / text body.
  3. Send campaign - pick the contact list(s) with email recipients and select email message to send the campaign.
  4. Check statistics - evaluate sent campaigns.

 

STEP 1 - create a contact list

Use dashboard buttons or select menu item Contact Lists > Create a Contact List.

Fill in the field with the red asterisk and leave the Custom fields and Visible fields as they are. Save the new contact list.

Your contact list has been created. You can see it in the View Contact Lists.

Now it's the time to add some contacts to your newly created contact list. You can do it manually by clicking on link Add Contact on a corresponding row.

Or - of course - you can import the contacts in a batch. See the following step on how to import your contacts.

 

STEP 2 - import contacts to your contact list

Please have you contact list ready in a CSV format (comma separated value). Basically it's just a plain text file where each contact is presented on a separate line. Microsoft Excel supports this format very well.

If you are unsure take a look at the sample file with absolute minimum of information - emails only. Download here.

The other sample is a file with a complex structure of information - email, name, surname, city etc. for each contact. Download here.

Sample with headers

EMAIL,SEX,EMPLOYED,DATE
user1@site.com,MALE,Y,20150101
user2@site.com,FEMALE,N,20151014
user3@site.com,MALE,N,20150706

Now select menu item Contacts > Import Contacts From a File and configure your import.

Mark as Confirmed - all the email are ready for mailing, Unconfirmed need verification. Leave Confirmed if you are unsure.

Format - which type of emails will these recipients receive. These days the HTML format is pretty common unles you have special needs fot Text format. Leave HTML.

Contains Headers - if your file contains headers like EMAIL,SEX,EMPLOYED,DATE etc. check this option.

Field separator - enter the separator of columns in your file. It's usually comma (,) or semi-colon (;)

Import file - pick a file with contacts from your disk

Click Next

The browser will upload your file to the server and similar form will open. Depends on the number of columns in your file you'll see the same amount of fields to map.

The system takes first line from your file and your task is to tell the system what are these data, e.g.:

"john.doe@somewhere.com" equals to the email address

"John" is the First Name

"Doe" is the Last Name

and so on.

Once you have your data mapped to the system data fields click on the Next button.

An information page will appear. Click Start Importing button to begin the process.

A popup window will be displayed where you can monitor the actual status of the import.

Once the import is complete you will be notified about result.

And that's it! If everything went fine go back to Contact Lists > View Contact Lists and you should see that your contact list now contains some number of contacts.

 

STEP 3 - Create your email message

So we have created a list of recipients for our emails and now is the time to create some email content we're going to send to them.

Go back to Dashboard and click on the button Create email content or go through menu Email Campaigns > Create an Email Campaign.

First of all you need to enter your Campaign Name and then pick the Email Campaign Format. Depends on you needs you can choose between HTML, HTML and Text or just Text. The most usual format is HTML.

If you have your own HTML template select No Template in the next select box. Or pick one of the predefined templates you like.

Continue by clicking on the Next button.

Here is the form where you can edit all the details of your campaign.

Email Subject is the one of the most important thing. For most email clients, recipients will see the subject line before they see the content of the email. So pay attention to the Email Subject. This is what people make them to open your email.

You can include custom fields in the subject line by clicking on the Insert Custom Fields link below the editor and copy/pasting them into the subject text box. So if you want to make the subject like "Hi John, how are you?" You need to have subject like "Hi %%First Name%%, how are you?". Withoutthe quotes, of course. The same way is with other fields.

Now you're going to create your HTML content. If you have started with the email template like I did, just edit the content. The icons are pretty self-explanatory and are very similar that every text editor has.

If you have your own email template, just select Upload file from my computer. Pick the file on your disk and voilà - the content of your email template is loaded into your editor.

Under the editor there are buttons

  • Insert a Custom Field - this is the way how to make personalized emails. It's always beter to begin email with Dear Peter instead of Dear customer. Move your cursor in the template to the position where you want the variable to placed and click on the button. Now pick the variable you want. This variable will be changed to e.g. real first name, last name, city etc. (depends what you pick) during the sending.
  • Insert Unsubscribe Link - another important thing. You always need your customers to be able to get themselves removed from your mailing list. Click on this button will insert unsubscribe variable in your email content. If you don't put the variable in the email it will be automatically appended to the end of your email during sending.

So let's assume you have your content ready. Now you should check if there aren't any stopwords in your content. Go a test your email content with Email Validation. Click on button Check your email campaign for spam keywords.

If the popup just blinks and disappears then everything's fine. But it some problems are found you will see a report similar to this:

Fix the content and try again otherwise such content will not be saved as a email campaign.

Note: this is only internal test of spamminess of your email. If you pass this test it does not automatically guarantee you that your email will be delivered. Remote antispam servers might have different settings thus we can't guarantee your email will pass their tests.

If you want to see how you email will look in major email clients like Outlook, AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo etc., then click on the button View your email in different email programs. You will receive some suggestions on how to adjust your email content to make sure it will be displayed correctly.

The last important feature is Preview Your Email Campaign.

Fill in the From email address (Send Preview from this Email) and yours address (Send Preview to this Email) and you should receive a test email.

Note: Don't try to set the sender's address that's like from major email providers like @gmail.com, @aol.com, @yahoo.com. Such emails will be most likely dropped by remote servers. Instead use your company's or personal address.

Save your email content.

Your new campaign will appear in the list.

Now it's time to send the campaign. Click on the Send link in the corresponding row.

 

STEP 3 - sending the campaign

Start again in your Dashboard by clicking on the button Send campaign or use menu item Email Campaigns > Send Campaign.

Select the target Contact Lists you want (can be multiple) and click Next.

Now select the

  • Send This Email Campaing - select which campaign will be sent
  • Send From This Name - enter the name of the sender that will be displayed in the email
  • Send From This Email Address - enter your email address. Note: Every email domain has policies that help decide whether incoming messages should be accepted or rejected. Email providers like Yahoo, AOL, Gmail etc. have strict such policies. They help prevent phishing, spoofing, and the delivery of fraudulent emails. This means that when you use email address from such email provider as your campaign’s From email address, you could experience delivery problems.
  • Send Reply Emails To - enter the email address where responses will arrive to

You can send your campaign right now or you can Schedule the sending. Untick Send Your Camapign Now to schedule.

  • Send Your Email as a Multipart - If you're unsure, leave this option ticked. Sending a multipart email will let the contacts email program decide which format (HTML or Text) to display the email in. It is best to use this if you don't give your contacts a choice to which format they receive (e.g. they all subscribe as HTML), when they receive the email their email program will automatically show the correct format.
  • Track Open Rates for HTML Emails - leave ticked if you want to measure open rate
  • Track Links Clicked in this Email - leave ticked if you want to measure click rate (CTR) of your email

Click Next.

A confirmation page will be displayed. Click on Schedule My Email Campaign.

Now you can see the campaign is ready to be sent.

All emails are being sent now. Wait some time to get first statistics.

 

STEP 4 - email campaign statistics

Go again through Dashboard or click Statistics > Email Campaign Statistics in the menu.

Click on the View on appropriate line.

A summary of your campaign will be displayed.

Click on the other tabs to go the details of opens, click on links, bounces and unsubscribes.

 

If you have any questions please ask us here.