This screen displays all current e-mail Campaigns that you can manage.
Campaigns are a powerful way to keep in touch with prospects, members, customers,
and others interested in what you do through e-newsletters, e-promotions, and
e-announcements.
Campaigns can be sent as plain text or HTML (by selecting a Page) to a one or more
Contacts or Contact Groups.
Only Contacts that have a valid e-mail address and have "opted-in" to receive e-mails
will be included in any Campaign. We call these Contacts "Subscribers".
Since Campaigns can be Pages, your website design, content styling, logo, and other
branding can remain intact, so your image stays consistent and professional to all
Subscribers.
You can also add a personalization tag before you broadcast it, and the system will
insert each Subscriber's name into every e-mail message.
Campaigns can be paused, restarted, and canceled at any time before they have been
completed. You can monitor a Campaign's Status at any time. Cancelled and Completed
Campaigns are displayed only on the Campaign History screen.
There are two types of Campaigns. Manual and Auto Campaigns. Here is a comparison of the differences between them:
Manual | Auto |
Created by a Campaign Manager to send a single e-mail message to many recipients (Contact Groups) all at the same time. E-mail blast and mass-mailing are terms that best describe this form of e-mail campaign. | Orchestrated by a Campaign Manager, but triggered and created by each recipient themselves to send a single e-mail message to the recipient at a specific interval of time in the future. |
Creation of each e-mail campaign is manual, but sending can be automated. | Creation of the e-mail campaign is automated (and sending can be automated with a software subscrption). |
Sent to many recipients the same time. | Sent to many recipients, all at different times. |
Sent based on the actions of the Campaign Manager (by setting the date/time for delivery). | Sent based on the actions of each recipient (setting their own delivery date/time, albeit unknowingly). |
You must be a Campaign Manager to create a Manual Campaign.
If you are also a Content Manager, you can create a Campaign from any Page that you can
edit. Modify the Page to your liking, and click "Create Campaign". Your Page will
be selected by default.
TIP: Be sure that you assign at least one Contact Group to your Campaign Managers so
they have access to Contacts to send too. Likewise, you can also use this feature to
restrict Campaign Managers to only sending Campaigns to their own Contact Groups.
You must be a Campaign Manager to create a Campaign Profile. You can't create an Auto Campaign manually, instead you create a Campaign Profile which in turn will create the campaign automatically when a Visitor triggers the Profile's Action.
The access control for Auto Campaigns is the same as Manual Campaigns. Site Administrators, Site Designers, and Site Managers can edit any Campaign and Profile, as well as the Campaign Manager that created the Campaign Profile.
NOTE: For Starter hosting plans or sites without a software subscription, Auto Campaigns are automatically created with the status of "Paused" so they can be audited. For small websites with few actions and visitors this works well and no upgraded hosting plan or software subscription is required. For larger sites with many visitors and actions, if a Pro or Elite hosting plan or software subscription is detected, the system will automate the process of creation and sending of Auto Campaigns.
Click on the Campaign name that you want to view. Campaign Managers can only view and edit their own Campaigns. Site Managers can manage any Campaign.
NOTE: This screen only shows Campaigns that are "Ready to Send" or "Paused". If you change the status of any Campaign on this screen to "Cancelled" or it is sent and becomes "Complete", it will no longer be visible on this screen (but visible on the My Campaign History screen).
Campaigns can be started or restarted manually at any time, or started automatically
at a future date and time if the Campaign Scheduler is enabled. Simply set the status
to "Ready to Send" and make sure that the scheduled date is in the future.
Manual Campaigns merge all Subscribers together and removes any opt-outs and duplicate
e-mail addresses to ensure that only those Subscribers that want the e-mail will get
one, and only one!
Manual Campaigns send individual e-mail messages to each Subscriber, so that no
snooping e-mail administrator can view the message header record and determine who else
received the same e-mail communication. This method also produces the highest delivery
rate.
For HTML Campaigns, two versions of the Page are embedded into each e-mail message. One
version is HTML, reformatted to be displayed correctly within any web-based e-mail
client, like Gmail or Yahoo! mail. The other is a text version, created automatically
from the Page's content, so that text-based e-mail clients don't see any messy HTML if
they are unable to render it. Also included in the message footer is a link to the Page
itself, so that the Subscriber can view the message from within their web browser if
they wish.
For HTML Campaigns, a snapshot copy of the Page being sent is saved within each
Campaign, so that the content remains the same even if the Page gets changed or deleted
after the Campaign has been created or sent.
For HTML Campaigns, when a Campaign is created a unique tracking code will
automatically be added to the end of each returning link (this is a link that comes
back to your site) that does not already contain a tracking code.
If the built-in Google Analytics, Who's Online, or Social Networking features are
enabled for your site, those code snippet will not be included in Pages when they are
e-mailed because they can cause delivery or viewing problems for some recipients.
Because the majority of e-mail clients do not support JavaScript, E-mail Campaigns will
not include it. This means Pages that contain Ad Regions, Photo Galleries, or any other
type of JavaScript should not be e-mailed (i.e. don't include animationed regions like
these in the Page Styles that you use to e-mail Pages).
If the Campaign Scheduler is disabled, the system will use your desktop browser to
send the Campaign. To manually start or restart a Campaign, click on the Campaign name
and then click on "Send Campaign".
When you click "Send Campaign", a browser window pops up and begins sending the e-mail
messages for the Campaigns. If you close the browser window, or click "Stop &
Close" before the Campaign is complete, the Campaign will be interrupted and not all
e-mails will be sent.
If you do close the window or stop the Campaign, you can "resume" it again at anytime
to sent the remaining e-mails by clicking "Send Campaign" again.
NOTE: The system broadcasts individual e-mail messages that are not sent at one time to
maximize delivery rate, so please be patient.
If the Campaign Scheduler is enabled, and you would like the Campaign to be sent automatically at a future date and time, click on the Campaign name and set the "Send at this Date & Time" field. If you leave this field blank, your Campaign will be sent immediately.
You can personalize your Campaigns so that each e-mail is delivered with the Recipient's name in the subject or the body of the e-mail. To do this, simply add the follow text tag to the body (for plain text format) or Page content (for HTML format) and/or the Campaign's Message Subject line:
^^name^^
If you want to replace the name value with some alternative text in case the name is blank, then use this format:
[[^^name^^||Recipient]] <- "Recipient" can be replaced with any text.
The "name" mail merge field is replaced with the Subscriber's Contact values according the the following example:
For UNIX web servers (i.e. not Windows), this name value will also be used in the "To:" field of the e-mail, along with the e-mail address (e.g. Andrew Smith <example@example.com>). If no Contact or name info can be found, or this is a Windows server, then the "To:" field will only contain the e-mail address.
Check the box next to one of more Campaigns you wish to delete and click 'Delete Selected' button. Cancelling a Campaign will not delete it.
In order to be compliant with the CAN-SPAM act, legislation intended to prevent unsolicited e-mail from flooding your inbox, each e-mail message sent by a Campaign contains an additional message at the bottom. This message provides the following functions, and cannot be disabled:
It is important to point out that we do not condone unsolicited e-mail communications and using this system for such purpose violates our terms of use policies. If we detect such usage, we will disable the Campaign feature for your website permanently.