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Emails sent from the Email Marketing Service will include your organization's address from your account. This is a requirement of the CAN-SPAM Act. The organization's street address will always be included. |
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It's time to put your writing skills to use by creating an email marketing campaign directed at your contacts. This guide will take you through your first email marketing campaign so you'll feel like a marketing pro.
You can send up to 500 emails a month for free. Once you use those, you can choose to update your account if you want to send more. Many groups use these email campaigns on a regular schedule. We've given you enough to get a real feel for whether this feature works for you.
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Log in to your account
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If you previously logged in to your account using the Pet Adoption Portal, or by going to the Management Interface, we've simplified things! Log in to your account at https://rescuegroups.org. |
Navigate to the Email Marketing section of your account.
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You can find the Email Marketing Campaigns page by going to Services > Email Marketing: Campaigns. |
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steps for creating an email campaign
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, as follows. Once you create your first campaign email, you'll wonder how you lived without this tool! In addition to these steps, it's very helpful to familiarize yourself with the Email Marketing Settings page, where you can view your bounced emails, keep track of how many emails you've sent and how many you have remaining in your quota, and some other information. Read about it in Email Marketing campaign settings.
- Review and change your settings (See the section About email marketing campaign settings).
- Add a campaign. (Information Below)
- Enter the campaign information. (Information Below)
- Select a template. (Information Below)
- Edit your campaign.
- Preview your email (See the section about editing your campaign).
- Send a test message.
- Add contacts.
- Create a run schedule for the campaign (the campaign will not run until you activate it.)
- Activate the campaign.
Add a Campaign
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To start your email campaign,
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click Add a
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Campaign from the Email Marketing Campaigns menu.
Once you've mastered your first email campaign creation and you realize how easy it is, you can create a campaign when you have the time to design it, and send it out when you're ready.
A campaign may be sent just once, or it could be scheduled to send on a regular basis automatically. You might send a one-time campaign to announce an event or the results of a board meeting. You might schedule a campaign to automatically send an email to your new adopters.
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the basic campaign information
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The basic campaign information defines the new campaign for you: you'll give your campaign a descriptive name, and fill out some other information about the campaign.
The Add a Campaign page includes the following fields:
- Name: The name of the campaign.
Example: Holidays 2011 Newsletter
- Description: A description of the email campaign that will help your volunteers identify it.
Example: Newsletter for late December with Santa pictures
- Category: The Email Marketing Campaign Category. The Category determines who is going to receive the email.
Example: Newsletters
- Subject: The subject to use as the email subject when sending the campaign.
Example: Happy Holidays from the Iguana Sanctuary!
Sender Email Address: The sender/from email address to use for the campaign email. The email will come from this address, and all replies will go to this address. Any active email can be used for this notification and each campaign can use a unique email address.
Example: info@wildcat.org, donate@birdsalive.org, volunteer@DogsNPuppies.org.Warning We strongly recommend that you use your own domain for this type of communication to ensure email deliverability. If you use a third party domain like aol.com, yahoo.com or yahoo.ca, our system will automatically replace your sender email address with info@rescuegroups.org in your campaigns. This helps increase the email being successfully delivered to your subscribers as those domains do not let us send mail on their behalf.
To add your campaign:
- Name your campaign.
- Enter a short Description (Optional).
- Select a campaign Category (One of these: events, fundraiser, newsletter).
- Enter a Subject your readers will see in their inbox. (You can revise this later before you send your email.)
- Enter the Sender Email Address. (
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- The email you send will come from this address, and all replies will go to this address.) You can set any active email address to be used as the sender email, and each campaign can use a unique email address.
- Click Save. Once you have saved the campaign, a new menu displays.
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Once you select a template for a campaign email message, changes to that template will not change the email message that was based on that template. |
A template is a basic structure, with a particular style built in. You can select from two pre-made templates, or select the blank template and design your own.
The template includes the layout, design, and colors that will be used for the email. After you select a template you can change those design elements and add text and graphics.
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The Email Marketing Templates page lists the built-in templates and the custom templates you create and save. |
- Click Select Template.
- Click Choose under the template you want to use. (For this example, we've created a custom template and we are selecting the custom template.)
NOTE: There is no Save button, you just choose the template to attach to the campaign.
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To see a preview of a template, click the name of the template, such as Fundraiser Template in the example above |
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We offer a couple of templates you can select, or you can select the blank template and design your own. Click Select Template. |
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To select the template, click Choose under the template you would like to use. (For this example, I've already created a custom template and I am selecting my customized template.) |
Edit Your email campaign
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You can edit both the look of the marketing email and the contents of the message:
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Editing the HTML look and feel
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You can change the overall font family, font size, and colors in your template by clicking the Edit HTML Email Look & Feel button. |
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To change the colors in the email:
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Edit HTML contents
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When adding content: |
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To change the text in the message, click the Edit HTML Email Contents button. |
Here's a tip: You can include a signup box so that your contacts can elect to receive more emails from you. To find out how read this page: Email Sign Up Widget Code.
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Select the part of the email message you want to change:
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For this example, I clicked Header Content. |
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When you've completed your changes, remember to click Save Changes. |
Preview Your Email
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Click the Preview Email button to preview the entire email that will be sent. |
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After previewing, click Back to Campaign. |
Send a Test Message to Yourself
It's a good idea to send a test message of the email campaign to see what it will look like once sent. If you don't like it, return to the editing screens to change the campaign.
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Test messages count toward your total emails. Please be sure to take this into consideration when sending test emails. |
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To send the test message to yourself, simply click Send a Test Message. |
Add contacts/groups
Add the groups or the contacts to whom you are sending this campaign.
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Since you have a few ways to add contacts to receive this email. You may want to review Managing Email Marketing Campaign Subscriptions for more detailed information. |
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Click [ Name of Category ] Subscriptions to start to add people for the campaign. In this example, I selected the category Fundraisers. |
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Click one of the following buttons:
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Each time you send out a new email, you may want to "re-add" contacts from your contacts (Add Subscriptions from Contacts) or groups like donors, adopters, etc. (Add a Group). Doing this each time will ensure you've added in any new contacts to the subscription. |
Activate the campaign
Now that you've reviewed your email and sent yourself a test, you are ready to activate your campaign!
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Set the run schedule
The run schedule tells the tool when and how many times to send out your emails.
Congratulations! You've created and sent your email campaign to your subscriber list.
It's important to note that emails sent from the Email Marketing Service will include your organization's address from your account. This is a requirement of the CAN-SPAM Act. The organization's street address will always be included.