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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.

Log in to your account

Where do I find it?

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.

Where do I find it?

You can find the Email Marketing Campaigns page by going to Services > Email Marketing: Campaigns.

These are the steps for creating an email campaign. Detailed instructions are below. Once you create your first campaign email, you'll wonder how you lived without this tool!

  1. Add a campaign.
  2. Enter the campaign information.
  3. Select a template.
  4. Edit your campaign.
  5. Preview your email.
  6. Send a test message.
  7. Add contacts.
  8. Activate the campaign.

Add a Campaign

To start your email campaign, click Add a Campaign.

Enter the basic campaign information

This basic information defines the new campaign for you: you'll give your campaign a descriptive name, and fill out some other information about the campaign.

  1. Name your campaign.
  2. Enter a short Description (Optional).
  3. Select a campaign Category (events, fundraiser, newsletter).
  4. Enter a Subject your readers will see in their inbox. (You can revise this later before you send.)
  5. Enter the Sender Email Address. (This email will come from this address, and all replies will go to this address.)
  6. Click Save.

Select your template

We offer a couple of templates you can select, or you can select the blank template and design your own.

Click Select Template.

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

You can edit both the look of the marketing email and the contents of the message:

  • To adjust the template font, font size, colors, and width click Edit HTML Email Look & Feel.
  • To edit the contents of your campaign (text, photos etc), click Edit HTML Email Contents.

Editing the HTML look and feel

You can change the overall font family, font size, and colors in your template by clicking the Edit HTML Email Look & Feel button.

To change the colors in the email:

  1. Select the colors for the background and fonts.
    If you know the hexadecimal color code, enter it in the appropriate field (#ffffff).
    If you do not know the hexadecimal code, click the multicolored squares to open the ColorPicker and select a color.
  2. Select the font family and size.
  3. Click Refresh Preview at any time to view your changes in the Preview area below.
  4. When done, click Save Changes.

Edit HTML contents

When adding content:
If you are pasting text from Microsoft Word or an email, be sure to use the Paste from Word, or Paste as Plain Text icons. This removes any non-HTML-compliant formatting. These icons are on the top row.

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.

Select the part of the email message you want to change:

  • Click Header Content, Main Content, or Footer Content to edit the contents of each of those sections of your email. 

For this example, I clicked Header Content.

  • Edit the content by typing in the editor (the green area in our example)
  • Format your text using the icons in the editor.
  • You can also Upload an Image or File by clicking the buttons Upload an Image or Upload a File.
  • When done, click Preview at the bottom of the page to see your changes.

When you've completed your changes, remember to click Save Changes.

Preview Your Email

Click the Preview Email button to preview the entire email that will be sent.

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.

Test messages count toward your total emails. Please be sure to take this into consideration when sending test emails.

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.

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.

Click [ Name of Category ] Subscriptions to start to add people for the campaign. In this example, I selected the category Fundraisers.

Click one of the following buttons:

  • Add Subscriptions from Contacts (bulk add or selectively add names from your contacts).
  • Add a Subscription (add in a single name, email).
  • Add a Group (donors, adopters, etc).
  • Import Subscriptions (csv file).

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!

  • Click the Activate button at the bottom of the campaign screen.

  • A warning will pop up asking you to confirm that you are ready to activate.
  • Click Yes, Activate This Campaign!

Set the run schedule

The run schedule tells the tool when and how many times to send out your emails.

  1. Click the Set Run Schedule button. Typically, your campaign will run one time, so set to send Once. 

     
  2. Enter the date that you want the email to go out (this is set to send Eastern time zone, please calculate for any time zone differences).
  3. Click Save.

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.

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