Email campaigns

Ad hoc campaigns are batch campaigns, which means that one email campaign is sent to many recipients. This happens at a fixed time and only once. They can be launched immediately or scheduled for a future date. 

The content of these campaigns is usually standard for all contacts, but Emarsys offers a number of features to tailor this, including personalization, conditional text and block targeting.

Ad hoc campaigns can be triggered as part of an Automation Center campaign, via the API, or launched directly from the Email Campaigns module.

Recurring campaigns are also batch campaigns, which are set up to launch at the same time at regular intervals. Content can be added manually or automatically via RSS feeds. A child campaign is generated 30 minutes before launch to let you check the content and make any last-minute alterations.

Note: Recurring campaigns must be set up in cooperation with Emarsys Support. Please contact us for more information.

On-event emails are triggered by recipient action. The following on-event emails can be triggered from the Email Campaigns module:

• On registration – The email is sent after a recipient registered via a form of your choice. Example: an email confirming registration.

• On birthday – The email launch is linked to the “date of birth” field in the contact database. The system looks for available date-of-birth entries and sends “on birthday” emails as appropriate.
• On tell-a-friend – The email is sent after a designated email has been forwarded via the Emarsys tell-a-friend page; addressee is the forwarding contact.

• On change profile – The email launch is linked to a change in a contact profile and sent to the contact after they made the change.

• On contact us – The email launch is linked to a contact-us form and sent to a contact after they have submitted the form.

• On date – The email is sent on a specific date. Once a date field has been created, you can select it from the drop-down box.
• On abandon shopping cart – The email launch is linked to a session in a web shop which has been started via another email. If a customer opens a shopping cart and fails to make a purchase, a reminder email can be sent. You can choose between sessions that have been accessed via a particular email or by any email in a category.
• On import – The email is sent after an import has been performed. Example: You want to send a welcome or confirmation email to contacts who registered for your newsletter from outside Emarsys (i.e. an offline campaign, your own database).
• Note: To trigger an email you must enter the import identifier from an Auto-Import on the Settings page of the campaign. This identifier will then be available for selection on the Import page and the email will launch as soon as that Auto-import is complete.
• On program event – These emails are part of Automation Center programs and can only be launched by the program.
• On external event – These emails are used by the API as part of an external integration.

All on-event emails can be sent a defined number of days after the event has occurred or, in the case of date-based campaigns, a defined number of days before.

On date (including on-birthday) emails are sent each day at the same time in the account default time zone. This setting is not affected by changes to the time zone in your My Profile page.

Emails are listed with their Email name, Recipient source and Status, as well as the Admin (user) who created them, the Template they were based on and the date they were Created and last Changed. The list can be sorted by clicking the respective column title. By default, the last 200 emails are shown (and can be searched for). To access older emails you can change this setting in the advanced filters (see below).

To view only a certain type of email, you can filter the list. Initially only the Filter free-text search box and the Category are visible. Click More Filters to use the advanced filter options.

• Language – Displays only emails which were created with the selected language setting.
• Type - Displays only emails which were based on the selected template type.
• Recipient source - Displays only emails using the selected recipient source.
• Status – The status of an email is defined by a) it being active or inactive (i.e. deleted), and b) its current workflow phase. You can select a workflow phase from the drop-down menu.
• Created - Displays the emails which were created during the selected time range.
• Changed - Displays the emails which were changed during the selected time range.
• Show all campaigns - By default, only the last 200 campaigns are shown. To display all your campaigns, check this check box.

• Show only my campaigns - Displays only campaigns which were created by you.
• Show child campaigns – Shows the child campaigns for on-event and recurring emails.
• Remember settings – Saves the current settings for later use.

When you delete an email, it is not fully deleted but moved to a different folder internally. If the deleted email has already been launched, very little changes; the images in the email will still be downloaded and the links will still work and be tracked, including the online version and unsubscribe.

Deleted emails will not be listed on the Email Campaigns or Email Analysis pages. To display the list of deleted campaigns, click Show deleted Campaigns.

The simplest and most flexible solution is to create a master campaign in one language, and then copy it for each additional language, replacing the content as appropriate.

This method is quick and easy to do, but it does mean that each campaign will have its own reporting. However, you can view some aggregated reporting and the response metrics side by side in the Trends page, 

It is possible to duplicate all the blocks in your email and create a specific one in each language, and then use block targeting to display each one to a different segment of the same launch list.

For a list of all languages supported by Emarsys for email, see: Language Codes.

This does not mean that you cannot send emails in other languages, but Emarsys provides the text in these languages for additional features such as unsubscribe landing pages and contact forms

Here you define the following settings:

• Email name - The internal name for the email campaign
• Language - Used for automatic texts such as unsubscribe landing pages, as well as the fields used for personalization.
• Email category - Used for behavior segmentation.
• Additional tracking parameters - These will be added to every link in your email, if you are using an external tool such as Google Analytics, for example.
• Send text-only - If you want to send only a text version of this email, activate this checkbox.

Here you define the following settings:

• Recipient source - The type of source defines how launch list is generated - either from a list or segment, a form submission, an API call or via an event.
• Segment - This changes dynamically with the Recipient source; here you select the actual source.
• Exclude - If you have chosen a simple segment or list as source, you can also choose to exclude contacts in a different list or segment from the launch list.
• Ignore frequency cap - If this is activated, the frequency cap will be ignored for important event-triggered emails to ensure that your contacts do not miss any critical messages, such as password recovery.

• Ignore opt-in - If this is activated, Emarsys will ignore the opt-in status of your contacts when sending email campaigns.

• Do not send to duplicate email addresses - If this is activated, Emarsys will ignore email addresses that occur more than once in the launch list, and send only to the first contact in the list.
• CC - This option is only available for one-time emails. Activate it if you want to send a copy of the mail to another email address, e.g. for archive or reference purposes. Copies can only be sent to contact lists, not segments. The original recipients of your campaign will not see the other recipients cc'd in your campaign. If you use Send Time Optimization, only the first launch will be cc'd.
  • Send this email also to - The contacts selected from the drop-down will not be included in the email analysis. This drop-down is available only if you have activated the CC check box.
• Frequency - If you have chosen a segment or list as source, you can define if this is a one-off or a recurring campaign.

• BCC recipients - This feature is only available if your Recipient source is Generated through an event. This option is restricted to three email addresses, which must all belong to the main sender domain configured for your account. The original recipients of your campaign will not see the other recipients bcc'd in your campaign.

To A/B Test an ad hoc, batch campaign in the email editor, proceed as follows:

For recurring and event-triggered emails, you will need to use the Automation Center A/B splitter node to test your email content.

This node lets you create multiple paths in your program and assign a percentage of incoming contacts to each one.

For more information on how this feature works, see: Testing Programs.

If you want to send different versions of the same campaign to your entire launch list in one go, rather than testing them on smaller groups, you can use the Automation Center A/B splitter node as described above and set the paths to 50% each (for example).

This will randomly split the versions between the launch list and launch them all together. You can then analyze the results afterwards.

You can launch a campaign straight away by clicking Launch Now. You will be asked to confirm your action and then the launch process will begin immediately.

To schedule the launch for a later date, proceed as follows:

• Click the date and time picker at the bottom of the page to select the date and time you want your email to be delivered.
• Select the time zone if necessary.
• Click Launch Later.
• Confirm your action in the pop-up dialog.

Once your campaign is scheduled, the date and time are shown on the Scheduling page. You can stop the launch by clicking Unschedule at any time.

If you are using Send Time Optimization (STO), Emarsys needs to analyze the launch list and calculate when to send to each recipient. This can delay the launch by 15-30 minutes in some cases. For more information on STO, click here.