Table of Contents

Email marketing

The managing of email marketing directly in DynamicWeb 10

This article will cover the most important things you need to know in order to work with email marketing in DynamicWeb 10, such as:

  • Campaigns and their use and how to create them
  • Emails and how to create and send them
  • How to use email flows
  • Using and creating email templates

This article should provide you with a decent introduction to email marketing.

Campaigns

All emails are created and organized in Campaign folders. Campaign folders are mainly an organizational tool – you can create as many folders as necessary, or you can use a single folder with sub-folders. The emails created in a campaign folder will inherit the settings of the specific folder ensuring an efficient and streamlined email campaign.

Campaign folders are organized under the Campaigns folder, and when a folder is selected its overview screen appears:

Marketing area1

The screen gives an overview of:

  • General campaign information (1)
  • Clicks widget; list of all clicks-happenings from the emails (2)
  • Email widget; list of all emails in the folder (3)
  • The predefined set of email states; drafts, scheduled, or sent (4, 5, 6)

Creating a campaign folder

To create a campaign folder:

  1. Use the context menu for Campaigns or an already made Campaign folder, and select Create folder

  2. Provide the settings for the Campaign folder fields in the tabs:

    The General-tab is used to define the most common folder properties:

    Setting Use Comments
    Folder name Set the folder name
    From: name Set the sender name
    From: email Set the sender email
    Description Set an email description
    Subject Set the email subject
    Domain Set the domain used for links in the email
    Render content for each recipient Check/uncheck whether email content should be rendered for each recipient or only once If the email contains user-specific content, it must be rendered for each recipient. Please note that this naturally significantly impacts performance
    Unsubscribe text Text for the unsubscribe link
    Redirect after unsubscribe Select a page from the file-selector Recipients will be directed here upon unsubscribing

    The general-tab is also where the Conversion engagement index settings can be changed. Engagement is measured by assigning an Engagement Index value to various actions, and collecting visitor statistics based on that:

    Engagement index Use
    Open the email Set the value for opening the email
    Click a link Set the value for clicking a link
    Adding products to cart Set the value for adding products to cart
    Signing on to email Set the value for signing on to email
    Unsubscribes the email Set the value for unsubscribing the emails
  3. Click Save and Close

Emails

In DynamicWeb 10, email content is created as pages in the content-area, and these pages are then sent out as emails to a list of recipients using the email marketing tool you’re reading about here.

When you click on an email created in a campaign folder, you will see an email overview screen:

Marketing area6

This screen gives an overview of:

  • General email information such as state, creation date, sender email, and with access to preview or edit the email content page (1)
  • Action menu for scheduling or sending the email (2)
  • Clicks widget; list of all clicks-happenings from the email (3)
  • Recipient widget; list of all recipients and recipient groups of the email (4, 5)

Create emails

When you have an email content page, you will want to create an email for it in the email area. To do so:

  1. From the context menu of a Campaign folder, click Create email

  2. Provide the settings for the email fields in the tabs. Some properties may already be filled as emails inherit the settings from their Campaign folder - if properties are changed, only this email will be affected:

    The General-tab is used to define the most common email properties:

    Setting Use Comments
    Recipients Select recipients
    Recipient groups Select recipient groups Recipient groups can be from both the Dynamic Segments or User Groups
    From: name Set the sender name
    From: email Set the sender email
    Subject Set the email subject
    Pre-header Set the email pre-header
    Page Select an email from the file-selector This is the email content page created in the Content area
    Domain Set the domain used for links in the email

Send emails

When you have created your email and want to send it, go to the campaign folder and click on the email. From the email overview screen, click the action menu where you have two choices:

  • Send email now
  • Schedule email - here you select a date and a time for sending out the email

Automation

The Automation tool is an organizational tool, that shows two folders with Active and Inactive emails:

  • The Active folder holds all emails with the state Scheduled
  • The Inactive folder holds all emails with the state Sent or Draft

Flows

An email flow is a series of emails automatically sent to a group of users in a fixed order and with a fixed delay between each email.

As such, an email flow is an essential part of an email automation setup – especially if the group of recipients is based on dynamic criteria via queries.

To create an email flow:

  1. Click Create flow

  2. Provide the settings:

    Setting Use
    Name Set the flow name
    Active Check/uncheck whether it should be active
    Start Select a date
    Recipients Select recipients
    Recipient groups Select recipient groups
    Processing Use the radio button to select an option. Select what to do with recipients no longer included in the selection of recipients
    Repeat every Select a time interval
    Don't add new recipients Check/uncheck if new recipients should be added or not
  3. Click Save and close

When you have created your flow, you can add steps to it. Each step corresponds to an email being sent to recipients who have reached this step the next time the flow is processed.

To add a step - an email - to the flow:

  1. Click on your email flow to go to the edit screen

  2. Click New step

  3. Provide the settings:

    Setting Use
    Email Select an email from the file selector
    Delay unit Select a time unit
    Delay Select a number for the delay unit
  4. Click Save and close

Email templates

When creating a new email, it is possible to choose an email template from the folder. This can be utilized for many reasons; it makes the process of creating an email faster, can ensure a consistent look and tone of the emails, or used to create identical emails for different domains.

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