Creating Your First EBlast Campaign
This is a step-by-step guide to sending your first campaign with Campaign Monitor. Follow the instructions on this page to create, test, send and view reports for a regular campaign.
In This Article
- Setting up a Regular Campaign
- Select the Campaign Format
- Choose Recipients
- Test Your Campaign
- Send Now or Schedule for Later
- Select a Payment Option
- View Campaign Reports
Setting up a Regular Campaign
To get started, open Clients from the top of your account page, then click the client name you want to create the campaign for.
NOTE: Some of our customers have only one client in their account because they set up Campaign Monitor for personal use
Define the Campaign and Sender Details
Open the client’s Create & Send tab and click Get started (or Create a new campaign if this is not your first). Then follow the on-screen instructions to set up a “Regular” campaign, as shown here:
TIP: Give some thought to the email address entered for “Who is it from,” because email replies will be sent to that address. To have replies sent to a different email address, click the blue link to use a different reply-to address.
When you’ve filled in the campaign details, click the green Next button. It’s easy to come back later if you need to change anything.
Select the Campaign Format
The next step is choosing the format for your campaign as explained below.
Gallery
You can select a template design from the Gallery, then customize it to suit your brand using our email builder. This option allows you to customize the template itself and add content to it at the same time. See the instructions here.
When a campaign is created using one of these designs you’ll be prompted to give it a name, which adds it to your saved templates to use again next time.
NOTE: You can also import your own email templates but this has to be done from the Templates tab before you create a campaign.
Import
If you already have a complete HTML email, designed externally and ready to send, select Import to upload it to your account using one of two options:
Plain text
You also have the option to keep things simple with a Plain text email. These are good for things like transactional emails, non-marketing-related content, or maybe to give your email a more personal feel. However, because they are text-only emails containing no HTML, only basic reporting is available. You’ll get bounce rates, but no stats on clicks or opens.
When the content is ready for your chosen campaign type, click Define recipients for the next step.
Choose Recipients
If you’ve already added one or more lists for your client, just select the one you want to send to from the Current lists page:
If there are no lists you’ll be prompted to add new subscribers by typing them in or importing a file. You can also add new subscribers on the fly when you do have existing lists. Just click the Import new icon.
NOTE: Adding subscribers like this will automatically create a new list for your client. Under Lists & Subscribers it will be called: List Imported for <Campaign Name>. To keep lists organized you can change the list name and type, merge lists, and delete old lists.
Click Next when you’re done.
Confirming your permission to email
At this point you may see a system message prompting you to start the approval process. This is really important for maintaining our deliverability ratings. If you don’t see the message it means you don’t need approval to send to the number of subscribers you’ve selected.
Review the Campaign Snapshot
We’re almost there! To double-check everything you’ve set up so far, we summarize it for you in a campaign snapshot. If you need to change something just click the Edit buttons on your right:
If you selected a template to create your campaign, from the gallery or your saved templates, the snapshot is where you get the opportunity to check the plain-text version of the email. It’s worthwhile doing this because what looks great as HTML might need adjusting for the text-only format.
From the “Content” section, click Preview to check for things like text formatting, and also to make sure the content makes sense without images and embedded links. Then click edit if you need to make changes.
When you’re ready, click Test and define delivery.
Test your campaign
A Quick test allows you to send your campaign to five email addresses or less, for free:
Optionally, there’s a fully automated design and spam test that you can run for a small fee. Click Complete test, pictured above, to set one up.
Click Skip the test to keep moving or Next, after you’re done testing.
Send Now or Schedule for Later
If you’re sending a free trial campaign, to five people or less, you can fire it off now by clicking Send campaign now, as shown here:
Or, select Schedule it for the following time and choose a time and date to send it later. Campaigns can be scheduled to send hours, days or even a few months from now.
If you’re sending to more than five recipients, determine the campaign delivery time (send now or schedule) then click Pay for this campaign.
Select a payment option
Unless you have already chosen a billing option for your client, you’ll be prompted to choose a payment method. If you only want to pay for this campaign right now, select Pay every time and check out our pay per campaign guide to see if it’s the right billing option for you.
The other option is monthly billing, which is calculated by the number of active subscribers on all of your client’s lists.Learn more about monthly billing here.
There’s even more advice on our pricing page, but if you select a billing option that doesn’t suit, don’t worry, it’s really easy to switch.
After a payment option is selected, click the Send campaign button. The second your email is sent from our servers, we’ll notify you by email.
View campaign reports
Your campaign report shows how many people are opening the email and which links have been clicked, as well as keeping record of bounces, unsubscribes and other important activities.
Campaign reports are real-time, so refresh your browser window to see the latest stats and figures instantly.
If you would like to learn a little more about any of the topics we covered above, you can select the Help link located in your Redman EBlast system.
