Campaigns - Email and Text
- Last updated on November 18, 2024 at 4:28 PM
Campaigns are used to send emails and/or texts to customers over time. They are great for nurturing new leads, welcoming new clients and introducing them to your business, re-engaging existing clients, and more.
Campaigns may be sent by email, text, or both.
Sending Campaigns
Campaigns may be sent by email, text, or both. Once you have created a campaign, it may be used on landing pages, custom pages with lead capture, event registration, or when people use the Contact Me form on your website. The campaign may also be added to one or more contacts manually.
If you're interested in the strategy behind writing an effective campaign, here is a training call about that topic: https://youtu.be/GdpaU4g3DZ0
Adding, Editing, Copying, or Removing a Campaign
To create, edit, or remove an existing campaign, follow these steps, then find the section below that corresponds to what you'd like to do next.
- Go to the Contacts menu and click on Settings
- Click the Campaigns button
Creating a Campaign
To create a campaign, click the Create Campaign button at the bottom of the page.
Copying a Campaign
To make a copy of an existing campaign, click the copy button.
Editing a Campaign Messages
To edit an existing campaign, click the name of the campaign in the list. See below for an example.
Removing a Campaign
To remove a campaign, follow these steps:
- Select 'edit campaign'
- Select 'delete campaign'
Editing Campaign Details
When you're adding a campaign or editing the campaign details, there are several fields that you may fill out that affect the campaign. Below is the campaign detail screen. If some fields aren't showing, that means 2-way texting isn't enabled. Each field is described below the picture.
- Campaign Name: This is the name of the campaign that only you see.
- Name Shown to Contact: when a contact clicks on the "unsubscribe or manage subscriptions" link on the bottom of emails, if they are currently subscribed to the campaign, it will show them this name. Ideally, it will match the name of whatever they signed up for originally to get on the campaign.
- Preferred Sending Medium. The following options are available:
- Email and/or text (use the contact's preference). This option will follow the "Receive Campaign Emails By" and "Receive Campaign Texts By" field that show up when editing a contact.
- Email only. This will only send the campaign by email. If the contact is opted out of email or does not have a valid email address, then they will not be sent emails.
- Email preferred. If the contact is opted into email and has a valid email address, they will receive the campaign by email. If they are opted out of email or have an invalid email address, but they are opted into text messages and have a valid phone number on file, they will receive a text message instead of email.
- Text only. This will only send the campaign by text. If the contact is opted out of text or does not have a valid phone number, then they will not be sent text messages.
- Text preferred. If the contact is opted into texts and has a valid phone number, they will receive the campaign by text message. If they are opted out of text or have an invalid phone number, but they are opted into emails and have a valid email address on file, they will receive an email instead of a text message.
If you have 2-way texting enabled, you'll see these additional fields:
- Text-in keyword: if you enter a keyword (like "INFO") in this field and someone texts that keyword to your phone number, this campaign will automatically start.
- Text-in sending speed: if someone texts in a keyword, this determines how quickly the messages are sent. The default is that the campaign messages are sent once per day, but you can choose to send them "fast", or sending them over minutes instead of days.
- Sequential text-in keyword. If you would like to allow someone to receive all the messages in the campaign in a short period of time, enter a sequential text-in keyword. If someone texts in this keyword, it will send all campaign messages to them, spaced 1 minute apart, no matter how the messages are timed in the campaign. Please note that this can sometimes cause text message delivery problems if you have a lot of messages, since some mobile providers may block consecutive messages, thinking that they are spam.
- Text opt-out keyword. If you would like to let someone opt out of a specific campaign, this opt-out keyword will remove them from the campaign. This does not work for fast text campaigns or sequential text campaigns, just normal campaigns.
- Text-in vault access: if someone texts in a keyword, it will automatically add them to the vault or vaults that you specify here. If you set up text-in vault access, please keep the following in mind:
- If there is a campaign set up to be sent when someone gets access to a vault, that will send in addition to the text-in campaign. So, if you only want one message to be sent in reply, do not put any messages in the text-in campaign itself.
- Because the text-in campaign can add a recipient to more than one vault, the tags [vault_name] and [vault_link] will not work. Those only work on the campaigns associated with the vaults themselves.
- Do not add the text-in campaign as the vault's campaign, or the reply will not send the vault name or entry link.
Editing Messages In A Campaign
The campaign message editing screen, shown below, shows all of the messages in the campaign along with the day that they will be sent.
To create a new message, click the Write New Message button towards the top of the page.
The Send On Day field allows each message to be sent on a specific day, relative to when the campaign was added to a contact. A day 0 (zero) message means that this message will be sent shortly after the campaign is added to the contact. Day 1 and later days are sent on a schedule. This means that a day 1 message is sent the day after a campaign is added to a contact, a day 5 message is sent 5 days after the campaign is added to a contact, etc.
Campaign Start Date
The "Campaign Starts" field allows the campaign to run on a fixed date range. This can be useful for starting campaigns on a specific time, e.g. for the month of January, or for events that are based on a specific date. The default is "ASAP" which means the campaign will start sending right away.
If you choose "on a specific date", when someone is added to the campaign, the system will send them the day 0 messages shortly after adding the campaign to the contact. This allows you to send them a message confirming that they will start receiving messages. Subsequent messages will be sent on the scheduled day thereafter, and the date will show up below the day number.
The "on a specific date" field is the day before the Day 1 message, so if you want someone to start receiving the Day 1 and beyond messages starting February 1, the date should be set to January 31. If someone is added to the campaign prior to the date, they will receive day 0 messages right away and all subsequent messages starting on the date specified. If someone is added to the campaign after the start date, they will receive day 0 messages right away and then join the campaign on the given date. So for example, if the start date is January 31 and someone joins the campaign on February 5, they will receive the day 0 messages, then at the appropriate time of day, will receive the Day 5 messages (if they hadn't already been sent that day).
If you change the "on a specific date" field to another date, any contacts already receiving the campaign will not be updated to the new schedule. This is to prevent people from missing or doubling up on any campaign messages. If you would like to restart the campaign, it has to be re-added to the contact.
Advanced Campaign Features
If your plan has the Advanced Campaigns feature, then there will be an Advanced Features link (see the screenshot below). Click it to show additional options for messages. For day 0 messages, they can be sent right after someone registers (ASAP), or be set up with a delay for a number of minutes. For day 1 and later messages, they can be sent at a specific time of day. Also, with Advanced Campaigns, it allows specifying how each message is sent: email only, text only, email preferred, text preferred, or following the contact's preferred setting. This allows you to set up campaigns that interact with your contacts using more than one form of media.
Writing a New Message
After clicking Write New Message, you can create a message that will be sent in the campaign.
If you'd like to use a template to help create a common look and feel for each message, click the Saved Replies link next to the subject line and select a Saved Reply to use in your subject and message body.
If this campaign will be sent by both email and text, then there are two options for filling out the fields on this screen:
- Write separate content for both email and text. Fill out Subject, Message Body, Text Message, and optionally the Pictures. The Subject and Message Body fields will be sent if the campaign is sent by email, and the Text Message field (and optionally the picture to go with the text) will be sent if the campaign is set up to send by text.
- Reuse the same content for both email and text. Fill out Subject and Message Body and leave Text Message blank. The Picture may optionally be filled out. In this scenario, when the campaign is sent by email, the Subject and Message body will be sent. When the campaign is sent by text, the Subject will be sent in the text message, and a link will be added that displays the contents of the Message Body on your website.
If the campaign will be sent by email only, then just fill out the fields for Subject and Message Body.
If the campaign will be sent just by text, then you can just put the text message in the Subject and Text Message boxes and leave Message Body blank. One or more pictures to send by text may optionally be added as well.
Personalizing Messages
If you would like to personalize the campaign message to each recipient, click the icon that looks like a speech bubble next to the Message Body box. It looks like this:
Then, choose a field to add, such as Contact First Name. This tag may also be used in the Text Message box as well by copying and pasting it from the Message Body box to the Text Message box.
Reusing Existing Messages In Multiple Campaigns (Advanced)
If you would like to reuse an existing message, click the "Add Existing Message To This Campaign" link when writing a new campaign message. If you do this, the campaign will share the same message as any other campaigns using that message, so editing that message will also affect all other campaigns using that same message. Use the Write New Message button if you'd like the message to only be in the campaign you're editing.