Advanced Email Broadcasting
This section will explain the basics on the email broadcasting tool which is linked to on CareAbout. When you create a CareAbout account, an email account on Involve (name of our tool) is automatically created.
Firstly, click on the "Manage Broadcasts" button on the side in the Advanced section, that will open up a new tab or window to Involve.
Once you're there click on "Campaigns".
Click on "New Broadcast" which should take you to an new email editing screen. Choose HTML from the broadcast type as highlighted below from the dropdown. This should bring up some editing options to begin your email broadcast creation.
Start inputting some text in the box that should now have the editing functions visible. Once you're finished with the broadcast, save the broadcast using the button as highlighted below.
Campaign Tag: the name you give it so you can recognise the email broadcast in your control panel.
Sender name: who the email is to be sent from, i.e. the person or company name.
Sender email: what email address this broadcast is to be sent from. This is the same address that bouncebacks will goto and where possible replies will goto. It is imperative that an inbox for this is already setup and also that it's not your private email that is entered, because if you have thousands of records within your recipient list, it's possible you will get a lot of bouncebacks which will clog up your inbox.
Subject field: what will appear on the subject of the email when it arrives in an inbox.
Once saved, you can send a proof to your own email and also add other recipients via the larger text box below. You can have as many emails as you like in here, but they need to be separated by comma.
This is good to check for sending errors and things that may not show up when sending, like for instance outlook does not like background colours and background images, or CSS in the header for that matter.
For a general rule of email broadcasting, try to use small images inside a table layout, which can be uploaded via the image uploader icon. This is the same process as editing pages in CareAbout.
When you're happy with your broadcast proofs, save what you have and now you are ready to upload some recipients to your broadcast.
One thing that is important when doing multiple broadcasts is that when uploading a list, make sure that it is as up to date as possible. This means having bad addresses removed, and taking out the unsubscribers. This list should be in CSV (Comma Separated Value) format, and not in excel formats. You can save from excel to a CSV if you choose the save as option and drop down the file types you are able to save to.
If you're happy with the list, browse for that list and upload it. Make sure the name is not too long otherwise you may get an error.
Your options menu should now have expanded as the picture below.
Personalise is to add customised fields that may be in your data, like names and email addresses. To input personalised fields into the email, you must first have these personalised fields in your recipient list, or the fields will not show up.
If you have personalised fields in the data, they should come up in the "Data Field". The next step is to enter a "Merge Tag" which is what the system will recognise as a personalised field.
The usual practice is that we enter the name of the field so that we can recognise it, and surround it with a symbol for example if we take the first_name field we would make it #firstname# to keep it simple.
It could also be ~firstname~ or $firstname$ or !firstname! pretty much anything with symbols on the start and end which separates it as a word in your email broadcast.
The merge tag will be entered in the email broadcast main content. So for the merge tag we've chosen your first line of your email broadcast could look like this:
Dear #firstname#,
Whereby #firstname# would be the first name of the record in the data list.
The "Test Data" field is what appears there when you send the proof, which will not be taking the data from your recipient list. Enter a value that is relevant to the data field used and then press the "Add Field button.
You can add as many personalisation fields as you like as long as the data in the recipient list contains it.
Once you've added all personalisation required, return to broadcast and save it. Send another proof so that all the personalisation show up.
You can now press the "Send It".