Create a Campaign

Create a new email campaign using the steps below.  From the Admin Control Panel, go to Campaigns > Create New or from the Campaign List, select Create a New Campaign link at the top right corner of the page.  In the Campaign editor page, complete each field.

1

Campaign Type: The campaign type is determined by the type of target group created, and will define the available merge fields for the subject line and body content.  Select one of: Customers, Membership or Reservations

2

Campaign Name: Internal name, not visible to customers

Best Practice:Use a simple and consistent naming convention for your campaigns; similar to how you might name and organize files on your computer. For example: 2017 OCT WINE CLUB RED ONLY SHIPMENT [Active | Red Only Members]
[YEAR] [MONTH] [CUSTOMER TYPE] [TARGET GROUP]

3

From Name: Typically the Winery name, or a combination of a person and the company name.

4

From Email Address: The email address the campaign is being sent from. Must be a valid email address.  A campaign launch summary will also be sent to this email address at the completion of the email blast. 

5

Target Groups: Campaigns can only be sent to saved target recipient groups; these are created from the search tools.  Only saved groups that match the campaign type will be available.  Multiple target groups can be selected for one campaign and there is no limit to the amount of customers a single campaign can be sent to.  For more information on how to set up target recipient groups, get instructions  in this article. 

6

Allow resend to same address: A new campaign will default to not allow the campaign to resend to the same customer in the target customer group(s). In most cases, you’ll want this setting to be left at No in order to prevent any customer from receiving an email more than once.  If you want to resend the same campaign, then change this setting to allow resend.  This could be helpful if the target customer group is only recipients who did not open the first campaign sent.  A recurring campaign uses a dynamic target recipient group with the Allow Resend set to No. As new customers are added to the database and the group total increases, only new customers are sent the email campaign.

7

Send Frequency: A campaign can be launched to send only once, or created to send periodically on a recurring schedule.  Select one: Once, Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Quarterly.

8

Launch Date: The date the campaign will send to the group of target customers.  Campaigns can be created and scheduled to launch days and months in advance!  This is a great way to get a jump start on your annual marketing plan.

9

Launch Time: The time the campaign will send to the group of target customers.  Don't forget AM/PM!  ( Must be scheduled at least 20 minutes prior to launch time).

10

Subject: This will be the subject line of the recipient's email.  We recommend keeping it short and sweet! Use the available merge fields to call out personalized information, like the customer's name!  Subject lines cannot contain any non-US-ASCII characters. 

11

HTML content: this is the body of the campaign.  The toolbars in the HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) editor are consistent with common toolbar functions available in most major text editing applications.  This tool is called a WYSIWYG, which stands for what-you-see-is-what-you-get.  Learn more about creating the content of your campaign in this article. 

12

Plain Text content: Once the content of the campaign is created, select all, and copy/paste the content into the plain text editor.  This is a great fail-safe for any recipients that have selected to not receive HTML rich email content. 

13

Select Wrapper: Learn more about wrappers in this article - https://help.ecellar1.com/article/425-campaign-wrapper-manager. 

14

Send preview to: Always send a preview to yourself before sending a campaign to customers.  During the campaign workflow, send a preview of the email to yourself or your team before it’s officially sent to your customers.  This step allows you to see the layout of the email, then edit before it’s launched.  Add up to 15 emails separated by commas to send a preview of the email campaign.  Each time [Submit] is clicked, previews will be sent to any email addresses in this field.  Also, this field may be left blank at anytime. 

15

Submit: to save without launching the campaign

16

Check the box for Launched, confirm the popup, then click Submit to launch the campaign, which will queue it into the bulk mailer.  Do not submit a campaign to launch within 20 minutes of completion to avoid any last minute changes and mistakes. Launching the campaign will initiate the process of sending the email blast to all customers in the target group at the scheduled date and time.  Remember, it takes three-clicks to launch a campaign.
1. check the Launched box
2. confirm the popup validation and
3. click Submit.   

Once a campaign is in a launched state, it is locked for editing and cannot be changed, unless it's unlaunched.