Creating an Email Campaign

Click the Quick Link to navigate to a particular topic:

• Basic Details for my email Campaign
• Creating content for my Email Campaign
  • • Using Templates
    • Importing/Uploading my very own Template
    • Designing a template using the HTML Editor
    • Importing my template from the Cloud
• Choosing the Recipients
• Sending my Campaign
  • • Stats and Reports for my Campaign
    • Excluding contacts from a particular campaign
    • Sharing my Email Campaign on social media
  
  Related Topics
  

Adding Basic Details for a new campaign

To create a new campaign,Click the Email campaigns tab (next to the Home tab), and then click Create Email Campaign

or

Click the Home tab --> Getting Started --> Create Email Campaign

Fill in the following information:

Field	Description
1. Name	Name your Campaign for future reference.
2. Subject	A suitable subject to describe your Campaign.
3. Personalize sender details with CRM data	Select this checkbox to personalize the sender name based on account owner present in Zoho CRM. Learn more
3. Sender Name	Mention your name or your organization’s name.
4. Sender Email Address	Specify your business email address. (The email address used to create your Zoho Campaigns account will be set as sender address by default)
5. Reply-to Address	This should be the same as the sender email address.

Personalize your "To" address: Instead of just adding the recipients' email addresses, add their first and last name too.

Advanced Options: You can use Google Analytics to track the traffic flow and the traffic source of your campaign. We tag 3 campaign-tracking parameters to all URLs in the email campaign:

1. utm_source=Zoho Campaigns
2. utm_campaign=Campaign Name, and
3. utm_medium=email

Creating the content for my email

Design and configure the content of your email by choosing your email type and content option:

Choosing an Email Type

1. HTML & Plain Text – This option allows the user to send campaign content in both HTML (rich text) &text (plain text) format. The advantage of sending an email through both the formats is that it’ll enable the recipients to receive a well formatted email of their choice. And if you’ve provided the HTML file, Zoho Campaign will automatically extract the content for the plain text.
2. HTML only – Select if you want to send your campaign with visual images and logo. However, the recipient of your campaign needs to use a browser/email client and device that support this format.  
3. Plain Text only – Theses are simple emails without images or logos. The purpose is to send the message without losing any content. It has been found that plain text version shows a high degree of email deliverability.

How to monitor plain-text campaigns?

You can track plain-text campaigns by inserting links in your email content. All you need is to select the checkbox to enable tracking for the link inserted in the email content.

How the links present in plain-text campaign are tracked?

When you insert links in your email content, they get replaced by our domain based links.

When a recipient clicks these domain based links, they get redirected through our servers and lands on the original webpage.

What is the need to replace the inserted link by a domain based link?

These domain based links are click tracking URLs which goes through our server to track links present in the email content.

Choose the content layout and design from one of four options:

1. Professional drag-and-drop templates
2. Import an existing HTML file, along with its images
3. Use the HTML editor and design a HTML email
4. Import from the Cloud i.e. Google Drive etc.

Templates - You can go with one of our templates and upload images, add text, have options for button, inline image, anchor tag, and easily customize the layout using the dropdown feature. We’ve categorized our templates on the basis of your requirements:

1. Basic Templates - These are simple templates with one-, two-, and three-column layouts. Pick one of these , add the content and images, and send your campaign.
2. Designed Templates - A variety of templates designed for a variety of needs ranging from business communication to seasons greetings.
3. Smart Templates- These templates are optimized for viewing on mobile devices.

   

Template Editor - In addition to selecting a template you can add to the design and upload images, add text, have options for button, inline image, anchor tag, and easy customization of the layout using the dropdown feature. All these options are available through the template editor.

Learn more about template editor

Import/Upload - With this option, you can import the HTML content for the email. Browse and select the HTML file along with the related images and upload them .

To import the HTML content,

1. Go to Content Configuration page, Select Import/ Upload option.
2. Browse and select the HTML page and related image files in Zip folder.
3. Click Import to upload the files.

HTML Page

Here you need to upload the HTML file designed for your email campaign.

Image Files

All images which include logo, banner, and CSS files should be in a single zip folder. Make sure that you zip the images folder and not the images. We’ll extract the images from the .zip folder.

If inspite of uploading the image zip folder, the images do not appear on the email it can be one of these reasons:

HTTP resource:

• Typo error – Recheck the spelling of the images and its code in HTML.
• 404 Error – This error occurs when the image is removed from the website.
• Authenticated session access – Particular image is taken from a site which requires an access into the website.
• Not a public image –You have to have private privileges to access this image.

Non-HTTP Resource:

• Please check if the zip folder contains the image.
• Recheck the spelling of the images and their codes in HTML.

HTML Editor - You can design your own HTML content using our HTML editor and you don’t have to take the trouble of importing your HTML files along with the related images, logos and CSS files.

Campaign Customization - Customize your campaign with themes.

Here you can change the background color, font style & size and personalize the header & footer options. You can select the theme from a dropdown list. Learn more about Campaign Themes (Header & Footer Customization).

Send Test Mail

While creating an email campaign, it is always recommended to first send a test mail to view how the message will look in the recipients’ inbox. It provides a last chance to identify the errors in the content, if any. There are two ways to send the test mail.

To send a test mail

1. In Content Preview page, go to Test Email (On the right side of page).
2. Select Email address.
3. Click Send Test Email.

OR

1. In Send Campaigns page, go to Test Email. (On the right side of page).
2. Select Email address.
3. Click Send Test Email.

Choose Recipients

1. In Choose Recipients page, select the mailing list of contacts.
2. To create a mailing list, follow the path Contacts tab -> Import Contacts subtab. Learn more on How to import Contacts
3. Click Proceed.

   

Send for Review

To ensure that your email campaign reaches the recipients inbox, our moderators check the subject line, mailing list and content for anti-spam compliance. Learn more on "Why is my campaign reviewed?"

Send Campaign

You have three options to send a campaign.

1. Send Immediately - Send your emails immediately.
2. Schedule Delivery - Schedule the emails to be sent later.
3. Send later in Recipient's Time Zone - Schedule emails based on each subscriber's time zone.

To schedule email campaign based on Recipient's Time Zone

1. In the Schedule Email page, select Send Later in Recipient's Time Zone.
2. Choose the date and time for email delivery.
3. Click Schedule.

Time Zone based Reports

You can view detailed reports of the campaign. The following reports will be shown:

• Summary View of Recipient Activity
• The Time Zone Stats show the number of recipients in each time zone and also the status of the emails sent. (Scheduled or Sent).

Exclude Contacts

You can exclude contacts who have already received an email for a particular campaign to concentrate on newly added contacts.

To Exclude Contacts, follow these steps:

1. In Send Campaigns page, Click Exclude contacts.
2. You’ll be prompted with the Recipients of the Campaign.
3. Select the previous sent campaign from the drop-down menu.
4. Click Save to proceed.

If you want to exclude all contacts of a previously sent campaign, you can Add Criteria in the popup message. The contacts will be excluded by adding Any option wherein any contacts of those previous sent campaigns will be excluded.

When you clone a campaign and send it to the same mailing list but with added contacts which was used for the previous campaigns this option gives you a provision to exclude all those contacts.

Social Sharing

Promote your email campaign on social media by sharing it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and Pinterest.

Click Email Campaigns tab --> Choose the campaign you want to share.

In Report Summary page, click Social Share button.

Manual Sharing

You can also manually share their email campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and Pinterest profiles.