Introduction

This article summarises how to create and send a marketing email, but the full details on each of the steps is contained in earlier articles which are referenced below.

Firstly, navigate to Mailings -> New Mailing. You can see from the top line that there are three steps to complete - 1. Mailing, 2. Design and 3. Options.

Let's start with completing the mailing form as shown below:

The Mailing Name field is used to give each mailing a unique name that will help keep your mailings organised and easy to find when you want to review and compare mailing results. If it a good idea to have some conventions about what the name looks like so that there is consistency across teams and over the years that mailings are used.

Next, you can indicate that this mailing forms part of a wider Campaign. There are articles elsewhere in the Knowledge Base that describe campaigns on more detail, but essentially that allow your organisation to track all constituent interactions related to a particular fund-raising or engagement effort. You can link activities, contributions, event participation, mailings, membership signups, and pledges to a particular campaign.

The From field contains the email address that the mailing is sent from, and must be chosen from one of the addresses available in the drop-down list. This can be tailored in the final Options page before the mailing is sent.

In the Recipients field you specify who the mailing should be sent to. You do this by selecting one or more "Include Groups", the individual members of which will be added to the mailing. You can also specify one or more "Exclude Groups", in which can any of these members will be removed from the mailing. Full details on setting up groups for mailing are included in the article here.

Lastly, enter the Subject that recipients will see when they receive this email. You'll notice that there is a button labelled Tokens - this allows you to add one or more field names from CiviPlus that will substituted at time of sending with an actual value. In the example shown above we have chosen {First Name}, but if you click the Tokens button you will see that there are dozens of other fields you can select to really personalise the subject line, and as we will see the actual body of the message.

You will notice that there is a small + sign at the end of the Subject field - this is the option to allow A/B testing on the subject line and covered in another article in the Knowledge Base.

Once you are happy with basic Mailing information you have entered, click CONTINUE and move to the 2. Design section.

This is where you design the body of the mailing, and hopefully you'll be able to use an existing template rather than starting from scratch. When this page opens you will see a set of existing mailing template that you can use as is (or tailor). You can also create a new mailing design from scratch. The design process is the same for both, and details on how to use/edit an existing template, or create one from scratch are covered in a series of articles here

Once your design is complete you can decide when the mailing should be sent, and choose some advanced options. Details on how to complete this section are in the Knowledge Base article here.

And that’s it! It’s that simple to send out a beautiful looking email to your supporters.

If you’d like more advice on how to craft amazing email campaigns, in terms of content and structure, please check out our webinar on the topic.