Topics in this article
- Introduction
- Before you start
- Step-by-step
- Frequently asked questions
Learn how to create and send email campaigns with E-goi. Choose a contact list, create the email from scratch or import a template, and easily send it out.
What is an email marketing campaign?
Creating email marketing campaigns is an effective way to connect with your audience, promote news, share valuable content, and boost sales. Understanding how to make the most of the tools available in E-goi can enhance the effectiveness of these campaigns.
In this guide, we will detail the process of creating and customizing email campaigns in E-goi, from building an email from scratch to using predefined templates, integrating with analytical tools, customizing the snippet to increase open rates, and much more.
Before you start
Requirements
To ensure a smooth execution of creating your email campaign, please confirm that:
- You have a contact list, with consent and segmentation as needed.
- You have decided whether the campaign will be a one-time or recurring send.
- You have verified the integration of E-goi with Google Analytics, if you intend to use this functionality.
- You have prepared the content of your email, including images and text.
Main options of the email campaign
Subject: It will be first thing that your contacts see right after the email sender. The subject can be the key of a good email open rate and that's why we recommend you to take your time on it :). And add merge codes to make it even more personalised, if you want to.
Sender: This will be the email address used to send the email and it will be visible to your contacts. You can either select one of your already defined ones or you can add a new sender from here just by clicking on the + blue button.
Reply-to: It will be the reply email and you can choose a different address from the previous one. This is very useful if you prefer your contacts' replies to go into another inbox (to a different team, por example). You can either select one of your already defined email addresses or you can add a new one just by clicking on the + blue button.
Advanced options
Integrate with Track & Engage: Are you planning to link your website into your campaign? Then you can turn this option on to track the pages that have been visited by your contacts and learn about their interests.
Just remember to set up the Track & Engage before using this option.
Let contacts comment on this email via Facebook: This one allows your contacts interaction with the email campaign by commenting on it via Facebook.
Integrate with Google Analytics: Ideal for analysing visits to your website. You can either keep the parameters suggested by E-goi (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_term, utm_campaign
and utm_content) or customise them. Just integrate your E-goi account with Google Analytics before selecting this option.
Auto-generate snippet: This is the top-line sentence of your email displayed after the subject line. Use the auto-generated version or personalise it to increase your campaign open rate.
Auto-generate plain text version: Use this one to ensure that contacts using text-only email readers can see your email content.
Thumbnail: It's a preview picture of your email in case that you auto-share it on Facebook or Twitter.
Step-by-step
Create and send email campaign
1) Go to the Engage menu, head over to Email, and hit Create.
2) Choose the contact list you'll be sending your email to and whether it's a single or a recurring send. Then click Next.
3) You'll be shown a couple different ways to create your email message. You can design it from ground up, go for one of our ready-made templates or upload a newsletter of your own.
4) If you design it from scratch, choose between our super-effortless drag-and-drop Email Builder or the Advanced HTML Editor.
Customise the email snippet
A growing number of inboxes (such as Gmail, Outlook and most mobile devices) offer a small preview text for each email. Gmail's look like this:
Those greyish words right next to the subject line are pulled from the email's own copy. This is known as "snippet" or "pre-header", which you can - and should - use to add some extra sizzle to your subject!
This, along with your sender name and sending reputation, is what affects your open rate the most! Let's customise your snippet with a dedicated text without affecting your copy at all:
1) Go to the Options step and click Advanced.
2) Untick Auto-generate snippet (which would use your email's first words as a preview) and type in your snippet text (no more than about 160 characters long). Make sure it's punchy, straight to the point and a fitting clincher to your subject line.
3) While previewing your email in E-goi, you'll see your custom snippet next to the subject.
If your snippet text is small, the email's first words will sneak into the preview. You can't prevent this, as Gmail's preview, for example, will always snap your email contents to the snippet (even if you add trailing spaces to it). So, be sure to either make your snippet text longer or change your email's first words so they segue nicely from your snippet.
Integrate email campaign with Google Analytics
If you use Google Analytics to track traffic to your site, you can integrate it with E-goi so that visitors landing on your site from an E-goi email campaign will be marked as a traffic source in Analytics.
1) Be sure you've properly set up Google Analytics to monitor your website traffic. Ensure your E-goi email campaign contains at least one link to your site.
2) In E-goi, go to the email's Options page, tick Advanced and enable Integrate with Google Analytics tracking. You can then save the campaign.
3) Contacts visiting your site by clicking any link in your email will be tagged by Analytics as a traffic source. To find them, simply log into Analytics and head over to the Traffic Acquisition report. You'll see the subject line of each E-goi campaign you've sent, plus their results.
E-goi parameters received by Google Analytics
- utm_source - the traffic source ("e-goi").
- utm_medium - the traffic originating channel ("email").
- utm_term - the subject line of your email campaign (if you need to pass the campaign's internal title along to Analytics, just use our !internal_title code).
- utm_campaign - the public title of the mailing list you sent the email campaign to (you can use our !list_id code to pass the list's ID as well).
- utm_content - empty by default, but you can use this for basic content A/B testing in Analytics (eg. tagging two call-to-action links and find out which performed better).
Create an email campaign template
From an existing email campaign
1) Head over the Engage menu, hover the mouse pointer over Email, and hit Create.
2) Pick the contact list you'll be doing this send to. Then choose "Broadcast".
3) Choose "From scratch" and then "Blank email".
4) Write down the email's subject and select your favourite email editor: Email Builder or Advanced Editor.
5) Create your email and, before sending it, click "Save as template" by hitting this button on the bottom bar.
6) And there you go, the email will be saved as a template for your next sends.
You can also view the template (and create an email campaign from it) by going to the My Resources menu and clicking on My templates.
From scratch
1) Click "My Resources" on the top menu bar. Then select "Templates".
2) Click "Add template" from the Email category, pick the contact list you'll be doing this send to.
3) Select "From scratch" and then "Blank email".
4) Write down the email's subject and select your favourite email editor: Email Builder or Advanced Editor.
5) Create your email and, once it looks nice and beautiful, you just need to click "Save" by hitting this button on the bottom bar.
6) And... that's all! :) You'll have your template up and ready every time you need to send a campaign following that design.
Uploading a newsletter created without E-goi
If you've already created your email using another HTML editor, it's a simple matter to put it up in E-goi! Just compress your email's HTML file and images in a ZIP file and upload away. Here's how to do it:
1) Use your computer's file browser to navigate to the folder where your email's HTML file and related images are located. We'll be compressing all of these in a single zip file, but first make sure to:
- compress only the actual HTML file and all related images instead of compressing the folder where the HTML and related images are located.
- check that the name of the HTML file and image files is as simple as possible (spaces and special chars are allowed, but we don't recommend using them.
- check the ZIP file name is as simple as possible (eg. "newsletter.zip").
2) Create the ZIP file containing your email's HTML and images. The ZIP file shouldn't be more than 20 MB in size.
3) Then log into your E-goi account, hit the "Engage" menu, hover the mouse pointer over "Email", and hit "Create".
4) Choose the contact list you'll be sending your campaign to. Select the campaign type you'd like to send and click "Next".
5) Then select "Import". Select "Upload ZIP file", browse to the ZIP file in your computer and choose it.
6) E-goi will then import the ZIP file and display your email's HTML in the Advanced Editor.
Keep in mind that, except for image and link paths, E-goi will not make any changes to your original HTML, so make sure that the code you import follows email design guidelines and best practices.
Store email responses on E-goi
Whenever people answer an email you sent out using E-goi, they'll be replying to the email address you've set as sender (or the one you've chosen as your email's reply-to address).
This means you'll often get a lot of automated out-of-office replies. E-goi can filter most of those out for you in addition to storing your contacts' real answers! Just do the following:
1) Enable the Store replies in E-goi setting (under the campaign's advanced options).
2) Once your campaign is out the door, any replies from your contacts which are not out-of-offices will be shown on each contact's profile (and you'll also receive them in your reply-to address). To view a specific contact's answer, search for that contact, bring their profile up and hit the Replies tab.
Your campaign report will also include a Replies section, detailing the total ouf-of-offices and the total actual replies.
Segment contacts by their responses
1) To view only people who answered your email, create a segment using the Contacts who replied segment.
2) To view those whose answer includes a specific word, create a segment using Campaign reply contents and type in the word you want to search.
You can also do segments based on reply date and number of replies. Simply choose the criteria you need.
View the email campaign report
1) Click on the Engage menu, go to Email, and click on View all.
2) Click on the Report of the campaign you want to check out.
Frequently Asked Questions
My email campaign didn't reach the inbox
Make sure you follow the email marketing best practices.
Can I add conditional content to my email options?
Yes. Apart from adding conditional content into your email body, you can also do it on the Subject, the Sender and the Reply-to.
Say you want to send a campaign through 2 segments of your list (contacts from the U.K. and contacts from the U.S.) and you need to tweak the subject, the sender and/or the reply-to for each of them.
You can do it using only one campaign.
Click the + Variation button under Subject, Sender or Reply-to, add your content and choose the segment it will be shown for.
Keep in mind that:
- You can add as many segment-based variations as you want.
- You customise your Subject variation using merge codes.
- You must also choose those segments before sending the campaign, in the Setup step of your campaign creation.
Can I trigger automations when people reply to my email?
Yes! Just set up an automation and use the Reply trigger.