Creating an email campaign

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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).

 

 

Creating a template

Follow the same steps as any other campaign template.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

Adding an RSS feed to your email

Got an RSS feed for your website or blog? You can have E-goi plug it automatically in your email and deliver it straight to your subscribers' inbox on a schedule.

This is perfect to email your latest blog postings or send hot-off-the-press newsletters. In the example below, every article has been pulled by E-goi from an RSS feed.


1) Hit 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 "RSS-to-email" and click "Next".

3) Enter your feed's URL (or simply type in your website address), then click "Check" and choose how will the feed look in your email.

4) Select a colour scheme, write down the subject of the RSS and click "Next".

5) You'll be taken to the email options page. The key bit here is selecting your sender (ie, the email address your message will be sent from). Then hit "Next". (you can go back to the email options whenever you need; just click "Options" on the bottom bar).

6) You can now style the RSS added to your email and give it your personal touch. Just play around with E-goi's super intuitive editor - Email Builder. Simply drag and drop items from the left-hand panel or click the RSS block, then modify the feed options in the right-hand panel (keep in mind disabling the block's "Keep reading" button or the feed's images will also remove any links from your feed items).

7) And there you have it! When previewing the campaign, the latest items from your RSS feed will be displayed in your email. Now just test it out and get it out the door (manually or automatically on your set schedule).

Customising the RSS content 

Feel free to use our RSS language. Simply paste any of the RSS codes below in the text area of your email. You'll see the result by previewing the campaign.

 

Code What it does
{{FEEDBLOCK:url}}
{{ENDFEEDBLOCK}}		 These tell E-goi "Here be an RSS feed!". FEEDBLOCK opens the RSS feed while ENDFEEDBLOCK ends it. Replace "url" with your feed's address.

Make sure to enclose any of the codes below in FEEDBLOCK and ENDFEEDBLOCK!
{{FEEDITEMS:count=num}}
{{ENDFEEDITEMS}}		 These will list your RSS items. FEEDITEMS opens the listing while ENDFEEDITEMS closes it. Replace "num" with the number of entries (posts) you want E-goi to display.

If you're using any of the FEEDITEMS options below, be sure to enclose them in FEEDITEMS and ENDFEEDITEMS!
{{FEEDITEM:LINK}} The URL for this specific RSS item.
{{FEEDITEM:TITLE}} Item title.
{{FEEDITEM:DATE}} Item date and time. Depending on how the RSS was set up, these can be either the post's creation date/time or publishing date/time (E-goi will pull them straight from the RSS).
{{FEEDITEM:AUTHOR}} The email address of the item's author.
{{FEEDITEM:CATEGORY}} Item category.
{{FEEDITEM:DESCRIPTION}} Item description (ie. the post's summary)
{{FEEDITEM:IMAGE}} Item picture. This will return the image's URL only (for maximum flexibility), which means you'll need to add it to an <img> tag. It also requires a feed with properly configured image tags to work.
{{FEEDITEM:CONTENT}} Full item content. In case it includes images, E-goi will embed them using the post's original HTML code.
 
 

Examples

The snippet below will display our blog's 5 latest posts: 
{{FEEDBLOCK:https://blog.e-goi.com/feed/egoiblog/}}{{FEEDITEMS:count=5}}<a href="{{FEEDITEM:LINK}}">{{FEEDITEM:TITLE}}</a><br>{{FEEDITEM:DATE}}<br><img border="0" style="border: 0px none; outline: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: bottom;" src="{{FEEDITEM:IMAGE}}"><br>{{FEEDITEM:DESCRIPTION}}{{ENDFEEDITEMS}}{{ENDFEEDBLOCK}}
 

Pulling the title of your feed's latest post into the email's subject

Just use the code below as your email subject line and replace "url" with your feed's address: 
{{FEEDBLOCK:url}}{{FEEDITEMS:count=1}}{{FEEDITEM:TITLE}}{{ENDFEEDITEMS}}{{ENDFEEDBLOCK}}

 
How to build an RSS feed for your site

Most site building tools (such as Wordpress) will auto-generate an RSS feed for you. But if you need to do it yourself from ground up, take a look at the official guide. Also be sure to have a gander at this example, which makes it easier to embed images in your RSS feed.

 

 

Adding dynamic content using XML or JSON

1) First and foremost, make sure your XML or JSON output follows these rules:

  • Enclose the whole thing with <items> (for XML) or "items" (for JSON).
  • Enclose every individual item with <item> (for XML) or "item" (for JSON).
  • You can have as many <item> sets as you need, with each one containing their own parameters, but you can't add another nesting level inside each <item> set.

This XML example will bring it all together. It displays two items plus their individual information (name, link, date, image, description and price):

<items>
   <item>
      <title>Product 1</title>
      <link>//www.mystore.com/product1</link>
      <date>16-11-2015</date>
      <image>//www.mystore.com/product1.jpg</image>
      <description>My first item</description>
      <price>10</price>
   </item>
   <item>
      <title>Product 2</title>
      <link>//www.mystore.com/product2</link>
      <date>16-11-2015</date>
      <image>//www.mystore.com/product2.jpg</image>
      <description>My second item</description>
      <price>10</price>
   </item>
</items>

Fancy JSON instead? Just follow this example:
  
{
    "items": {
        "item": [{
            "title": " Product 1",
            "link": "//www.mystore.com/product1",
            "date": "16-11-2015",
            "image": "//www.mystore.com/product1.jpg",
            "description": "My first item",
            "price": "10"
        }, {
            "title": "Product 2",
            "link": "//www.mystore.com/product2",
            "date": "16-11-2015",
            "image": "//www.mystore.com/product2.jpg",
            "description": "My second item",
            "price": "10"
        }]
    }
}

2) Now set up a URL for your online store which dinamically generates an XML or JSON output according to the above format. (eg http://www.mystore.com/JSON/ if you go for JSON).

Plugging the output into your email

1) Create your email using our Email Builder editor. While editing it, drag the "HTML" widget from the left-hand panel to where you want the store's output to appear in your email.

2) An HTML block will come up. Head over to the right-hand panel and replace its whole content with the code snippet below:

 

{{EXTERNALBLOCK:http://www.mystore.com/JSON/}}{{EXTERNALFORMAT:json}}{{EXTERNALITEMS:count=2}}
<table style="width: 100%;">
  <tr>
    <td style="width: 50%; text-align: left;">
      <img src="{{EXTERNALITEM:image}}" alt="{{EXTERNALITEM:image}}"  border="0" style="border: 0px none; outline: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: bottom;" />
    </td> 
    <td style="width: 50%; color: #9D9D9D; font-family: Arial,Helvetica Neue,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22px; text-align: left;">
      <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica Neue,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:16px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;">   {{EXTERNALITEM:title}}</span>            
      <br /><br />
      <br />
      <span style="font-size:20px;">{{EXTERNALITEM:price}}</span>
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>
{{ENDEXTERNALITEMS}}{{ENDEXTERNALFORMAT}}{{ENDEXTERNALBLOCK}}

 

  • The EXTERNALBLOCK variable sets content to load from the URL you entered. The EXTERNALFORMAT variable states whether your output is JSON or XML. EXTERNALITEMS:count specifies how many items to display (in case your URL's output contains a large number of items).
  • The HTML code will display each item's image, title and price.
  • The ENDEXTERNALITEMS, ENDEXTERNALFORMAT and ENDEXTERNALBLOCK variables close off the dynamic content block.


When you send out your email using E-goi, the above variables will be turned into the name, image and price of the items in your JSON or XML output, fetched over straight from your store.

Displaying items your customers have in their cart

The first thing you should do is set up E-goi's Track & Engage across your online shop so we can track the items each customer adds to their cart. Then use our !current_cart_products merge code to plug into your email the item IDs of the products the customer added. To do that, the URL in the code example above ( http://www.minhaloja.com/JSON/ ) should be changed to:

{{EXTERNALBLOCK:http://www.mystore.com/JSON/!current_cart_products}}

This will pull the product info based on the product ID Track & Engage assigned to the specific item the customer added to their cart.

 

 

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 email marketing best practices.

 

What is the send time recommendation?

Important: This feature is available for Pro and Corporate plans.

If you’ve been emailing your contact list for a while using E-goi, our AI can figure out the best time and day of the week for your next campaigns.

In case there's enough data to calculate it, you’ll see the best send time option in the Setup stage of the email campaign you'll be getting out the door.

Best send time is based on email engagement (opens, clickthroughs, etc.) for the emails you’ve sent to this contact list over the last 90 days.

 

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.

 

Can my email display a different sender for specific contacts?

Yes. This may be quite useful in in certain cases.

Example: As a real estate company, you'll be emailing your prospects a special offer on your services. However, you want the email sender to be the real estate agent assigned for each prospect, so any replies go straight to the prospect's agent.

To do this:

1) In the contact list you'll be sending your email to, add an extra field of the Email sender type and provide it with a name.

2) Edit the contact info for the contacts you'll be assigning a email sender to. Under the field you created in the previous step, choose the sender these contacts will see. Save your changes.

If you need to do this for multiple contacts, you can easily mass-edit them in a single go.

3) Create your email campaign. In the Options step, click More options, enable Set an alternate sender and choose the field you created in step 1.

If you want to do the same for your email campaign's reply-to address, enable Set an alternate reply-to and choose the field you created in step 1.

4) Follow the usual steps to test and send out your campaign. Any contacts for which you've set a specific sender will see it as sender when receiving your email campaign.

 

Updated:

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