EBSuite CRM Blog

• What is a Marketing Campaign?

You use a Campaign to send out emails to your clients. A Campaign always consists of

- an audience list: whom to send
- a email template: what to send
- a campaign schedule: when to send

• Why do I need to use Campaigns and the Marketing Module?

- Email can be sent one at a time to any email in the database.

- The User may also search for a group of Contacts with the search tool and send emails to that group.

- Campaign emails are meant to be sent to a group of clients and have the SPAM LAW compliance that allows the recipient to "be removed" from subsequent mailings.

• What are the technical differences?

- Non-campaign emails are sent in real time, Campaign emails are always scheduled.

- Non-campaign emails have one To field, one Cc field, and the selected clients  receive the same email.  Campaign emails are sent to each client one at a time, and individually keyword merged.

- Campaign emails have to include an unsubscribe link ( CAN-SPAM act of 2003 ).

- Campaign emails have to include your corporate physical postal address ( CAN-SPAM act of 2003 ).

- Campaign emails honor Do-Not-Mail field , and unsubscribed list ( CAN-SPAM act of 2003 ).

- Non-campaign emails send images using direct http link ( remote images ), Campaign emails send images using in-email resource ( cid:… ) for better delivery. For more details, please see the " What is this ##IMG..## thing? And what is Remote Image? " below.

- Campaign emails can be scheduled, and this leads to EBSuite’s powerful feature: the Blast Campaigns and the Drip Campaigns.

• Does EBSuite offer any pre-built email template designs?

There is a very modest sample, but generally you will want to design your own template.

• When I design the template, what are Merge Keywords on the left side e.g. ##XYZ## tags?

In EBSuite email templates, all keywords are in the form of ##KEYWORD##.  For example, in our templates you will see ##ORG_NAME##, and if your company name is "ABC Corporation", the email will be sent with  "ABC Corporation" replacing "##ORG_NAME##".  Those can be used anywhere in the template to be merged with the corresponding field value of the record.

• In the pre-built email templates, what is this ##UNSUBS_URL##?

This is a special keyword. If you include this keyword in your email, EBSuite campaign engine will automatically replace it with the actual unsubscribe link at campaign delivery time. If you do notinclude this keyword, we will append the actual unsubscribe link at the bottom of your email at campaign delivery time. We are required to do this as a campaign software provider.

• If I add a graphic image, what is this ##IMG…## thing? And what is Remote Image?

In a non-campaign email, an image is sent as a direct URL link. For example, if your original HTML email design says < IMG SRC = " … " > , the email will be sent with < IMG SRC = " … " >. We call this sending emails with remote images.

The problem with remote images, is a lot of email clients by default block them. Because to display them, your recipient’s email client needs to go out and retrieve the images from the internet, and that poses a security risk.

Our Marketing Module campaign email template editor will parse through your email design, and replace all < IMG … > tag with ##IMG…## tag. Then you will need to go through a simple "Specify Image" process, to map the images to the images captured in the Materials area. Once you’ve done that, your campaign emails will use images as part of the email, and the recipient’s email client would be able to display them as intended.

• I have finished my template design. But with all these ##XYZ## thing, how can I tell whether the email will come out looking great?

The best way is to click on the "Test Email" icon (to the left of your template) from the template summary page.  Make sure you receive the test email and the content is indeed what you wanted.

• Now that a Drip Campaign is setup, how can Contacts automatically be assigned to receive the Drip Emails.

In the Admin area you can setup a “Background Workflow Engine” rule that will assign the Drip Campaign to a Contact based on a “Saved Search” filter.

Review the short Video Screen Capture to see an example

Review the Learning Center Guide