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From within your CRM, click on the Campaigns link in the sidebar, under the Communication section.
Starting a New Campaign
From the Campaigns screen, click on the blue button labelled Create New Campaign.
Step 1 - Properties
All the information on this screen is for internal use only - your selected recipients will not see anything that you enter on this page.
- Title: Enter a title for your Campaign, that you will use to find the Campaign in your Drafts, or in your Campaign History. This is often the same as your email subject, but it can be anything that describes the current Campaign.
- Category: Categories are optional, and can be useful if you are sending many Campaigns through your CRM, to help organize your Campaign History and/or Drafts. For example, if you are sending multiple Campaigns about the same event or promotion because you need to target multiple queries, using a shared Category would help you keep track of these linked Campaigns.
- Description: Descriptions are also optional fields, and can be useful to differentiate your Campaigns if you are sending many/similar messages via the CRM.
- Campaign Type: Choose either Email, or Mail Merge. Most Campaigns will be Emails, so this document will focus on this option.
Step 2 - Targets
In this step you will select who will receive the email from this Campaign. To begin, click the blue button labelled Add Targets.
In the Send To dropdown box, you will need to choose what type of target you will be sending to:
- Object: This will allow you to send to all Contact records within your CRM at once (which you probably never want to do), or allow you to choose records to target one by one. This can be useful if the group you are targeting can not easily be selected in a query.
- Query: This allows you to send an email to the results of a query saved in your system. This is useful for sending emails to groups of contacts in your system that are grouped together by shared criteria, such as Membership Level, Qualification or Age, to name a few.
To send to an Object, follow the below steps:
- Send To: Choose Object
- Object Type: Choose the Object to send to (most likely Contacts)
- Records: Choose All Records to send this Campaign to ALL records within your CRM. Choose Selected Records to bring up an additional section for you to select individual contacts.
- Select Records: This section appears when you select Selected Records in the option above. Search for contacts by name in the search bar, and click Filter to narrow down the list. Check the box next to each contact that you would like to send this Campaign to.
- Email Fields: Select the CRM email field(s) that you would like to target for each selected record you’ve chosen.
- Return Email Targets: Click this button once you have filled out each of the options above, and your targets will be selected for this Campaign.
To send to a Query, follow the below steps:
- Send To: Choose Query
- Query: Choose a query from the list that you would like to target with this Campaign.
- You may only select one query per Campaign.
- If you do not see the query that you need listed, it may need to first be created. Please contact your CRM support team for assistance (educational materials for CRM Query creation are coming soon).
- Email Fields: Select the CRM email field(s) that you would like to target for each selected record you’ve chosen. Please note that, in order to function, at least one email field must be returned in the selected query chosen as a Campaign target.
- Return Email Targets:Click this button once you have filled out each of the options above, and your targets will be selected for this Campaign.
Step 3 - Create Message
In Step 3, you will craft the actual email which will be sent to the selected targets of this Campaign.
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- From: Choose an email address from the list that you would like the emails in this Campaign to be sent from (if you do not see your email address on this list, please contact your CRM Support Team).
- Subject: Enter the subject of the email. This will be seen by the recipients.
- Content: Create the body content of the email that will be sent.
- You can enter the content directly into this box, and format using the tools on the toolbar above.
- Alternatively, the last icon on the right will bring up the full Axis Editor for you to edit your email with. For detailed instructions on how to use the Editor, please click here.
- IMPORTANT NOTE: The list of available snippets in the CRM is different than those available to you through the Axis Website. When adding snippets to your email in the Axis Editor, be sure to only select snippets from the “Page Specific” section of the snippet dropdown, as these are the only ones that will reference your CRM database.
- Schedule:Select if you would like the emails in this Campaign to be sent only one time, or on a recurring basis.
- Send At:Select the time that you wish to send the emails out (or, if you have set up a recurring email, the time for the first batch of emails to be sent).
Step 4 - Review
In this step you have the opportunity to review your input for all previous steps. If you notice any edits that need to be made, you can easily return back to any step in the process either by clicking on the button at the bottom of the screen labelled Last Step - Create Message or by clicking on the name of the step from the cookie trail at the top of the screen.
- Properties: Displays the information entered as Properties for this Campaign. Remember that everything in this section is internal only, and will not be seen by Campaign recipients.
- Targets: Displays the set of contacts that you are targeting with this Campaign. You can see the Object or Query that you targeted in the grid, or to view a list of all returned targets, you can click the blue button labelled Show Recipient Listing.
- Create Message: Displays the From Address, Subject, and body content of the email that will be sent out via this Campaign. Also displays the selected Schedule and Send At time for the Campaign, at the bottom of the section.
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- Last Step - Create Message: This will bring you back to the previous step and enable you to make any changes to the email.
- Send Test Message: Displays a small popup window that enables you to send this Campaign to a single recipient - as a test only - so that you can review the format of your email in a live email client.
- IMPORTANT NOTE: It is highly recommended that you utilize this feature at least once before officially sending the Campaign.
- Save Draft: Saves your current Campaign as a Draft and returns you to the list of active Campaigns.
- Finish: This is your Send button. Once you click Finish, the system will queue your email messages to be sent according to the schedule you set earlier. If you chose Now as your desired time, then clicking the Finish button will queue your emails to be sent immediately.
Viewing Your Campaign History
To access a list of all the Campaigns that have been sent via your CRM, and to view the statistics for each Campaign, click on the Campaign History link in the sidebar, under the Communication section.
Campaign History Overview
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The statistics on this initial screen serve as an overview of your sent Campaigns. If you need to “drill down” deeper into any given Campaign, or even a specific Message from within a Campaign, you can do so by clicking either the Campaign Name or Message Subject.
Campaign Details
To access the details of a Campaign as a whole (especially for those with recurring messages), click on the Campaign Name from the Campaign History screen. Here, you will be able to review the properties of this Campaign, as well as view an overview of all the individual messages that have been sent as part of this Campaign.
The details in this section are very similar to those on the previous screen, but this view allows you to easily gauge the long-term effectiveness of recurring email Campaigns. You are also able to drill down into the message details of any message in the list by clicking on the Message Subject of that message.
Message Details
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To access the details of a message sent through a Campaign, click on its Message Subject from either the main Campaign History screen, or from the Campaign Details screen. Here, you will be able to view the properties of the Campaign that this message was a part of, as well as review the body of the email itself.
Further down, you will see a list of all the links contained within this email, and how many clicks each link received. You are able to see a list of all the contacts that clicked on the link by clicking on the number in the Clicks column.
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- Sent To: Displays the CRM record that this message was sent to. Click on this name to display the message history for this record.
- Address: Displays the email address that corresponds with the CRM record that this message was sent to. Click on this address to generate a new email to this email address.
- Sent At: Displays the timestamp at which this message was sent from Clubessential’s email servers to the recipient.
- Opened: Displays the time that the recipient opened the message. If the recipient did not open the message, this field will remain blank.
- Unsubscribed: Displays the time that the recipient unsubscribed from the message. If the recipient did not unsubscribe from this message, this field will remain blank.
- Bounced: Displays the time that this message was marked as having bounced. If the message was delivered successfully, this field will remain blank.
- Link Clicks: Displays the number of times that this recipient clicked on any link within the message.
FAQs
Q: How can I manually select which contacts to target with my Campaign?
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Enter 1 -2 Best Practices
Downloadable Guide
Axis Editor CRM Campaigns - Guide