Create campaign regular

Creating an email marketing campaign to send your newsletter with Acumbamail is very simple. In this article, you'll find detailed all the steps required to create a new campaign, select subscribers, choose and edit a template, and send it.

Create a new campaign

In the Campaigns section within Newsletters, click on the New campaigns button.

Click New Campaign and select Newsletter.

Steps for creating a campaign

Step 1: General settings

In this first step you will have to configure the general aspects of the campaign, which are the following:

• Campaign name: This name will not be visible to anyone but you. Its function is to be able to organize you internally.

• Email and sender name: The email and name that the recipients of your campaign will see. They are completely customizable.

In some cases, if it is the first time you have entered the sender's email, a pop-up may appear informing you that you must verify yourself as the owner of the email provided. Click Send verification email and you will receive an email in that email with two options:

1. Click on the link that you will find in the email.
2. Enter the code you received in the email in the pop-up.

• Subject of the email and preheader that the recipients or subscribers of your campaigns will see. The preheader is a short text that will be seen below the subject line in the email inbox.

Here's an example of what an issue and a preheader looks like:

• Configure the links in your campaigns and whether or not you want to track clicks on links within the email.

You can customize the links of your campaigns with your own domain or subdomain (so that Acumbamail's does not appear). To do this, you'll first need to set it up. In the example above, we've set all links in the campaign to start with www.newsletter.acumbamail.com.

• Customize Google Analytics: You can integrate your email marketing campaigns with Google Analytics to track visits to your website from a mailing campaign. You will be able to customize the default UTM values that follow the links coming from your email campaigns.

UTM values allow you to locate where visits to your website are coming from. In Acumbamail campaigns you can configure two parameters:

• utm_campaign: This reflects the campaign of origin of the visit. We, for example, will write: "webinar2021".
• utm_source: this reflects the source of origin of the visit. We, for example, put "email".

If we then wanted to analyze the visits in Google Analytics, we would see "email" in the list of Source /medium of Google Analytics:

And down here is where we would see the UTM of campaigns:

Step 2: Subscribers

You can send a campaign to a single subscriber list or multiple lists.

You can also send to a specific segment (subgroup) within a list. You can select a segment from the list created previously or on the fly.

Step 3: Templates

In this step you can define the visual aspect of the email that the subscribers you have selected for the campaigns will receive. To do this, you have different options: 

• Select one of the more than 860 default templates , fully customizable and responsive , available to modify from the template editor . You don't need to know code or design to edit them. In the next section we explain how to modify one.
• Upload your own template in HTML format in the Import template option . In this case, you have all the steps explained in this article .

Default templates

To use an Acumbamail template, which you can modify in the next step, you can access it in two ways:

• From My templates you can select a template with which you have previously worked
• From New templates you can select one of our templates, filtering by category:

Choose the template you like best by hovering over it and clicking Select. Next, a pop-up will be displayed with which you can enter the name you want to give the template (this will only be seen by you, to organize yourself internally) and you will now go to the template editor from step 4.

Step 4: Design

In this step you will be able to edit the visual aspect of your campaigns and its content.

Pre-designed template

The Campaign Editor interface will be displayed, a simple tool to comfortably change texts, images and colors. Here you will find more information on how to handle it easily: email marketing template editor .

When you're done customizing it, click Next.

If you have imported your own HTML

If you imported your own HTML template in the previous step, another editor will appear from which you can view your template and add the mandatory unsubscribe tag so that subscribers can unsubscribe from your list, as well as other tags that you have previously defined.

Keep in mind that this visualization will not be the final one, and that to preview the appearance of your campaigns it is better that you do it in the next step, since in the current step the edges of the tables will be shown.

Step 5: Summary

This will be the last step before sending your campaigns.

Summary

In this section you can review all the elements of the campaign and, where appropriate, edit them:

• Sender:

• Affair:

(Remember that you can put personalized tags on your subject and email, we explain how here)

• Subscribers:

• Customization of link URLs. If you have modified in advanced options in step 1 how you want the links in your campaign to be displayed:

• Tracking URL: if you have activated a control of the clicks that are made within your email or not:

• URL of your campaign: the public link that you can use if you want to share your campaign, for example, on social media. Also, if you double-click on the minimized view of the campaigns, you will access a preview of it:

Test your template on all browsers and devices

This option lets you see what your template will look like in the different browsers, devices, and mail clients where your subscribers can open it.

This way, you can make sure that it looks correct in all of them. Here you can find more information about this tool.

Automatic forwarding to unopened, sending to the most active time and campaign quality

Also in this step you have three tools that will help you obtain better results available for PRO and Enterprise plans :

• Forward campaigns to non-openers automatically, after X days and with a different subject: activate it before sending the campaign. The forwarding will appear as a new campaign with the name of the original campaign plus "open _no".
• Send each subscriber at their most active time: through an algorithm, we know at what time of day each recipient usually opens your mailings (based on previous behavior with other campaigns).
• Check the quality of the campaigns: This tool analyzes a series of parameters (DKIM/SPF configuration, analysis with SpamAssassin, analysis of whether there are broken links or not and analysis of prohibited words that can activate antispam filters) that can have an impact on the deliverability of the shipment. Once completed, you'll be able to see a score out of 10 and make any changes before sending the shipment.

Submit the campaigns

Once you've made sure everything is correct, you have three shipping options.

Submit a test

Clicking on this option will display a form with a field in which to enter one or more email addresses (separated by commas) and send the campaign. It's a good way to make sure everything is working properly. You can submit as many proofs as you want.

Schedule a shipment

You can schedule a shipment for a specific date and time. Please note that the default programming time is based on Madrid (Spain) time (UTC +1). If you want to change the time zone, you can do so from My Account Preferences .

Once scheduled, the Schedule Send button will change status to Scheduled and your campaigns will be sent at the time you selected.

You can edit the schedule whenever you want (before the submission has been made).

If you would like to make changes to an already scheduled campaign, simply click Unschedule and then Cancel Submission to make the campaign go into edit status, you can make your changes and schedule it again without problem.

Send campaigns

By clicking on Send campaigns you can now start sending the campaign instantly. When you click, a pop-up will pop up to confirm the action and, if you accept, the campaign will start sending right then and there.

ATTENTION: this step is irreversible and you will only be able to cancel or cancel the shipment once it starts to be sent if you contact our support team as quickly as possible. Even if you delete the submitted campaigns, it will continue to be sent.

Check out reports

Once the shipment starts to be sent, you can consult the campaign reports in real time. To learn more about how to view and interpret them, read this article.

Why should you include an unsubscribe link in your campaign

To send mailing campaigns with Acumbamail, you must include a link that allows your subscribers to unsubscribe from your list quickly and easily.

Although at first it may seem counterproductive to make it easier for your hard-to-get subscribers to unsubscribe, the truth is that there are various reasons that will benefit the results of your campaigns by doing so.

Transparency and good relationship with users

One of the first benefits of including a link that facilitates the user unsubscribe process is to offer a transparent relationship with users. If someone stops being interested in your communications, and encounters a complex or tricky process to stop receiving them, the only thing you will do is generate frustration and offer a very poor image for your brand.

Avoid being marked as spam

If you complicate the unsubscribe process, the user will probably look for the shortest route and mark you as spam. If this happens relatively frequently, your reputation as a sender will be seriously damaged and your campaigns will have a good chance of ending up in the spam folder, ruining the effort and investment you are dedicating to them.

Optimize your resources

Another aspect to take into account is: why do you want to keep sending emails to someone who is not interested? It is not very likely that you will make him change his mind, and the insistence will generate more rejection than intention of interaction with your campaigns (let's not say that he decides to buy or hire any of your services).

When unsubscribing, your campaigns will not be sent to that user, and you can dedicate your resources to those subscribers who are interested in your shipments.

Obey the law

As if these reasons were not enough, the unsubscribe link helps you scrupulously comply with current legislation. Specifically, the LSSI (Law on Information Society Services and Electronic Commerce), which states that the provider must offer the recipient the possibility of opposing the processing of their data for promotional purposes, both at the time of data collection as in each of the commercial communications that I send to you.

The Law also obliges service providers to enable simple and free procedures so that recipients can revoke the consent they have given, as well as to provide accessible information electronically on said procedures.

You must also take into account the requirements imposed by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union, as well as other regulations in force in other countries.

How Acumbamail manages unsubscriptions

If you use our platform to send your mailing campaigns, you won't have to worry about anything. Simply, include the unsubscribe link by using its corresponding TAG, and our system will manage it automatically, marking the user as low and preventing any campaigns from being sent. In case they decide to sign up for your lists again, their status will automatically become active again.