Create classic campaign

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

Create a new campaign

In the Campaigns section under Newsletters, click on the New campaign button.

Click New Campaign and select Newsletter.

Steps for creating a campaign

Step 1: Start

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

• Campaign name: This name will not be visible to anyone other than you. Its purpose is to help you organize yourself internally.

• Sender email and name: The email and name that your campaign recipients will see. They are completely customizable.

In some cases, if this is the first time you have entered the sender 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 in the email.
2. Enter the code you received in the email within the pop-up.

• Email subject and preheader that your campaign recipients or subscribers will see. The preheader is a short text that will appear below the subject in the email inbox.

Here's an example of what a subject and preheader look like:

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

You can customize the links in your campaign with your own domain or subdomain (so that Acumbamail's doesn't appear). To do this, you'll first have to configure it. In the example above, we've configured all the 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 an email campaign. You can customize the default UTM values that follow links from your email campaign.

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

• utm_campaign: This reflects the campaign from which the visit came. For example, we would put: "webinar2021".
• utm_source: This reflects the source of the visit. We, for example, put "email".

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

And below is where we would see the UTM of campaigns:

Step 2: Subscribers

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

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

Step 3: Templates

In this step you will be able to define the visual appearance of the email that the subscribers you have selected for the campaign will receive. To do this, you have different options:

• Select one of over 860 fully customizable and responsive pre-made templates available to edit from the template editor . You don't need to know code or design to edit them. In the next section we explain how to edit 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 that you have already worked with before.
• 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 to the template (only you will see this, to organize yourself internally) and you will be taken to the template editor in step 4.

Step 4: Design

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

Pre-designed template

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

When you have finished 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 where you can view your template and add the mandatory unsubscribe tag so subscribers can unsubscribe from your list, as well as any other tags you've defined previously.

Please note that this will not be the final view, and to preview how your campaign will look it is best to do so in the next step, as the table borders will be displayed in the current step.

Step 5: Shipping

This will be the last step before sending your campaign.

Summary

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

• Sender:

• Affair:

(Remember that you can put custom labels in your subject and email, we explain how here )

• Subscribers:

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

• URL Tracking: whether you have activated control of the clicks made within your email or not:

• Your campaign URL: This is the public link you can use if you want to share your campaign, for example, at Social Media. Also, double-clicking on the minimized view of the campaign will take you to a preview of the campaign:

Test your template on all browsers and devices

This option allows you to check how your template will look in the different browsers, devices, and email clients in which your subscribers can open it.

This way, you can ensure that it looks correctly on all of them. Here you can find more information about this tool.

Automatic resending to unopened emails, sending at the most active time and campaign quality

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

• Automatically resend campaign to non-openers after X days and with a different subject line: Enable this before sending the campaign. The resend will appear as a new campaign with the name of the original campaign plus "_non-openers".
• Send to each subscriber at their most active time: Using an algorithm, we know what time of day each recipient subscriber typically opens your emails (based on previous behavior with other campaigns).
• Check campaign quality: This tool analyses a number of parameters (DKIM/SPF configuration, analysis with SpamAssassin, analysis of whether or not there are broken links and analysis of banned words that may trigger anti-spam filters) that may affect the deliverability of the send. Once finished, you will be able to see a score out of 10 and make any necessary changes before sending.

Send the campaign

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

Send a test

Clicking on this option will open a form with a field in which you can enter one or more email addresses (separated by commas) and send the campaign. This is a good way to make sure everything is working correctly. You can send as many tests as you like.

Schedule a shipment

You will be able to schedule a delivery for a specific date and time. Please note that the default scheduling time is based on the time in Madrid (Spain) (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 campaign will be sent at the time you selected.

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

If you would like to make changes to a campaign that has already been scheduled, simply click on Unschedule and then Cancel Sending to return the campaign to editing status, so you can make your changes and schedule it again without any problem.

Send campaign

By clicking Send Campaign you can now start sending the campaign immediately. When you click, a pop-up will appear to confirm the action and, if you accept, the campaign will start sending immediately.

ATTENTION: This step is irreversible and you will only be able to cancel or void the sending once it has started if you contact our support team as soon as possible. Even if you delete the sent campaign, it will continue to be sent.

View campaign reports

Once your campaign has started to send, you'll be able to view your campaign reports in real time. To learn more about how to view and interpret them, read this article.

Why you should 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 easy for the subscribers that you have spent so much effort to get 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 unsubscription process for the user 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 achieve is generate frustration and offer a very poor image for your brand.

Avoid being marked as spam

If you make the unsubscribe process complicated, the user will probably take the shortcut 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 high chance of ending up in the spam folder, ruining the effort and investment you are putting into them.

Optimize your resources

Another thing to keep in mind is: why do you want to keep sending emails to someone who isn't interested? It is not very likely that you will change their mind, and insistence will generate more rejection than intention to interact with your campaigns (not to mention making them decide to buy or hire one of your services).

By 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.

Comply with the law

As if these reasons were not enough, the unsubscribe link helps you to 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 and in each of the commercial communications sent to them.

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 information accessible electronically about said procedures.

You will also need to 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 cancellations

If you use our platform to send your email campaigns, you won't have to worry about anything. Simply include the unsubscribe link using their corresponding TAG, and our system will automatically manage it, marking the user as unsubscribed and preventing any campaigns from being sent to them. If they decide to re-subscribe to your lists, their status will automatically return to active.