Creating a new email campaign in Act! Marketing Automation

Question: How do I create a new campaign in Act! Marketing Automation?

Product Family: Emarketing
Product: Act! Marketing Automation

Answer:

This is a step by step guide for setting up a simple email campaign in Act! Marketing Automation. This article will take you through setting up your campaign parameters and what each parameters means before getting into your campaign's flow designer.

To create a new campaign:

1. Navigate to the Campaigns menu item within Act! Marketing Automation.
2. Click the Actions drop down in the top right portion of the page and select New Campaign.
3. In the pop up you will see 4 tabs that you can choose from:
   • All Templates: A series of pre-built out campaign flows that you can choose from. Each selection has a different purpose and a description provided to gain insight into what type of campaign it is for.
   • My Templates: Any campaign flows that you have saved. For more information on how to fully utilize this feature, read more here.
   • View By Type: Here you can select by the type of campaign you would like to send, such as a Marketing or a Sales campaign.
   • View By Industry: Here you can select a campaign flow based on different industries.
4. In this article, we will be building a campaign flow from scratch, so click the All Templates tab and select Blank Campaign.
5. Click Continue.
6. On the next page, give your campaign a name. The name is only internally facing.
7. You can also add smart tags to this campaign. Smart tags will set one or multiple tags to your campaign for easy searching later. To add a tag, type in the tag you want to use then hit Enter. You can add in as many additional tags as you need. Smart tags are not mandatory and can be left blank.
8. Click Continue.
9. On the next page, select the Act! CRM group that you would like to send this campaign to. Then enter the from name and email address you want this campaign to come from. You can enter in any name and any email prefix. The domain in the email must match the sending domain set up for your account. The reply-to email address, however, can be any email address you want! Just be sure to enter a valid email for an inbox that is monitored for those contacts that may reply to your email.
10. Click Create.

You are now taken into your campaign's flow designer. This is where you will complete all remaining campaign setup to get your campaign ready to send out. On this page you will be able to do things like schedule your first email send, add in any additional emails or other steps, include any additional groups you would like to send to, turn on campaign list sync, etc.

To keep this article simple, we will be setting up a single-email campaign scheduled to release immediately upon campaign activation. 

To edit your email step to bring in a template from your template library:

1. Click the blue email step in the campaign flow.
2. In the pop up, select Edit Email Content then click Go.
3. This will open up a drag and drop editor where you can either create a new email from scratch or, import an already existing template from your template library.
4. To import a template, click the Actions drop down and select Import My Templates.
5. Select the template that you wish to use for this email, then click Import.
6. You can make any edits you need to the template using the drag and drop editor. You can also insert contact merge tags using your CRM fields now that a group is associated with this campaign. To insert a merge tag, click into any text content block, place your cursor where you would like the merge tag to go, then click the Marge Tags button in the grey text editor bar. You will now see your Act! fields that are included in the layout of your group you selected in the initial setup.
7. Next, you will need to give your email a name and subject line. Click the Actions drop down and select Properties. A pop up will appear where you can give this email a name (it is only internally facing) and a subject line (visible to your recipients). Once you have finished, click Update.
8. Once you have finished editing your email, it is always a good idea to test it to make sure images appear, links work correctly, etc. To test this email before sending, click the Actions drop down and select Send A Test.
9. In the first box, enter the email address or multiple email addresses of anyone that you would like to receive a test of this email.
10. In the next box, you can enter the email address of someone from within the group you are sending to if you are using merge tags. What this does is allow you to see how this email will look for your recipients when they receive the email. So, for example, if sally@acme.co is in the group I am sending to, I can enter their email address here in order to see how Sally's merge tags will populate when they receive the real email. Once the email addresses are added, click Send Test.
11. After you receive the test email and feel comfortable with the results and the email's setup, in the email editor click the Actions drop down and select Return. You will be taken back to the campaign flow designer.

Now that we are back in the campaign flow designer, there are several tools you can use before activating your campaign. See the list below for articles on the different tools, how they function and how to utilize each one.

Schedule your email send for a future date/time

How to run a List Simulation

Campaign list sync

Turn on Notifications

Adding a Decision Step to your campaign

Adding an Action Step to your campaign

Once you have finalized the setup of your campaign flow and you are ready to activate your campaign:

1. Click the Actions drop down and select Activate.
2. You will be taken to a page where you can review all the parameters set up for your campaign. It is important to review this before activating to confirm your send time, your email's from name and email, the group you are sending to, etc.
3. There will also be a Campaign Actions section that confirms that you have important items set up like your email's subject line. If there is anything important that you forgot to edit, you will see a red X with a description of what needs to be edited. Otherwise, you will see a green check mark.
4. Once everything looks good and you are ready to activate your campaign, click the Activate Campaign button.

Your campaign is now active! The first email in your campaign will be released at the time scheduled (if it is set to Instant Release, the email will begin sending out immediately).

Pausing your campaign:

There may be a few reasons you need to pause an already active campaign, for example if you need to add additional groups to your inclusion or exclusion lists or if you want your campaign to stop running. Additionally, to make any major changes to the campaign, you will need to pause first.

To pause your campaign:

1. Open your existing active campaign that you wish to pause.
2. Click the Actions dropdown and select Pause.
3. On the activation screen, click the Pause Campaign button.

There are a few important things to note when you pause a campaign. If you are pausing the campaign in order to add any inclusion lists, newly added inclusion lists will be added to the Start step of the campaign as soon as it is re-activated and run down the flow. This means that if your email steps are scheduled for specific date/times, you will need to edit these to a date/time in the future. If the date/time is kept on a date in the past, your newly added contacts will skip any steps that are scheduled for a date in the past.

If you are pausing the campaign in order to stop the campaign from running, this will stop all contacts in whatever step they are on. The campaign will remain paused until manually re-activated. This is the recommended method if you are wanting to discontinue a campaign or stop your entire contact list from continuing to receive any more emails in this campaign.