This guide covers the basics of email marketing in Feathr and points you to more detailed articles for each step. Want to go deeper? Enroll in Feathr Academy's Email Marketing Modules.
Table of Contents
- Choosing Email Marketing Campaign Types
- Verifying Sender Information
- Selecting/Importing an Audience
- Managing Subscription Preferences & Opt-outs
- Creating Email Templates
- Managing Campaigns After Publishing
- Reading Email Campaign Reports
Choosing Email Marketing Campaign Types
Feathr offers three email campaign types:
1. Single Send
A Single Send is one email sent to a list of recipients at a scheduled time. You'll need a template, an imported list or filtered Group, and a send time. Step-by-step instructions.
Example: A monthly newsletter
2. Auto Send
An Auto Send sends an email automatically when someone meets a trigger you define. Triggers can be tracked web or email activity, a change to a person field, or a date. You can narrow the audience with inclusion and exclusion Groups. You can also add optional bulk sends:
- Initial Bulk Send reaches people who already met your trigger before launch.
- Final Bulk Send reaches everyone in your inclusion Group(s) who never met the trigger, at the campaign's end.
Examples: A confirmation email after someone submits a form, or early access to an offer for people who visit your event page, followed by a final send to the rest of your member list.
3. Drip
A Drip sends a series of emails over time. It starts automatically when someone performs an activity, has a person field change, reaches a date, or completes a previous Drip. Drips can have up to 20 steps. Drips can also use inclusion Groups, be added to Flights, and send test emails for individual steps. Before a Drip runs, you can drag and drop its steps to reorder them. Step-by-step instructions.
Example: A welcome series for new donors
What happened to Smart Send? Smart Send is being retired. Its two main features, inclusion Groups and a final bulk send to your list, are now built into Auto Send. Live Smart Send campaigns will keep running as-is for now and will later be moved to Auto Send automatically, with matching settings. You don't need to do anything. Your campaign will keep working the same way; it'll just be listed as an Auto Send. To build a new campaign that works like a Smart Send, create an Auto Send with an inclusion Group and turn on the Final Bulk Send.
Verifying Sender Information
Before you can send emails, you'll need to verify your email address or connect your organization's mail sending domain. Connecting your domain is the better long-term option because it enables DKIM/SPF protections.
Resources:
- Email Deliverability Guide
- Email Address Verification Instructions
- Connecting a Domain to your Feathr Account
- Domain Registrar Guide
Selecting/Importing an Audience
1. Importing an Email List
Files must be under 50 MB and in .xlsx or .csv format. A single email column is enough, but you can add more labeled columns to map to Feathr data fields like organization or job title.
Resources:
Key points:
- Each import creates a static Group named after the file.
- If an email address is already in Feathr, the import updates that person's record. New addresses create new person records.
- We recommend reimporting your contact and opt-out lists for each campaign.
2. Selecting a Group
Any Group that contains email addresses can be used as a recipient list. This works best if you've imported lists before or have strong lead capture forms. For Auto Send and Drip campaigns, you can also use Groups as inclusions, which limit the campaign to people in those Groups.
Note: Imported lists are saved as Groups automatically. To leave out people who shouldn't get a particular email, use an exclusion Group. Don't use unsubscribe management for this.
Audience Locking (Single Send):
- If the campaign is published to send within 24 hours, the audience locks right away.
- If the send is scheduled further out, the audience locks 24 hours before the send time.
Managing Subscription Preferences & Opt-outs
1. Subscription Preferences
Every marketing email includes an unsubscribe link, which is required by CAN-SPAM and can't be edited. It takes recipients to a subscription preferences page, where they can unsubscribe from all your emails or manage their subscriptions to specific Feathr Projects.
You can edit how your organization name and individual Project names appear to recipients.
Access and edit subscription preferences.
2. Importing Opt-out Lists
If you have email addresses that unsubscribed on another platform, you can import them. Feathr will automatically exclude them from your marketing emails.
Important: Opt-out list imports are static. To keep opt-outs current, use the subscription preferences feature or reimport an updated list with each campaign.
Creating Email Templates
Feathr's template building tools let you design professional emails with drag and drop. A template includes the layout, the written copy, and any merge tags you use for personalization. For example, "Hi {{User.UserAttributes.name}}!" shows up as "Hi Susan!" for the recipient.
Your subject line, preview text, and merge field defaults are saved with the template. After a campaign is published, you don't edit its template. You change it by swapping in a different one, so recipients who view an email in their browser still see what was originally sent. For small tweaks, the quickest way is to clone the original template, update the clone, and swap it in.
Complete template creation guide with video walkthrough.
Managing Campaigns After Publishing
Editing a Running Campaign
For Auto Send and Drip campaigns, you can change these settings while the campaign is running, with no need to stop it:
- Trigger rules
- Inclusion and exclusion Groups
- Campaign goal
- End time
Content changes still require stopping the campaign, swapping in a different template, and republishing. This covers the template, subject line, preview text, and merge field defaults. For step-by-step details, see How to Publish an Auto Send Campaign and How to Publish an Email Drip Campaign.
Note: You can reorder Drip steps by drag and drop until the campaign has run. After that, the order is locked so the stats for each step stay accurate.
Campaign States
Campaign statuses make it easy to see where each campaign stands:
- Scheduled: Published, but the send time or send window hasn't started yet.
- Completing: The end time has passed, and the campaign is finishing its last sends.
- Complete: The campaign has finished sending.
Restarting a Campaign
Campaigns can be restarted after they've been stopped or completed, so you don't have to rebuild a campaign from scratch to run it again.
Reading Email Campaign Reports
Campaign reports show how your email performed, including deliverability, engagement, and link clicks. You can set a custom date range on a campaign report to focus on a specific period. For Drip campaigns, the All Steps report includes an engagement table that shows how people interacted across the whole series.