This article serves as a guided overview to Feathr's email marketing tools, as well as a curated resource hub for the documentation and help information related to using those tools. For even more in-depth guidance to email marketing success, enroll in Feathr Academy's Email Marketing Course.
Table of Contents
- Choosing Email Marketing Campaign Types
- Verifying Sender Information
- Selecting/Importing an Audience
- Managing Subscription Preferences & Opt-outs
- Creating Email Templates
- Reading Email Campaign Reports
Choosing Email Marketing Campaign Types
Feathr offers three types of email marketing campaigns. The general steps for using them successfully are similar, but each campaign type defines and reaches its intended audience differently. Here are their definitions:
1. Single Send
A Single Send Campaign is a single email sent to an email list. It consists of an email message template, an imported list (or filtered Group) of intended recipients, and a scheduled send time.
An example use case for a Single Send Campaign is a monthly newsletter.
This article features step-by-step instructions for creating and publishing a Single Send Campaign.
2. Auto Send
An Auto Send Campaign sends an email that is triggered by a tracked web activity. Because the Super Pixel tracks visitors on your website, you can identify behaviors that should trigger an email, and create an Auto Send Campaign to send email when the trigger activity occurs.
An example use case for an Auto Send Campaign is a confirmation email when a website visitor submits a form.
This article features step-by-step instructions for creating and publishing an Auto Send Campaign.
3. Smart Send
A Smart Send Campaign combines both of the above campaign types. It allows you to schedule an email to go to an email list, but allows a period prior to the scheduled send where a trigger activity can send the email early to individuals who perform the trigger activity.
An example use case for a Smart Send Campaign is early access to an offer or feature that is published on your website before it is announced to a larger group.
This article features step-by-step instructions for creating and publishing a Smart Send Campaign.
4. Drip
Feathr's Email Drip Campaign allows you to compose a series of emails over time to a group of recipients, automatically triggered by activity, person field change, or date. An email drip ensures that, with a single launched campaign, your targeted recipients receive multiple emails in a series that you design and strategize. This can lead to improved engagement with your emails and improved efficiency in your marketing.
This article features step-by-step instructions for creating and publishing an Auto Send Campaign.
Verifying Sender Information
Before using Feathr for email marketing, all users intending to send emails must either verify their email address or connect their organization's mail sending domain to their Feathr account. Connecting a mail sending domain is a preferred long-term solution as it enables DKIM/SPF protections and improves deliverability.
Here are instructions for verifying your email address.
Here are instructions for adding your mail sending domain to your Feathr account.
Because adding a domain requires a few steps outside of Feathr, we have created this handy guide for working with domain registrars.
Selecting/Importing an Audience
Your intended email audience will vary depending on your marketing goals as well as which campaign type you choose. As you just learned, Single Send and Smart Send Campaigns include a component where an email is intended to be sent at a scheduled time to a list of email addresses. In Feathr there are two ways to generate and attach an email address list to an email marketing campaign.
1. Importing an Email List
Feathr offers email list imports for your recipient list as well as your opt-out list. These articles offer step-by step instructions. More information below about opt-outs and subscription preferences.
How to Import Contacts for Email Marketing Campaigns
How to Import an Email Opt-out List
Any email list import must contain at least two columns: name and email. You can, however, add additional columns with information you wish to add to your people records. Those additional categories can be mapped to Feathr data fields in the import process. Examples include organization, job title, etc.
Once your import has processed, Feathr creates an audience Group with the same name as the filename of the spreadsheet you imported.
Please note: as of the time of writing this article, Feathr email imports are static lists. We recommend freshly importing your contact list and opt-out list for each Email Marketing Campaign in Feathr. If you import new information connected to an existing email address in your people data, the person record associated with that address will be updated. If you import a new email address, Feathr will create a new person record.
2. Selecting a Group
Just like with Retargeting Campaigns, you can select a Group as the recipient list for your Email Marketing Campaigns, as long as that Group contains email address data. Choosing a Group instead of an import will work best for users who have imported email lists in the past, or who have robust lead capture forms on their organization's website connected to their Feathr data.
Additionally, all imported lists are saved as a Group automatically. So while those Groups are static, you may always work from a previous import by choosing the Group of that import instead of importing it again.
Note that just like in retargeting campaigns, you have the option to include or exclude Groups from your email marketing. We recommend using exclusion Groups for people to whom your email offer does not apply, rather than as an unsubscribe list. Unsubscribers are handled separately, which this article covers in the next section.
If you're unsure about already-collected email data in your Feathr account, a quick way to check is to navigate to Community page and add the following filter:
This filter displays every person record in your total collected data that has an email address associated with it. You are able to view the total number of records in the blue gauge, and/or browse through the filtered results to view them individually. You could build a Group from this one filter, which would save a dynamic list of everyone for which you have an email address, or apply additional filters to narrow down your results. That choice depends on your organization's email marketing strategy.
Managing Subscription Preferences & Opt Outs
The health and deliverability of your email marketing messages depends at least partially on adhering to the rules and regulations of email marketing practice. While it is your responsibility to know and follow these rules, Feathr offers two main tools for maintaining email lists that do not send unwanted emails.
1. Subscription Preferences
Every marketing email you send through Feathr includes a non-editable link offering recipients the opportunity to unsubscribe. This is a requirement for compliance with the CAN-SPAM act, which regulates email marketing in the US. The link takes your recipient to a subscription preferences page, where they can unsubscribe from all emails from your organization, or manage subscriptions to specific Feathr Projects that may include email marketing campaigns.
While the inclusion of a subscription preferences link is not editable due to regulation, as a Feathr user you can edit the name of your overall organization, as well as the names of your individual Feathr projects as they display to your email recipients.
Here are instructions for accessing and editing subscription preferences in Feathr.
2. Importing Opt-out Lists
If you have previously managed subscription preferences in a different email tool or CRM, you may have an exported list of email addresses that have previously unsubscribed from your marketing. This is simple to import into Feathr.
Any list that is imported as an opt-out list will automatically be excluded from marketing emails.
Here are instructions for importing opt-out lists in Feathr.
Please note: at the time of writing this article, opt-out list imports are static. The only dynamic way of managing opt-outs in Feathr is as described in subscription preferences above. If your organization also provides an unsubscribe option from a different source, such as a different landing page than the Feathr subscription management page, you must either import an up-to-date opt-out list for each email marketing campaign you send, or connect your own landing page to a custom data field (if your Feathr package level allows). Contact your CSM about the best option for you.
Creating Email Templates
Now comes the fun part: designing your email. Feathr's template building tools enable even the least tech-savvy or least artistically gifted user to build beautiful emails with a few clicks (But don't worry, designers and techies will succeed too).
Every email you send in Feathr starts with a template. A template is the graphic layout of your email, as well as its written copy and any other content. The tools provided in Feathr's drag-and-drop template builder allow you to create the overall layout of your email, fill in the content, and even add merge tags, which enable scalable personalization, like when you add "Hi {{User.UserAttributes.name}}!" But the recipient sees "Hi Susan!"
For step-by-step instructions and best practices for building email templates, including a full walkthrough video by pro Feathr designer Jess Lupinacci, read this article:
How to Create Templates for Email Marketing Campaigns
Reading Email Campaign Reports
Once you've designed and sent your email, you will start getting analysis and data back in the form of a campaign report.
Campaign reports provide insight into the performance of your email, the deliverability of your target audience, the engagement with your links, and more.
For the full breakdown of the data you can expect to find in your email campaign Reports, see the article linked below.
How to Read an Email Marketing Campaign Report