Campaign management allows privileged system administrators to create, distribute and monitor email campaigns. For email campaigns to be available, they must be activated in settings. Additional server configuration, including SMTP server setup, scheduled distribution tasks, etc, are required in order for campaign management to operate. Consult an experienced integrator before turning on and operating campaign management.
To send an email campaign, we must create a datasource, a campaign using the datasource, than distribute the campaign.
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Datasources provide the target recipients to the campaign. A datasource could be a list of email addresses you provide, or acquired from the web site. Several datasources come included with the ecommerce engine upon installation. Additional datasources require creation by an experienced integrator. Once a datasource is created, it is reusable – and each time it is used, the datasource acquires current target recipients that fit the datasource’s criteria.
Campaign datasources should only be added and modified by experienced system administrators. Please contact your website integrator to add or change any datasources.
To view and manage datasources, select "Campaign Datasources". A list of current datasources will be displayed. Select 'edit' next to any datasource to view / manage the datasource. Select 'Test' next to any datasource to view a sample of it's recipients. You can also add a new campaign datasource by selecting the 'add new campaign datasource' link.
Campaign management provides the means to create and modify content that can be distributed to email recipients. To manage campaigns, select the 'Campaigns' link. A list of all current campaigns and a link to add a new campaign will be displayed.
To add a campaign, select the "Add a New Campaign" link. To edit a campaign, select "Edit" next to the campaign you wish to manage. The campaign management form will be displayed. The campaign management form contains the following fields:
Note that the subject and message body can use variables to display limited dynamic content. Be default, {emailAddress} is available by placing {emailAddress} (with the brackets) into the subject or the message body, the recipients email address will be displayed. Other variables available are controlled by the datasource. Check the datasource information or ask your integrator about what what variables are available, or to make additional variables available.
After you are completed entering / changing the content of the campaign form, select the 'post changed' button at the bottom of the form to commit the changes to the database.
To preview what the message will look like to the recipients, select the 'preview' link next to the campaign in the campaign listing.
To send a test message, click 'send a test' link next to the campaign in the campaign listing. Enter your email address into the form and click the 'send' button. You should receive the email shortly.
To distribute a campaign, select the 'send to *datasource*' link (where datasource is the name of your selected datasource for this campaign) in the campaign listing. You will be asked to confirm that you want to distribute this campaign.
The size of the campaign recipient list will effect how long the system will take to distribute to all the recipeints in the campaign. You can view the progress of the campaign distribution via the campaign report.
Campaign reporting allows you to monitor the progress of a campaign distribution and it's activity up to and including resulting visits back to the web site originating from the campaign. Additional reporting information on the campaign (including purchase activity) can be found using the Cart Report.
To view a campaign report, select "View Report" next to the campaign in the campaign listing. For each individual send of the campaign, the resulting report will provide the following: