Creating dynamic content
5
Using dynamic content in your campaigns
9
Previewing your dynamic content
11
Using split testing
13
Sending your campaign using split testing
14
Segmentation queries
16
Using your segmentation query with a campaign
19
Suppression lists
20
Suppressed contacts
20
Suppressed domains
20
Add suppressions
21
Bounce thresholds
22
Global suppression list
23
Public and private address books and contact data fields
24
Setting an address book as public
24
Setting a contact data field as public
25
Using public address books and contact data fields in your campaigns
26
Custom data fields can be added to address books to capture and/or contain additional information about your contacts. The more useful data you can collect on your contacts, the more you can segment, target and personalise your campaigns and generate better response rates.
There is no limit on the number of custom data fields you can create and when you create a custom data field it is added to all the address books in your account. This way, all your address books maintain the same structure.
To add a custom field to an address book, select the option Contacts
from the left-hand navigation panel.
From the sub-menu displayed, select the option Contact Data Fields.
A list of the contact data fields already created is displayed. The data fields FIRSTNAME, FULLNAME and LASTNAME are
created automatically by Sage ABC.
1 Name. Enter a unique name for this new data field. You cannot use spaces between
words when creating a name for a new field. See example below, our data field name
is “Purchased Before” but we have entered this as “Purchased-Before”.
2 Data Type. This is a drop-down box, you have the choice of “Text,” “Numeric”,
“Date/Time” and “Yes/No”. Make your selection as appropriate.
3 Default Value. You can enter a default value for the data field in the event that it is
not populated as a result of the uploading of your data. For example, if this was a
“Yes/No” data type, you might default the value to “No”.
4 Access. These radio buttons determine who has access to updating this field. (See page 25)
a This data label is public – this will allow your contacts to view/amend data you hold on them in this field.
b This data label is private – this will allow only users of your
Sage ABC account to view/amend data held in this field.
When you have completed the screen, click on: The newly created field now appears on your
audience receive different content, different offers, images, copy or calls to action. This means you can send one campaign with multiple targeted messages for different groups of customers. Which message each group receives is dependent on the rules you set when you create the Dynamic Content.
To create Dynamic Content, select Campaigns from the left-hand navigation menu.
From the sub-menu displayed, select Advanced Features.
The Advanced Features screen is displayed which has a series of tabs.
The first tab is Dynamic Content. Click on the button
“Company Type”.
Dynamic Content is triggered by creating different rules. The first tab displayed is the Default rule – whatever you enter in the content area here will be displayed in your campaign, if none of the other rules apply.
The Content area features the same editor you use to create your email campaigns.
In this area you create the message you wish to appear for your default rule.
You can insert Links, Actions and Images just as you would when creating your campaign.
Click on the Create New tab at the top of the screen. A new tab appears called “New Rule”.
Type in a Rule Name. In our
example, we’re going to change the content of our email dependent on whether the company type is
“Agency” or “Charity” so our first
rule is for the “Agency” element.
We now need to add the filter that will select the email addresses that will receive the Agency Content. Click on the Add filter link and all the available data fields within your contact address books are displayed.
Select the data field your filter will be based on and it will appear as part of the first condition. In our example, we have selected the data field “Company-Type”.
Enter the value required and click on the button.
Your completed filter is displayed. Click on the button before continuing.
Now move to the Content part of the screen and enter the text, graphics and links etc. that are
going to apply to this rule. In the example below, we have entered the content for the “Agency”
element of our Dynamic Content.
Next you would follow the same steps to create your content for Charities. You can create as many pieces of Dynamic Content as you wish.
Once your Dynamic Content has been created, you can link it to your email campaign.
Select Campaigns from the left-hand navigation pane and open your email campaign in the editor window.
Move your cursor to the area of the email template where you wish the Dynamic Content to appear.
Click on Insert next to the Dynamic Content you wish to insert.
SageABC
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You can test your Dynamic Content by using the button.
If you completed the default rule when setting up your Dynamic Content, you will see this information displayed in your preview screen, as shown below.
To view Dynamic Content for the specific rules you created, use the Search function at the top of the
preview window.
In the example below, we have searched for all Sage ABC email addresses and clicked the
“Search Contacts” button. You can also use “Show Recent” which will show contacts
SageABC
Company-Type is shown as ‘Charity’.
Click on the button on the right hand side of the window and the content for the Charity rule is displayed.
SageABC Advanced Features
SageABC Advanced Features
Sage ABC will analyse which line is performing the best and send the rest of your email sends using that
subject line. This lets you test and maximise your open rates using the best performing subject line.
To use split testing, open your campaign in My Campaigns by clicking on the edit pencil. Next, click the ‘edit settings’ link towards the top right of your screen – this will open your campaign settings window, as shown below.
Type in the first subject line you want to test and then click on the button. A second subject line box will appear as shown below.
SageABC Advanced Features
Complete the remainder of your campaign settings in the normal manner.
Sending your campaign using split testing
Sending a campaign using split testing is the same process as sending a single subject line campaign. Select the Send option alongside the campaign and specify the address book and/or segmentation
query to use for the campaign.
The Campaign Send Options screen is displayed.
SageABC Advanced Features
SageABC
SageABC
Click on the Next Step button and continue to process your campaign in the normal manner.
Your campaign will appear in the “Outbox” tab of the Campaigns Screen.
If you wish to cancel your split testing, click on the Split Testing icon: in the Status column.
Once your split testing has been completed, the campaign will appear on the Sent tab.
You can then review your results in the reporting area in the normal manner. An example is shown below:
In this particular campaign, three subject lines have been split-tested. The subject line that performed the best is marked with:
Sage ABC will send the balance of your campaign after the time gap you entered has elapsed.
The campaign will be sent using the subject line with the most success.
If both subject lines return exactly the same results, then Sage ABC will choose the first
for example – key demographic variables, e.g. send a targeted campaign to all your contacts who are male, aged 21-30 and have expressed an interest in sports equipment. If you have the data in your address books then Sage ABC will enable you to segment by it.
To create a segmentation query, select Contacts from the left-hand navigation menu.
The first tab displays your current address books.
Click on the Segmentation queries tab.
To create a new segmentation query, click on: and the Create segmentation query
describe the attributes of the contacts you are grouping or describe the mailings you plan to use the list for. The “Data sources” are your address books and the default selected is All contacts. To select another address book, uncheck All contacts first and then select
the address book(s) you wish to use for this query.
To build your query using the address books selected, click on the Add Filter link.
Filters enable you to easily apply rules, conditions and define the criteria and database attributes you want to build your query with. In our example this will be “Males aged 21-30 who have a product interest of Sports Equipment”.
When the Add filter link is clicked, you are presented with a list of all the Contact Data Fields
that exist in your address books.
Select your first filter by clicking on the appropriate field.
This will appear as part of the first condition. In our example below, we have selected “Gender”.
Click on the [operator] link to display a list of operators.
Typing the first 3 letters into the value box will automatically prefil the box with a matching value
if Sage ABC finds one in your contacts list.
Your completed filter is displayed.
Click on the icon to save this first line of your query.
If you are creating a multiple line query (i.e. with more than one set of criteria), you must save each line before adding the next filter.
In this instance you can now add the next filter, click on the Add filter link and select the next contact data field to be used for the second set of criteria, in our example below we have selected “Age-Group”.
The condition And has automatically between applied between the two sets of criteria.
“SageABC Advanced Features”
“SageABC Advanced Features”
“Product-Interest”.
Select your condition, filter and values as described previously.
Once all your criteria have been completed, click on:
Your segmentation query is processed and your query now appears under the
Segmentation Queries tab. It contains 169 contacts.
Using your segmentation query with a campaign
To send a campaign to the segmentation query you have created, move back to your Campaigns
list and click the send icon alongside the required campaign.
You are prompted to select a data source and the default view will be your Address Books tab.
Select the Segmentation Queries tab and any queries created will appear in the list. Check the box
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allows you to manage both suppressed contacts and domains, manage your bounce thresholds and even process your contacts against the Sage ABC Global Suppression List.
Select Contacts from the left-hand navigation pane and
then Suppression Lists from the sub-menu that appears.
The Manage suppression lists screen is displayed
which consists of five tabs.
Suppressed contacts
The Suppressed Contacts tab displays a list of all your contacts who have unsubscribed from
your communications plus those who have been automatically unsubscribed by reaching their bounce threshold or registering as an ISP Spam complainant.
You can manually add a contact to this list by clicking on the button. See Add Suppressions section for more detail.
Suppressed domains
The Suppressed Domains tab displays a list of all domains that have been suppressed.
The Add Suppressions tab enables you to upload or manually add any email or domain
addresses you would NOT like included in your campaign sends.
To manually add new addresses simply type the email address into the area provided ensuring you enter only one email address per line as shown in the example. Each of these email addresses will be added to your Suppressed Contacts list and excluded from any future email sends.
If you wish to suppress all email addresses at one company then simply add the domain instead as shown here. Again, make sure there is only entry per line.
If you have a lot of email addresses and/or domains, you may prefer to upload a .txt or .csv file. Use the
Browse button to select the file on your computer.
Your entries are processed and a summary report is displayed.
Regardless of the method you choose; manually entering, pasting text or uploading a file, email addresses suppressed will appear on the Suppressed Contacts tab. Domains will appear on your Suppressed Domains tab and any email addresses
relating to those domains will appear on the Suppressed Contacts tab.
Bounce thresholds
Selecting the Bounce Thresholds tab displays the following screen:
A bounce threshold represents the number of consecutive times an email campaign delivery is allowed to fail due to soft bouncing, before that email address becomes unsubscribed.
A hard bounce is an email message that has been returned to you because the recipient’s
address is invalid. A hard bounce might occur because the domain name doesn’t exist, the recipient is unknown, or there’s some type of network problem on the recipient’s end. The default setting is 1 and we do not recommend this setting being altered as this can affect your deliverability.
A soft bounce is an email message that gets as far as the recipient’s mail server, but is bounced
This function enables you to cleanse your entire contact list against the Global Suppression List.
The Sage ABC Global Suppression List is made up of hard bounces, complainants to ISPs
(Hotmail and Yahoo, etc) and inbound (ie. telephone) complainants, from across
all Sage ABC client accounts.
Selecting the Global Suppression List tab displays the following screen.
To execute this function, click on:
This status determines whether or not an email recipient can view, add and update information when they are unsubscribing or editing their details.
Address Books – if you make an address book public, you can avoid “mass unsubscribing” by enabling your contacts to choose which of your campaigns and communications they wish to subscribe to or unsubscribe from. If the address book is private then only the
Sage ABC account holder can access or update this information.
BE CAREFUL – your email recipients will be able to see the names of all “public” address
books displayed in their list so take care when specifying the name of each address book. Contact Data Fields – if you make a contact data field public, you can allow the contact to view, add and amend the data you hold on them. If the contact data field is private then only the
Sage ABC account holder can access or update this information.
When you create a new address book or a new contact data field, the status is always set to private by default.
Setting an address book as public
Create your address book in the normal manner, giving it a unique name and entering a description.
REMEMBER – your contacts will see the name of this address book so give it some thought.
The default setting is private. Click on the radio button next to “This address book is public”
and click:
To change the settings for an address book already created, go to your Contacts list and use the
icon alongside the address book to edit the advanced options.
Setting a contact data field as public
Create your data field in the normal manner, giving it a unique name.
REMEMBER – your contacts will see the name of this data field so give it some thought.
The default setting is private. Click on the radio button next to “This data label is public”
and click on:
5 SageABC user ps for this month.
SageABC
Your contacts access public address books and contact data fields by using the “Want to unsubscribe or change your details?” link that you should put in your email campaigns.
To do this, create or edit your campaign in the normal manner, using the button to insert the unsubscribe link into your template. The default text inserted is “Want to unsubscribe or change your details?” as shown below:
This default text lets your contacts know that this link can be used not only for unsubscribing from your campaigns but can also be used to change their details.
The following screen is now displayed to the contact:
If the recipient does not want to receive any more emails from you then they simply click the button.
Within the Your details section, the contact can edit not only their email address and preferred email
format but also any custom data fields you have set as public.
Within the Your address books section, the contact can see the communications they are subscribed to. They can subscribe or unsubscribe by using the checkboxes alongside each address book.
If they check a box they are not currently subscribed to, i.e. Monthly Newsletter, then
Sage ABC will automatically update the relevant address book with the recipient’s email address.
To access Site Analytics, select Campaigns from the left-hand navigation pane and then Advanced Features
from the sub-menu that appears.
Select the Site Analytics tab.
To enable Google friendly links, click the checkbox.
