The five-step campaign creation process guided you through from campaign creation to campaign send.
Throughout the campaign creation process, the particular step you're on is highlighted in the breadcrumb menu in the top right.
You can select BACK at any time to go to the previous step, or SAVE & CONTINUE to move on to the next step.
This article takes you through Step 1 of the process: Create. This involves setting up your initial campaign details.
Set up your campaign details
On the Campaign details page you can set:
Subject line
This is the subject line of the email as it will appear in your contacts' email client. We recommend trying to get the most important information in the first 60 characters of the subject line.
You can add emojis to your subject line if you want to. Select the smiley face icon next to the subject line to open the emoji picker.
Emoji support
Emojis can increase your open rates and enhance engagement. However, a word of warning: emoji support can differ across email clients and devices. Not all emojis get rendered correctly or consistently in your recipients' inboxes. This depends on their email client, device and operating system configuration. If you want to make use of emojis in subject lines, then we strongly advise thoroughly testing them.
You can also include personalisation in a subject line. To do this, select the personalisation icon to expand the data fields drop-down menu and select a data field placeholder to insert into your subject line.
This placeholder is replaced with the relevant data for each contact when the campaign is sent. So, the subject line Hi @FIRSTNAME@! becomes - for example - Hi Chris! when it reaches the contact’s inbox.
Friendly from name
This is the name that your email appears to come from in your recipients’ inboxes.
From address
All new accounts have a default from address assigned to them. Until you add a custom from address to your account, only the default one is available to you here. If you do have multiple from addresses to choose from, expand the drop-down menu and select the from address you want to use.
Learn more about custom from addresses in Branded domains: sending with a custom from address (CFA).
When you add values to the above fields, you can see a preview of how your email details should display in your contacts’ inbox at the bottom of the page.
Reply-to address
If someone replies to your campaign, the reply is stored in our system, and you can access these replies through the reporting section.
You can also add a reply-to address, so that any replies to your campaign are sent directly to an inbox of your choice from the recipient email address. It’s important to check replies to your campaigns, as sometimes contacts send unsubscribe requests this way, in addition to other requests for help or support, so this address should be one that you’re easily able to monitor. The reply-to address you add can be customised to each contact using a data field.
For example, if you store an email address for your employees in an @ACCOUNT_MANAGER_EMAIL@ data field, you could use this as your reply-to address.
On send, the data field value is populated, and the reply-to for each contact becomes manager.name@mycompany.com, allowing you to send replies direct to each contact’s account manager.
It’s possible to set a reply-to address on an account level for each custom from address (CFA) you have. If set at this level, the appropriate reply-to address is pre-populated for you when you create a campaign.
Learn more in Create a custom from address.
You can replace the reply-to address with a different one when setting up your campaign if you want to. The campaign-level address is used instead of the reply-to address set for the CFA.
If you leave the reply-to address field empty when creating your campaign, then replies are not sent to you. They are still forwarded if you have added a forwarding address.
Forwarding address
Entering a forwarding address is optional, but if you do enter an email address here, any replies to this campaign are forwarded to the address you entered.
Forwarded replies are sent to the address you enter from a Dotdigital system email address, rather than from the contact’s email address. To receive replies directly from your contacts, use a reply-to address.
If you add the same email address as a reply-to and forwarding address, you receive the reply twice. Once direct from the contact, and once forwarded by Dotdigital.
Campaign tags
Enter a tag or multiple tags to categorise your campaign, for example, Newsletter or Offer. Tags enable you to group campaigns together, allowing you to filter your reports and listings by campaign tags to view statistics for specific sets of campaigns.
Learn more in Group campaigns together using tags.
If you're assigning a tag that you've created previously, the autocomplete function matches what you enter with existing tags, to help speed things up and keep your tagging organised.
Link tracking
Select either Default or Campaign specific. Default settings use the tracking parameters set at account level. Campaign specific allows you to customise tracking parameters and values for the individual campaign.
Learn more
Additional campaign options
The campaign setup page allows you to access a few more features that you might want to use for your campaigns.
Split test settings
You can send multiple versions of your campaign out to a small section of your intended audience, and based on their interaction with the campaign, have the best version sent to the rest of your list automatically.
Read more in Split test an email campaign.
Campaign settings
Format
Choose whether you want to create an email campaign with both HTML and text versions, or create a plain text only version with no HTML content.
Type
Choose whether you want to create a standard or triggered email campaign. Triggered campaigns are used in automated processes, for example in programs or to send automatically on completion of a form.
Dynamic content
You can use dynamic content rules to determine what subject line and from name a contact should see, based on data you hold about them. For example, you might want to show a different subject line based on a contact’s geographical location.
Learn more in Insert dynamic rules and personalisation for subject lines and from names.
Encoding
By default, the encoding type for campaigns is set to Unicode (UTF-8). If you need to change this to use a different character set, for example Cyrillic or Chinese, then expand the Encoding drop-down menu and select the encoding type you want to use.
Learn more in Use different languages and alphabets in email campaigns.
When you're happy with all of your campaign settings, select SAVE & CONTINUE to start working on your campaign content and design.
Next steps