Creating and sending e-mails
Creating and sending e-mails in Outbound E-mail involves managing Contacts, creating Content and combining these into a Mailing:
- Contacts are the people you send mailings to:
- You add Contacts to Address Books. An Address Book represents a market segment or interest group.
- You target the intended audience of a mailing by creating Distribution Lists that contain a subset (selection) of your Contacts.
- Content involves the creation and classification of e-mail content:
- You create an e-mail as follows:
- Create Components—each Component defines a part of an e-mail (an e-mail fragment)
- Create a Page—a Page combines content (Components) with layout (Page and Component Templates)
- Specify Target Groups—when you add a Component to the Page, you can also specify which Target Group(s) the content applies to
- You classify content using Categories and Keywords. You create Categories and Keywords to:
- Classify Content—the primary purpose of Categories and Keywords in Content Manager is to classify and tag content (Components). Classifying your content helps you find related content.
- Classify Contacts—the secondary purpose of Categories and Keywords, which is most relevant to Outbound E-mail, is to specify Contact preferences and interests which you can then use to create Dynamic Distribution Lists and define Target Groups (categories of users) to match Component Presentations to these Target Groups
- You create an e-mail as follows:
- Mailings combine Contacts and Content. You can also Personalize a Mailing by adding personal details to the e-mail and tailoring the contents of an e-mail message to specific categories of users:
- Use Merge Fields (in template code or other text fields) to indicate where Outbound E-mail should insert Contact specific information such as name and surname.
- Use Target Groups to define categories of users (mail recipients) which you can then use to include or exclude certain parts of a Mailing (Component Presentations on an E-mail Page) to. Target Groups allows you to personalize the content of the Mailing to suit the Contact's profile: different versions of the same Mailing are sent to different Contacts.
- An E-mail Campaign allows you to coordinate a Mailing campaign by grouping several Mailings together and testing and sending them in one go. You can add Mailings from multiple Publications in an E-mail Campaign. An E-mail Campaign allows you to:
- Coordinate the sending of a single e-mail across multiple Publications
- Coordinate the sending of a series of e-mails consisting of, for example, a Start Mailing, Scheduled Mailing, Triggered Mailing and Reminder Mailing
When you have sent a Mailing, you can view the response of your Contacts to the Mailing and use this information to get an impression of who is interested in your e-mail and what kind of content interests them. You can use this information to create Distribution Lists, allowing you to send a more targeted Mailing.