Create an Email Campaign from Campaigns Page

An email campaign is a type of campaign that can be sent to users that are in your program and have a valid email address, regardless of registration status. Email campaigns are great for inviting users to download the mobile app and register, highlighting content (we have a lot of templates centered around content!), and other engagement or adoption strategies.

You have several options for creating and sending email campaigns through Studio: 

• Schedule a Smart Campaign while creating or editing a post on the Planner page:
  • Smart Campaigns can drive users to engage with a specific post
• Initiate a user invitation on the Users page
• Create an email campaign on the Campaigns page as outlined in this article:
  • Create a new email campaign
    or
  • Copy an existing email campaign

Permissions Note: Topic Manager access to Connect is an optional program setting. This article only applies to Topic Managers in your program if your organization has elected to enable this functionality. Please contact your program administrator or Firstup Customer Success Manager with any questions about feature availability for your program.

How to Create a New Email Campaign from Campaigns Page

1. Sign in to Studio.
2. Open the Campaigns page under Connect.
3. Click the Create Campaign button in the upper right-hand corner of the page.
4. Select Email and choose a campaign from a template, including emails such as User Invitation or Newsletter.
   
   Topic Manager Note: Which templates are available to you will depend on your program configuration, and may not include all templates available to other Studio roles.
   
   
5. Type the name of the campaign and click Continue.
6. Customize the HTML version of the email.
   • Subject line - you can adjust the subject line text. Leverage variables to automatically pull in values like the program name or user first name.
     
     
     
     
   • Preview Text - you can set the preview text that users see in their email inbox. If left blank, the email program will pull text from the body of the email. 
     
     The number of characters displayed by email clients varies widely, but typically 1-3 lines of text or under 50 characters should be a good target for a fully visible message.
     
     

     If you leave blank preview text...	If you enter preview text in Studio...
     ...users will see an auto-generated line:	...users will see the text you wrote out:

     
     Body of the email - click into any text field in the email editor to adjust the text including the font color, font size, bold, italic etc. You can also add links to your emails using the hyperlink button. Note: Some templates will have limited options for editing.
   • Content - if the template includes content cards, click into the content area to adjust what content will appear to users.
7. Adjust the Text Version to match the HTML.
   • At the top right of the email editor, select Text Version. The Text Version loads for a user instead of the HTML if the HTML Version runs into any issues or the user has a preference for text only. We are not able to automatically update the Text Version after edits to the HTML Version, so you will need to update the Text Version manually.
     
     
8. Select your audience. Target your email campaign to specific groups or snapshots by clicking on Send To.
   • You can send a campaign to all users, a single group or snapshot, or multiple groups.
     • Topic Manager Note: You can always send a campaign to users subscribed to your assigned topics. If enabled for your program, you may also be able to send a campaign to all users targeted by your assigned topic(s).
   • After completing your selection, the user count in the Send To section will update to reflect the number of unique users in your selected group(s).  

   • Each user will only receive one communication. We only send one email per user even if you target more than one group and a single user is a member of multiple groups.

     
      
9. Click Deliver to schedule your campaign for a later date and time or add a recurring schedule to send it more than once.
   
   The time you select will be set in the same time zone as your device. The campaign will be sent out only once, at the time selected. For example, if you choose 9am Eastern the campaign will go out at 9am Eastern/6am Pacific.
   
   
   
   
10. (Optional) Tag your campaign with an existing initiative, if relevant. 
    
    
    
    
11. Select Sender to choose from any Contact Addresses available in your program. You can see a preview of the selected sender's name, email address, and physical address before saving. To learn more about configuring Contact Addresses, review the article Customize the Sender and Reply-To Address.
    
    Topic Manager Note: Which senders are available to you will depend on your program configuration, and may not include all senders available to other Studio roles.
    
    
    
    
12. Click Create Test Email to test the campaign. Type in your email or the email of a colleague and click Send. This will send one time immediately without activating or saving your campaign.
    Note: Test emails of the invitation campaign will have an inactive "Get Started" or "Join Now" button. This is to prevent invitation metrics from being impacted by tests.
13. Save, Activate, or Send the campaign.
    • Save Draft will put the campaign under drafts for further review later. Even if the campaign has been scheduled, it will not be sent out until the campaign is activated.
    • Activate or Send Now will send the campaign at the scheduled time (immediately or at a later time).
      
          

Content Email Options

Content emails include the Newsletter templates (Grid, Minimal, Stylized, and Branded Banner), and the Content Email template. 

Emails that feature content can be customized to show specific amount of dynamic content, or even manually selected posts. 

Hover over the content area of the email template until you see Click to change content selection and click to open the Post Selector.

Dynamic Posts

Dynamic posts will automatically pull content from your program into the email template when the campaign goes out to users. You can choose to personalize the dynamic content or not.

If Personalize Content is set to yes, Firstup will pull in content per-user as follows:

• From topics the user has access to. This includes content from topics the user is not following. Note, we will not show targeted content that the user does not have access to.

• Published within the last 1-7 days, depending on the volume of available content.

• User has not interacted yet.

• Some posts that would not display well are excluded, such as posts with no image or posts missing a title.

• Note: if there is no content meeting the above criteria, then we fall back to Featured content the user has access to that was published within the last 7 days. This may include content the user has interacted with, posts with no image, etc.

If Personalize Content is set to no, all users will see the same content. You can specify rules for what content to pull in:

• Post Type - set to pull in any post or restrict to featured posts only.
• Number of posts per email - how many posts to pull into the email. The email may include fewer posts than specified if very few posts match the selected filters. The number of posts will also vary based on what the user has access to and what content they’ve already interacted with. 20 post maximum. 
• Select posts from - Specify topics to pull posts into the email. If no topics are selected, the email will randomly sample from all topics. 

Specific Posts

Control exactly which content will appear in the content email by using specific posts. You can select up to 20 posts to appear in your newsletter emails. 

Hover over a post to reveal the blue sidebar and select the checkmark to select a post. The blue sidebar will remain visible to indicate that the post is selected. To deselect a post, hover over the content again and click the X button. As you select posts, you’ll see the count above the post list update to indicate the number of posts you’ve selected.

Click Preview Selected to see just the selected posts and re-order them if needed. To re-order posts, hover over the content to make the blue sidebar appear and click the up or down arrow. Click Save when you're done.

How to Copy an Existing Email Campaign

1. Sign into Studio.
2. Open the Campaigns page under Connect.
3. Click the ellipsis button next to an already created campaign under one of the status tabs - Active, Paused, Completed, or Draft.
4. From the options menu, select Copy.
   
   
5. A new Campaign Editor will open with an exact replica of the campaign you cloned. Any text, images, or content customized in the previous campaign will be copied over to the new campaign. The campaign will automatically be named “Copy of [Original Campaign Name].”
6. Finish editing and send your campaign by following steps 5-11 above.