How to create a Date Based Email Campaign

A Date Based Email campaign can be set to trigger an email based on a special date or dates that you have entered into your contact records. This could be anything from your contact birthday, anniversary, contract renewal dates and more. The only "standard field" that we have pre-loaded in your account is the "Date of Birth" field. In addition to this standard field you can create any number of "Custom Date Based Fields".

Step 1

In order to capture important dates you will first want to create your "Custom Date Field(s)". Below is a screenshot that will show you where you can go in the system to create these custom fields.

Step 2

When you click on the " Add Custom Field" you will see the following pop-up open. You will want to make sure that you choose the "Date" option before saving your custom field.  After you add all of the custom date fields that you wish to track you are now ready to begin entering this information in your contact records.

Step 3

You are now ready to begin entering your dates so that you have the information you need to begin setting up your Date Based Email campaigns.  You can either enter this information individually in each contact record or you can use the Import Wizard to re-import data and update these fields for a large number of contacts at one time.

Below are 2 screenshots that show you the Custom Date Field that was just created above. Where to enter it and how it displays in the Contact record.

  Congratulations! You are now ready to create your first "Date Based Email Campaign".

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Step 4

From the Marketing module you are now ready to " Create a new campaign". The screenshot below shows you where you will go to create this new campaign.

Next you will see the first screen appear where you will name your campaign and choose type of campaign that you will be creating. In this case, you are creating a "Date Based Campaign" as shown below.

Step 5

We now need to choose the list we want the system to use to search for our date(s).  We will ALWAYS want to choose the list labeled " BC Contacts (DO NOT DELETE)" list.  This is THE main list that synchronizes all marketing contacts and will contain all the date information that we need to trigger this campaign.  After we have chosen the list then we will click on the "NEXT" button in the upper right hand corner of the screen to advance to the next step in the process.

Step 6

After you have chosen the template that you would like to use as a starting point to design your email campaign. Carefully go through and update text, insert new images as needed and when the customization is complete, you will move the next and final step to review the email before you send it out.

It is important to use a bit of imagination here when looking at these templates. We always encourage customers to look at the overall layout or framework of the email. Do you like the way it looks overall in terms of how it is organizing and displaying photos and how it is creating different? If you like the overall layout and flow then use this template as your starting point. It is important to understand that you can always change photos, and even delete photos wherever needed. Because of this like a puzzle where you can move around and even remove some of the puzzle pieces as needed.

Finally, you can change the color palette to meet your exact color requirements. These templates are highly customizable so again simply choose the overall layout that you like best and then begin customizing your design.

Step 7

In this step of the process there are a number of things you can review in preparation of launching your email campaign.

• Review and modify the subject line if necessary.
• Make adjustments to the filters you are using to ensure you have just the right segment of contacts that you wish to include in your email campaign.
• Choose the tracking options that you want enable.
• You choose when to have this email automatically triggered based on a particular date that you are syncing from your contact records.
• Send a test email to yourself to ensure that it is formatted correctly and will display exactly the way you envisioned it.
• Finally, you can preview how your email will look when opened from other email programs including: Gmail, Yahoo, Apple Mail, Outlook (various versions), iPhone, and iPad.
   

  

  
  Congratulations!  You are now ready to save this campaign and let the system do the rest.  never again will you miss sending out important information on an important date!!