Campaigns

This documentation will explain to you, step by step, how to create a campaign with follow-up messages (this feature is only in AcyMailing Enterprise).

The objective of this tutorial is to automatically send three messages to the user:

• The first one when he subscribes

• The second one two days after his subscription

• And a third message 30 days after his subscription

Create a campaign

• • Click on the menu AcyMailing -> Campaign

Campaign Menu

• • Create a new campaign by clicking on the button New

New campaign

• • Enter a name for your campaign (this name is only visible on the back-end so you can write anything you want)

  • Enter a description (this is only for ease of use when you handle several campaigns)

  • We won't activate the campaign for now and we won't attach it to any list neither so that we can create messages and then publish everything

  • Click on the button Save to save your campaign and return to the previous screen.

Save your campaign

Add 3 follow-ups to your campaign

• • Click on the little new icon to create your first follow-up message in this campaign

new Follow-up

• • You should now be quite familiar with this interface as it's the same as the Newsletter edition except that you can set up a delay on this e-mail

  • Like when you create a Newsletter, you can change your template by clicking on the Template button, you can add tags to your e-mail, etc.

  • Enter a Subject, the delay 0 (as we want to send it immediately), publish this e-mail and then click on the button Save.

First follow-up

• • We are back on our main Campaign interface but this time you can see a new follow-up has been added to the campaign with the delay 0.

Followup1 added

• • Repeat the same process and create two more messages with the delay 2 days and 30 days for your campaign.

3 follow ups added

• At this stage, we have a campaign which is not activated so no e-mail will be sent. This campaign contains 3 messages which will be respectively sent at the subscription date, 2 days after the subscription and 30 days after the subscription of the user.

• In this tutorial we created only 3 messages but you can create as many follow-up messages as you want, there is no limitation on the number of messages you can create in each campaign.

Attach the campaign to one list

We will now attach the campaign to one list so if the user subscribes to this list, the campaign will be triggered for this user. And if the user unsubscribes from that list, he will also be removed from the campaign.

• • Click on the name of your campaign

  • You will be redirected to a page where you can edit your campaign.

• • Attach your campaign to at least one list (you can attach it to several lists so if the user subscribes to at least one of the attached lists, the campaign will be triggered) and enable your campaign

Activate campaign

• Save your campaign.

• Your campaign is now activated with 3 follow-up messages. This campaign is attached to at least one list so if a user subscribes to your list, the campaign will be triggered and the three follow-up messages will be added to your queue of messages with different send dates.

• AcyMailing uses a cron system to automatically send the messages from this queue. So you have to make sure your cron task is configured properly otherwise this automatic process won't work and the messages won't be sent. We created an easy interface to let you create a cron task on our own server, just have a look at the tab Cron on your AcyMailing Configuration page and click on the button Create/Edit a cron task to enable it.

Your campaign is now ready, you don't have to do anything else, AcyMailing will do the job.

Test the whole process

Let's test what we just created.

So we will create a new user and subscribe him to the list "Download AcyMailing". As this list is linked to our campaign, the user will be automatically inserted in the campaign and 3 e-mails will be added to the queue with three different send dates. Then, AcyMailing will automatically send e-mails from the queue as it's triggered regularly by the cron.

• • Go to the AcyMailing Users page.

  • Click on the New button to create a new user

New user

• • Enter his name, e-mail address and subscribe him to one of your lists. In our example we will subscribe the user to the list "Download AcyMailing" as it's the only one we linked to our campaign.

User Subscribe

• • Click on the Save button

  • The user is now added to our list of users and subscribed to the list "Download AcyMailing". As this list is attached to our campaign, our three e-mails have been added to the queue for this user.

  • Click on the menu Queue and you should see three e-mails added for the user you just created.

Queue

• If not, please make sure your campaign is enabled and attached to one of your lists and try again.

• If the process works properly until this step but you don't receive your messages automatically, please make sure your cron is working properly. Remember that each message is sent because the cron triggers AcyMailing. So your first e-mail with 0 delay won't be sent immediately. It will be sent as soon as the cron triggers AcyMailing (usually maximum 15 minutes after the user subscription). If you want the first e-mail to be sent immediately on the user subscription and not have this delay, please create a welcome message in your list instead of this first follow-up. The welcome messages are not sent if you create the user from the back-end so you may want to test the process directly from your form subscription on the front-end.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does happen if I create a new follow-up message while my campaign already started?

If you publish a follow-up, you will see this message...

Message published

There are two links enabling you to add this new follow-up in the queue for your existing users, either for all of them or only the ones created less than X days before (X days is the delay of your follow-up).

For example, I already have an active campaign and many users are already in it. If I create a new follow-up with a delay of 20 days and click on the first link, then this follow-up will be added in the queue for all users subscribed less than 20 days ago to my campaign (so that they will receive it 20 days after they subscribed to the campaign). Users subscribed more than 20 days ago won't receive it in that case. If I click on the second link, all users will receive it regardless their subscription date... so if it's been more than 20 days, they will receive it immediately and if they are in the campaign since less than 20 days then they will receive it 20 days after their subscription.

What does happen if I change the delay of my follow-up message?

If you change the delay of one of your follow-up, you will see this message...

Changed delay

If this follow-up is already inserted in the queue, you can decide to update the delay for all current users.

That way, if I switch the follow-up delay from 4 days to 3 days and click on that link, current users will receive the message 3 days after their subscription instead of 4.