Creating a CRM email campaign in my organization

The CRM Email Campaign tool lets you easily send marketing email campaigns to your organization’s contacts. Email campaigns are sent to contacts based on custom reports created in your organization. This allows you to send targeted campaigns, resulting in more effective marketing by reaching the right audience with the right message.

Please note that the tool is specifically designed for sending promotional emails, helping you streamline your marketing efforts and reach your contacts more effectively. Regular contact reports, contact loyalty reports, and contact retention reports are all eligible for your email campaign's "To" list. Contact registration reports are not eligible to be used in CRM email campaigns.

The following article will walk you through the process of sending your first CRM email campaign. Further down, you may learn about available campaign metrics.

1. From your organization's dashboard in RR CRM, navigate to the lefthand menu and select "Email campaigns".

2. From the email campaigns landing page, click the green "+ Create campaign" button.

3. You have now entered the create campaign flow and been brought to the Settings step. Notice that there are four steps to CRM email campaign creation (Settings, Template, Content and Summary), denoted by breadcrumbs.

Enter a name for the campaign (optional) and an email subject (mandatory). If no campaign name is entered, the email subject will default as the name.

4. Next in the Settings step, select a verified sender and write in the sender name that will be visible to recipients. The available senders are those created in the event dashboards comprising your organization. Use the dropdown to select a sender email (email address) and watch how the corresponding sender name auto-populates. You may overwrite that sender name if needed.

Greyed-out fields indicate that no verified senders exist in your organization's events. As a Race Roster user, you may have previously created and verified email senders, but if that occurred in events outside of the organization where you are creating this campaign, you won't be able to use them. To create a sender, follow these steps in the article Adding a sender for email campaigns.

If you prefer to continue the campaign creation process, you may add the sender later.

5. Finally in the Settings step, select the Contact list(s) to whom you want to send the email campaign. By default, the system will deduplicate emails across any selected report(s) so that an email address only receives one email in their inbox. Yes, that means that if two contacts in the same report have the same email address (e.g., a wifeandhusband@mail.com), only one email will reach that email inbox. Note that the contact registration report type cannot be targeted. 

6. The next step in the email creation flow is Templates. Here, choose whether you would like to create your email from scratch or start with a Race Roster default template. 

7. Once you have selected the template you want to use, you are ready to build your email by proceeding to the Content step. Here, creating beautiful emails has never been easier with our integration of the Unlayer email builder. In this stage, you can: 

Drag-and-Drop to Add Content Blocks:

• • The builder uses a simple drag-and-drop interface, allowing you to select any content block from the sidebar and drag it into your design.
  • You'll find blocks like buttons, images, text, and more that can be quickly added to your email.

Add a Button Block:

• • Drag the Button block into your email. You can customize the button's text, colour, size, and URL link.
  • Once added, click the button to edit its properties. You can link it to any URL or adjust its style to match your design.

Add a Text Block:

• • Add a Text block to include any content like headings, paragraphs, or lists.
  • Click on the block, and you can edit the text directly. You can change the font, size, colour, and alignment to make it perfect for your campaign.
  • Bonus: You can also insert merge tags in the text block. These are dynamic placeholders like the recipient’s first name or other personalized info, which will be automatically filled in when you send your email. Simply click the merge tag button and select the data you want to insert. This includes:
    • First Name - {{FIRST_NAME}}
    • Last Name - {{LAST_NAME}}
    • Email Address - {{EMAIL}} 

Insert Images:

• • Drag an Image block into your design to add photos, logos, product images, or artistic designs.
  • Click the image block to upload an image file from your computer or choose from available images on the platform. Resize it as needed by dragging the corners.

8. The final step in the email campaign flow is the Summary stage. Here, you will verify all the information from the previous steps are correct and your email is good to go. Green checkmarks indicate the information provided is accepted while a red X indicates that the field requires attention before proceeding with the send.

Note: Before you can send an email you must check the box verifying that you are acting under anti-spam legislation.

If you are satisfied with the information you have provided and feel your email is ready to be sent to its intended audience you can now click the blue “Send your campaign" button. A confirmation modal will open for you to confirm you are truly ready to send. 

Congratulations, you’ve sent your first CRM email campaign!

Metrics

Back on the email campaigns landing page, your campaign will be listed with "Sent" as its status. To view information about its delivery rates, you may click the Actions "..." button and select "View metrics" from the dropdown.

On the email metrics page, for the specific email campaign, you will be able to see the number of emails that have

• been delivered
• bounced (A bounced email couldn't reach the recipient's inbox. This happens if the email address is invalid, the inbox is full, or server rejects it.)
• been rejected (A rejected email wasn't delivered because the recipient's server refused it. This could be due to spam filters, server rules, or other security measures.)
• resulted in a contact becoming unsubscribed
• failed to send (A failed email couldn't be sent due to an invalid mailing address. This could be due to a missing email address or the email has unsubscribed from your mailing list prior to the send.)

Click the blue "i" icon to learn more information about select categories.

Use the dropdown menu on the top left to switch to view a different campaign's metrics. You may also visit this page directly from the lefthand menu.

If you have any questions about creating a CRM email campaign or analyzing its metrics, please contact our support team via director@raceroster.com.