How to create a personalized newsletter

Now that you’re familiar with how personalized newsletters work, let’s begin the process of creating one. In our example, we will be showing you how to, create an email program where your personalized email newsletter will be built, create an email where you’ll target your audience select a template and add personalized content. Use tokens to dynamically add personalized content to your emails. Tailor your content to specific audiences by using segments. Check your work, collaborate with your team and get ready to send, add a smart campaign to your email programs and track the success of your program. Customize and clone pre-built programs with your branding and messaging in the personalized email process.

First let’s log into your Marketo account and navigate to marketing activities.

We’ll start by creating the program that our personalized newsletter will be built in. We’ve already created a folder to hold all of our marketing initiatives for the current year. So we’ll right click the same folder and select new program. The campaign folder should be the same as the one we just right clicked, but a different folder can be chosen here if needed.

Name for this example, we’ll name the program 2017-06-EM-personalized newsletter.

For best practices, make sure all your naming conventions make sense to you, your company, and to anyone else using your Marketo Instance For program type choose email and for channel choose newsletter using the dropdown menu. This channel has its own built in workflow. A simple built process and easy to digest metrics with the reporting dashboard and finally, type in the description, for this example, give this the description of newsletter with content tailored to industry and click create.

Now you’ll see the control panel displayed with four areas of action needed to complete the email setup process.

With your personalized email program already created, we’re ready to start building the email. Back in your workspace, click the program, personalized email and head over to the control panel. Next we’ll define the target audience. So we’ll start in the audience tile. We have two options. We can either import a new list or edit a smart list to create the target audience. For this example, we’ll choose edit smart list. That will take us to the smart list tab with a blank canvas, here you’ll define the target audience for this email campaign. For this example, we are targeting people in Pacific region states. So next, we’ll search for state in the search field on the right. We’ll locate the state filter, drag it over to the canvas, then select California from the dropdown.

We’ll add another filter. So we’ll search job title in the search field on the right, locate the job title filter, drag it over to the canvas, then select is and marketing manager from the dropdowns. You can preview the target audience you’ve created back in the audience tile. Click the program name tab to navigate to the control panel. Once there click the refresh button to get the count of people who will receive your email and who are blocked. The blocked database includes people who have unsubscribed, those whose email address no longer exist or have been blacklisted. Now we’ll click new email on the email tile of the control panel. The template picker will open in a new browser window where you’ll choose the template you’ll want to use in your email design. Templates are unique across Marketo Instances, but for this example we’ll choose the mission control template and the product announcements category.

Give your email a name and description. For this example, we’ll name it EM-New-Feature-Promotion.

Enter the description data analysis tool set new features and click create.

The from name. Your subscribers will see this. So make sure it’s a from name they trust. The from email address. Your subscribers will see this address. So choose one that is appropriate. The reply to email address. This is where you want your email replies to go.

The subject line is your chance to entice your subscribers to open the email. So be creative, use best practices and limit your characters to 50. For this example, we will give it the subject of January newsletter. Be ahead of the game with our data analysis tool set. Here, we’ve skipped ahead and done some email design and formatting. With this simple email created we can move forward to the next step.

With your email design in place, we’ll add some personalized content using tokens. Tokens allow you to dynamically add content to your emails. You can include tokens that pull in a subscriber’s first or last name, their job title, company name, industry or select from a variety of others. Starting in the from field will add a token, click in the field, then click the token icon. In the insert token window, choose a token from the dropdown menu. For this example, we’ll select lead.Lead Owner First Name. Enter in a default value. Then click insert. Down in the subject line, we’ll also add a token. Click in the subject line and add some text, click the token icon. And in the insert token window you can choose a token from the dropdown menu. For this example, we’ll select lead.FirstName, enter in a default value. Then click insert.

Now we’ll add some tokens into the body content area of the email template. Select any editable area of the email template to open the properties for that specific section, click the gear icon in the content panel on the right then select edit.

We’re going to use the company name token here. So we’ll add a little text first. With our text added, we’ll place the cursor where we want to add our token then select the insert token icon. From the dropdown we’ll select company.CompanyName, and a default value. Then click insert, then save.

Next, we are going to use the industry token. Again, select any editable area of the email to open the properties for that specific section. Click the gear icon and the content panel on the right then select edit. We’ll add some text, place the cursor where we want to add our token. Then select the insert token icon. From the dropdown, we’ll select company.industry. Add a default value, click insert, then click save.

Another great way to tailor emails custom to your audience is through use of segments and dynamic content. With your email design in place we’ll add some dynamic content. To perform the task in this section, you must have a segment built in your database.

Click to access an editable body content area of your email template. Click the gear icon and select make dynamic. In the segment by window, select a segment. For our example we’ll choose the segment, industry. Then click save.

Now you’ll see the segment appear in the editor under the dynamic tab. To begin adding tailored content we’ll click healthcare, enter our content into the rich text editor. Then repeat the same steps for each additional industry.

With our personalized content added, we’ll click the preview button in the top right to see our content looks. To go back to the email template, click edit draft. As always, it’s best practice to send a sample email, to test your design and content before sending it out to your audience. In the top left of the editor click the email actions dropdown and select send sample. We recommend that you enter the recipient’s email address in the box at the bottom of the form rather than using any of the dropdown options. If you are sending to multiple email addresses separate them by commas and click send.

Now that you sent a sample email and your team has approved the email design and content you want to approve the content in Marketo to move to the next step. From the email actions dropdown, select approve and close. Back in your workspace, you’ll click the name of your program to view the control panel. In the schedule tile click the calendar icon to choose a date and time. When the first three steps are completed and each tile displays a green success check mark then you’re ready to finalize the program. In the approval tile click approve program.

It’s always best practice to add a smart campaign to track program success. In this case, program success is defined as someone who clicked any link in the email. We’ll show you how to set this up. First, right click the program name and select new smart campaign. We’ll name this status update influenced and click create.

Next, we’ll identify our audience. So we’ll click the smart list tab.

We want this smart list to include people who clicked a link in our email so we can change their program status to influenced. So we’ll search for the trigger titled clicks link in email. Then drag the trigger over to our smart list canvas. We’ll leave the field on the left as email is, then select the EM new feature promotion email program from the dropdown. When someone clicks a link in our email we want to change their program status to influenced. So we’ll click the flow tab, locate the change program status filter, and drag it into the canvas. The program filled is our EM personalized newsletter and in the new status field, we’ll select newsletter influence from the dropdown. This will tell us that those people who clicked a link in our email program have achieved success as we’ve defined it. Next, we’ll click the schedule tab and activate the smart campaign. Be sure to activate your success tracking smart campaigns before your emails are sent. So that all activity is captured.

Now you have a working personalized email program. When someone receives your newsletters they will receive content targeted and personalized specifically to them. If they click any of the links in the newsletter their status will be set to web content influenced. Marking them as achieving success in this program.

Marketo offers a library of prebuilt programs ready for you to customize with your own audience, targeting, branding and sending specifics. To import our newsletter program template, start on the marketing activities page, click the new dropdown and select import program. In the subscription dropdown select Marketo program library and in the import program dropdown select the BP-NL-YYY-MM newsletter program and click next. In step two, we’ll choose the campaign folder for this program and click next. In step three, we’ll review the program details and click import.

With your program template imported, let’s clone it so we can customize it to use for this topic. Locate the imported program in the left side panel, inside the folders you designated. Right click the program template and select clone.

For workspace select the workspace that will be using this program. For clone two, select a campaign folder and in folder, choose the folder where your marketing initiatives are organized. For our example, we’ll choose the folder, my marketing initiatives 2017. For name, we’ll call this 2017-06-personalized newsletter.

For description, we’ll say newsletter with content tailored to industry. Then click create. Once the program imports you’ll be able to see the assets and campaigns you can use to customize your marketing efforts. -