Build a scheduled email program

You’ve decided you want to send an email. You’ve created your message and now you’re ready to set up the program in Marketo. In our example, we’ll be showing you how to create a Campaign Folder to keep all elements of your email program organized in a Campaign Folder, create an email program to send out emails, create AB test and track your results all in one place with an email program. Define the target audience by deciding who you want to receive your email communications. Create an email from a template by using pre-designed templates to jumpstart your design. Design and add content to an email by using images, text, color, and calls to action. Send a sample email. Preview and test your email content before you send it out to your audience. Schedule and approve the email for sending by choosing a time to send your email communications. Track program success by adding a Smart Campaign to your email programs.

To get started, log into your Marketo account and navigate to the Marketing Activities tab. First, we’ll be creating the Campaign Folder. The Campaign Folder keeps all of the elements of your email program in one place so your Marketo workspace stays organized. All programs must be created in the Campaign Folder, so we’ll do this first. Click the new dropdown under the Marketing Activities tab and choose New Campaign Folder.

Give it a name. For best practices, use your company’s naming convention standards for all your folder and program names. For this example, we’ll name our Campaign Folder My Marketing Initiatives 2017.

Provide a brief description for this folder, such as, All eCommerce related marketing automation activities for 2017. This description is viewable in Marketo only and is optional. Now, click Create.

Next we’ll create an email program. Right click the Campaign Folder you just created and select New Program. The Campaign Folder should be the same as the one you just created, but you can choose a different Campaign Folder here if needed.

Name, for this example we’ll name the program 2017 Email Spring eCommerce Promotional. For best practices, use a year and month followed by the channel or campaign type, then offer or content name. Overall, just make sure all your naming conventions make sense to you and to anyone else using your Marketo instance. For Program Type, choose Email. For Channel, choose Email Send. The Email Send option should automatically populate when you select Email as the Program Type. This Channel has its own ready built in workflow, a simple build process and easy to digest metrics with a reporting dashboard. And finally, type in the description. For this example, give this the description of. All promotional content for the spring season of 2017, and click create. Now you’ll see the Control Panel displayed with four areas of action needed to complete the email setup process.

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. Marketo recommends you always start by filtering out people who should not receive your marketing messages. This would include people who have unsubscribed themselves from your emails, among others. For this example, search for Member in the search field on the right. Locate the Member of Smart List filter and drag it over to the canvas. Fill out the first field with Person as in. Next we’ll select the Marketable Person Smart List in the dropdown. We are targeting people in Southern Region states, so next we’ll search for State in the search field on the right. We’ll locate the State filter and drag it over to the canvas. We want to add multiple values so we’ll click the green plus sign. In the Multiple Values Chooser window select Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee, then click Ok.

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’re going to create an email from an email template. First 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 Urbanista template in the eCommerce category. Start out by giving your email a name and description. For this example, we’ll name it Winter Outerwear Sale 2017. Enter the description. Move winter products through clearance initiative. 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’ll give it the subject of Winter Outerwear Sale. After all this information has been completed, you have the option to collapse this section so you have more room to design your email.

Let’s create your design. Templates contain image and content modules that can be customized to match your brand. For example, the header content can be customized with a different logo in links. If you want to add a different logo, select the existing graphic, click the gear icon and click edit.

Here you can use an image you have previously uploaded into the Design Studio, select an image from your computer, or use an image from a URL. To change the links in this header select the link content, click the gear icon and click edit. Here you can change the text, the typeface, the type size and many other options. The same can be done in the rest of the content modules throughout the template. Just click to select an area of the template to reveal the module properties and edit the content to fit your brand and message. After you have completed your design and reviewed each section of the template, you can view how your email will look on a standard mobile device by clicking the mobile icon.

Next, we will send a sample email. It’s important to test your design and make sure you are happy with the content before sending it out to your audience. In the top left of the editor, click the Email Actions drop down 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’ve 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 drop down 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 all steps are complete and each tile displays a green success check mark, then you’re ready to finalize the program. In the Approved tile, click Approved Program. If you don’t take this step, the email won’t be sent.

It’s best practice to always add a Smart Campaign to your email send programs to track program success. In this case, program success is defined as someone clicking any link in the email which shows that the email has influenced them to take an action.

We’ll show you how to set this up. First, right click the program name and select new Smart Campaign. We’ll name this Influenced and click create.

Next we’ll identify our target audience so we’ll click the Smart List tab. We want this Smart List to include people who click the 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 Spring eCommerce Promotional 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 Spring eCommerce Promotional, and in the new status field we’ll select Email Send > Influenced from the dropdown. This will tell us that those people who clicked the link in our email program have achieved success as we’ve defined it.

Finally, 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. -