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Creating and Sending an E-mail Campaign

Introduction

Using the features found on the Email tab, you can send e-mail blasts to all or some of the Athletes in your event quickly and easily. Before you set up and schedule an e-mail campaign, you'll need to verify and possibly enter a new Reply To address for your event. 

Verify/Edit the "Reply To" Address

We've recently removed the necessity to create and verify a sender e-mail through our e-mail provider. Now, when a new Org is created in CT Live, a Sender e-mail is generated based on the Org name (orgname@events.athlinks.com). The Sender e-mail cannot be changed, but the Reply To address can. Reply To Addresses should always be verified before each e-mail campaign is sent, and only one Reply To address can be set at once.

If you have an e-mail scheduled to be sent, you won't be able to edit the Reply To address until that e-mail has been sent. This is to preserve the integrity of scheduled e-mails. 

To change the Reply To address:

  1. On the E-mail tab of your event, click the Edit reply to button. 
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  2. In the window that appears, enter the new Reply To address, then click Save & Close.
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  3. The new Reply To address will now be listed as the one you entered.

Before we move on, there are a few important things to be aware of with e-mail addresses:

  • If you change the Reply To address on one event in an Organization, all other events in that Organization will be changed to reflect that. This doesn't affect scheduled or sent e-mails.
  • You can set the Reply To address, schedule a campaign, then change the Reply To address to something else and schedule another campaign as many times as necessary. Just remember to verify the Reply To address every time you schedule an e-mail campaign. 
  • The Sender E-mail cannot be edited or changed.

You can now create a new E-mail Campaign using your new Reply-To e-mail.

 

Creating a Campaign

Add a List

  1. Navigate to the E-mail tab and then click + New Campaign button in the upper right corner for the tab.
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  2. If you'd like to specify a language for the e-mail, you may do so from the Language dropdown.
  3. To determine who the e-mail will be sent to, click the Create List button in the To field.
  4. In the window that appears, enter a List Title title. This is for your own benefit to differentiate between multiple Campaigns.
  5. Select a value in the Select Recipients from field. Options are Race, Registration Choice, Bracket, Wave, or Import. Import allows you to upload a separate CSV file of athletes or non-participants. 
    If you import a recipient file, you can include only e-mail and name, but using only email is fine. If you only import e-mail addresses, you will not be able to use placeholders for Name or Coupon Code.
  6. You can choose to Sort Recipients based on any of the Races within the Event.
  7. If you like, specify a Date Range that will exclude entries that registered/were added before or after the specified dates. Check All Available to send to all recipients regardless of date.
  8. The next step will confirm the number of recipients, the date range from which they will be gathered, and how they will be sorted.
  9. Click Complete & Save to finalize the list.

You can remove or review a list at any time.

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E-mail Details

Now fill out the rest of the details of the e-mail.

  1. From: The email address the athletes will see the e-mail as coming from. If you have only one verified Sender e-mail, this will be populated by default. Otherwise, click the dropdown to select the desired Sender address.
  2. Subject: The subject line of your e-mail
  3. Send at: The date and time you would like this email to be sent.
  4. Template Builder: Enter the body text for the e-mail blast here. There are a few simple tools available for lists, alignment, tables, etc. You can change the header and icon images by clicking on them and selecting a new image from your PC. Images should be 600 x 100 pixels and 90 x 90 pixels for the banner and icon respectively. If you want to add images to the body of the message itself, you can do so with the image tool in the template builder. You'll need to host the image online somewhere. For more info on using the image tool, click HERE.
  5. You can use the [%first_name%] placeholder to personalize the e-mails by pulling in the first name field for each entry in your E-mail List.
    Please note that the Name and Coupon Code placeholder format has changed. Name is now [%first_name%], and Coupon Code is now [%coupon_code%]
  6. If you need to attach any additional files to your email, it's best to save that file as a PDF and host it online in Dropbox or Google Drive as a publicly shared file. You can then simply insert the share link into the body of the email.
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  7. Once all information is entered, click Save & Schedule.
    If any red errors appear after completion, make sure to correct, and click Save & Schedule again.
  8. A confirmation will be displayed upon completing successfully:

Example Email:

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Unsubscribing from E-mails

E-mail recipients may unsubscribe from any e-mails sent from SendGrid verified e-mail addresses. 

Unsubscribing works on a per-sender basis. If a user chooses to unsubscribe from an email campaign, it will unsubscribe them from all emails under your org associated with that Sender. Therefore we recommend keeping your Senders relevant to the nature of your email campaign. For example, use a different sender for campaigns that are providing important race information to registered athletes for your event vs. encouraging new athletes to register for an upcoming event.

Users can unsubscribe from the emails in the footer at the bottom of the e-mails they receive.

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