|
<< Click to Display Table of Contents >> Advanced Emailer - Email - Introduction |
  
|
|
<< Click to Display Table of Contents >> Advanced Emailer - Email - Introduction |
|
Advanced Emailer's primary channel of communication is Email.
Emails can be created to be used within campaigns and other list activities. Emails provide a means for direct interaction with potential customers, clients, and contacts.
Email Types
Template Emails
Template emails are transactional by default and can be used in campaigns, form submit actions, point triggers, etc. These Emails can be sent to the same contact as many times as needed. These cannot be sent to a contact outside of another Advanced Emailer component except when sending an email directly to a contact in which the content is cloned (template-based emails sent directly to a contact are not associated with the template email itself and thus stats are not tracked against it).
Campaign (Broadcast) Emails
Segment (or Broadcast) Emails are marketing emails by default. Segments are assigned to the email which will determine which contacts receive the communication.
Note : Each contact can only receive the email once - similar to a mailing list.
Email Formats
Emails can be created in both full HTML as well as basic text format to be delivered as required to contacts.
Email Delivery
Emails are delivered using the method defined by the system administrator. If User is a system administrator for an organization, then users will need to add the email protocol for the company to use. Advanced Emailer integrates with any email service provider which offers SMTP mail servers as well as several distinct services such as Mandrill, Gmail, Sendgrid, Mailjet, Postmark, Sendmail and Amazon SES.
The system can either send emails immediately or queue them to be processed in batches by a cron job.
Immediate Delivery
This is the default Email delivery method. Advanced Emailer sends the email as soon as it is instructed to by the triggering action. If Users expect a large number of emails to be sent, then utilizing the Queue is recommended. Sending emails immediately may slow the response time of Advanced Emailer if using a remote mail service since the system has to establish a connection with that service before sending the mail. Also attempting to send large batches of emails at once may hit User's server's PHP limits or email limits if on a shared host.
Queued Delivery`
This method is recommended if Users plan to send a significant number of emails. Advanced Emailer will store the email in the configured spool directory until the command to process the queue is executed. Set up a cron job at the desired interval to run the command:
php /path/to/Advanced Emailer/bin/console Advanced Emailer:email:process --env=prod |
Some hosts may have limits on the number of emails that can be sent during a specified timeframe and/or limit the execution time of a script. If that's the case for Users, or if Users would simply like to moderate their batch processing, they can configure batch numbers and time limits in Advanced Emailer's Configuration.
Email Fields
Users have access to any number of contact fields to be used in the emails. These can be easily placed within emails and will be automatically replaced with the appropriate text once the email is sent.
Tracking Opened Emails
Each email sent through Advanced Emailer is tagged with a tracking pixel image. This allows Advanced Emailer to track when a contact opens the email and execute actions accordingly.
Note : This technology is limited to the contact's email client supporting HTML and auto-loading of images. If the email client does not load the image, there is no way for Advanced Emailer to know if the email was opened.
By default, the tracking pixel image is added at the end of the message, just before the </body> tag. If needed, one could use the {tracking_pixel} within the body content token to have it placed elsewhere.
Tracking trackable links in emails
Clicks on each link in an email are tracked and those clicks count can be found at the bottom of email detail page under Click Counts tab.
Unsubscribing
Advanced Emailer has a built-in means of allowing a contact to unsubscribe from email communication. If using the builder, simply drag and drop the Unsubscribe Text or Unsubscribe URL tokens into your email. Alternately, insert {unsubscribe_text} or {unsubscribe_url} into your custom HTML. The unsubscribe text token will insert a sentence with a link instructing the contact to click to unsubscribe. The unsubscribe URL token will simply insert the URL into your custom written instructions.
Online version
Advanced Emailer also manages to host an online version of the email sent. To use that feature, simply add the following as URL on text to generate the online version link {webview_url}.