Whenever you send an email campaign, Direct Mail automatically creates a version of your message that can be read in a web browser and shared online. This is a really handy way to share your campaign via social media, add it to your website, or share internally with colleagues. Here’s how:
Direct Mail’s email automation features save you time and energy, letting you focus on the core of what makes your business unique. There are a number of automations available in Direct Mail, but this blog post focuses on one in particular: autoresponders. Autoresponders make it easy to send email automatically to people on your list based on certain events and criteria that you specify. One common example that you may be familiar with is a birthday or anniversary email. We want to introduce you to another use case: sending automated follow-up emails to people who engage with your newsletters.
Sending follow-up emails can be a great way to provide relevant information or support to a lead or customer in a timely manner. For people who express an interest in your newsletter (by clicking a link, responding to a poll, etc.), you may wish to send them additional information, schedule a call or meeting, or just thank them for their response or interest. We explain how to set up this kind of automation below.
Let’s cover what you need to get this automation up and running:
Let’s skip over #1, under the assumption that you already have your mailing list set up in Direct Mail.
Let’s talk about #2. Make sure that your email newsletter includes links (or a feedback poll) that people can click on or interact with. It could be a link to a page on your website, social media post, video, or other content that your subscribers may find interesting and click on. The click will be what triggers the automated follow-up email to go out.
Lastly, create the follow-up email that will be used in step #3. Just like any other email in Direct Mail, you can include any kind of content you like (text, images, videos, links, etc.) and use mail-merge tags to personalize your message for the recipient.
Now that you have all the pieces in place, let’s create the automation. By the time we’re finished, you will have sent your newsletter and configured an automation that sends out follow-up emails to the people who click your newsletter links.
The first thing to do is schedule delivery of the newsletter that you created in step #2 above. You don’t want to send it out at this step, but you do need to schedule it to send at a future date (to give you enough time to set up the automated follow-up emails).
This is done by clicking “Send” in the toolbar, then clicking the “Schedule” pop-up menu and choosing “Schedule for Later” (if you know when you want to send it) or “Save as Draft” (if you’re not sure when you want to send yet).
Choose “Window > Autoresponders” from the menu bar, or click the Autoresponders button in the toolbar.
Give the autoresponder a name— this is just for your reference, your recipients won’t see it.
Next, click on the pop-up menu and select the follow-up email that you created in step #3 above. This is the email that will be sent out automatically.
Next, choose the event that will trigger the follow-up email. In this case, choose the option titled “Clicking a link in an email campaign”
Next, choose which email campaign you want want to watch for clicks. This should be the newsletter campaign that you just scheduled to send. You can pick and choose which links in the newsletter will trigger the follow-up email. You may choose all of them, or just the links that are relevant for your follow-up email.
If you want to delay when the follow-up email is sent, or adjust other advanced options, you can do so by scrolling down to reveal those settings, but the defaults should cover most cases.
The final step is to click the Start button in the toolbar (look for the “play” icon ▶️). Congratulations 🎉, your autoresponder is up and running!
When your newsletter campaign is sent out, the autoresponder will watch to see who clicks the links that you specified. As soon as the link is clicked, your follow-up email will be sent automatically—even if Direct Mail is not running on your Mac at the time.
Just like regular email campaigns, you can review the performance of your autoresponder campaign in the “Reports” tab in Direct Mail. You will notice some additional date-based filtering options to help you evaluate recent performance versus overall performance. The “Recipients” section of the campaign report will show you who has received the autoresponder thus far.
Don’t worry, your autoresponder won’t send duplicate follow-up emails. They’ll receive the follow-up email after the first click, and subsequent clicks will not trigger an email.
Your follow-up email cannot be edited while the autoresponder is running. If you need to make changes, pause the autoresponder (in the Autoresponders window), make your edits, and then resume the autoresponder.
Autoresponders run indefinitely until you pause them (in the Autoresponders window). Note that autoresponders will be automatically paused if you remove your project from the cloud, or transfer ownership of your project to someone else.
When you schedule your email campaign to go out, there is an option to instead “Save as a Draft”. A draft campaign is simply an email campaign that is scheduled to go out, but that doesn’t have a send date specified yet. You can send a draft campaign at any time by selecting it in the Reports tab and clicking “Deliver Now” or “Schedule Delivery”.
No. Only “URL” links can trigger autoresponders. The other kinds of links (email, telephone, and anchor) are not tracked by Direct Mail and do not show up in the campaign report.
Spend your time focusing on the core of your business, and let Direct Mail’s email automation features take care of the rest. Our Autoresponder feature is a great way to automatically follow-up with subscribers in a timely manner as they engage with your newsletter content. Nurture leads, grow sales, build customer relationships, and more, all without lifting a finger.
Was this email helpful? How likely are you to recommend our service to a friend? What topic do you want us to cover in our next newsletter? There’s no doubt that getting timely, honest customer feedback is essential to the success of any business. That’s why we are so excited to share with you a new feature that lets you quickly and easily find out what your subscribers are thinking. It’s called Polls, and it’s available now in Direct Mail version 6.0, a free update for everyone.
Direct Mail’s built-in template editor already lets you add a variety of content blocks to your message: image blocks, text blocks, social media blocks, etc. We’ve now added an additional block: the Poll block. You add a Poll block to your message when you want to ask your subscribers a question.
Like other blocks, you can modify the appearance of your poll (layout, alignment, font, color, etc.), but you also specify a list of responses that your subscribers can choose from when answering. We have a number of commonly used responses built-in, but you can write your own, too. Here are some examples:
You can add as many polls to your email as you need.
When your subscribers receive your email, they can respond to your poll right from inside their email app. Each poll response is just a simple link. When they click the link, they are shown a web page thanking them for their response and directing them back to the email.
After you send your email campaign, poll results show up right in the campaign report. You’ll get a summary of the top response (and, if applicable, the average of all responses), and can drill down into a histogram of all responses. Poll results are also available on the go, in Stamps, as well as in web reports.
We hope our new Polls feature will help you unlock valuable feedback that your subscribers are just waiting to provide! Polls are easy to incorporate into your existing messages, convenient for subscribers to respond to, and results are available instantly in your campaign reports. If you have any questions, you can consult our in-depth help article on the topic, or contact our customer support team any time. We’d love to know what you think, and how you plan to use this new feature!
Congratulations! You have made it nearly all the way through 2020, a year like none other! The holidays are now upon us and, you know what that means: turkey, gifts, and overflowing inboxes. As you prepare your year-end marketing, here are some tips on how Direct Mail can help you break through a crowded inbox, boost sales, and grow your customer base.
Direct Mail comes ready to go with a number of holiday-themed templates. They look super-sharp on mobile devices and large screens, and are easy to customize (like all our templates).
You can find these templates in Direct Mail by clicking the “Choose Template” button and searching for Glimmer, Merry Pines, Slopes, or Quattro—or browse the other options available in the template gallery.
The end of the year is chock full of special occasions and opportunities to celebrate—more than just Thanksgiving and Christmas. Consider theming additional email campaigns around these upcoming holidays in November and December:
Consider starting your campaigns a week in advance (or earlier, if your customers average time to purchase is longer) with a follow-up scheduled for the day of. You might also consider sending a thank you email post-holiday.
It is possible to send too much email. Bombarding your subscribers can lead to unsubscribes or even spam complaints. A good rule of thumb is to not increase your typical email frequency by more than 3× during the holidays.
It’s going to be a crowded inbox, so stay away from bland, generic (or spammy) subject lines. Here are some ideas:
Adding a personal touch to the subject line almost always improves your open rate. Direct Mail makes this easy. If you want to include your recipient’s first name in the subject, just include the mail-merge tag “[first name]”. Like this:
You’re not limited to first names, of course. It can be any piece of information that you have stored in Direct Mail for a contact (e.g. occupation, city, last purchase, etc.)
Aim for a ten words or less in your subject line, and limit the number of punctuation or special characters so it doesn’t appear spammy. Using an emoji can help, but try and stick to just one. Also, note that some devices can’t display emoji, so it’s best to use emoji as an enhancement, instead of a replacement for words.
Questions are naturally engaging. Consider using a question as the subject line in order to draw your subscribers into the content.
Featuring your offer prominently in the subject line can be a good way to stand out in a crowded inbox. According to NRF and IPC, online shoppers top considerations are:
Here are some subject line examples for your inspiration:
The easier you can make it for your subscribers to purchase (or take some kind of action), the better. After all, the holidays are just as busy for them as they are for you. Make your call-to-action prominent and easy to find. Direct Mail’s built-in buttons work great for this, and are available in a number of styles.
Here are some sample calls to action you might consider (and some interesting psychology behind it):
Struggling to come up with ideas for your email campaigns? Get some inspiration from this gallery and the suggestions below.
Now that you’re ready to rock your campaigns, it’s time to put Direct Mail to work for you! Here are a couple of how-to articles to level-up your Direct Mail skills:
Sending Your Email Campaign at the Perfect Time. Learn how to schedule your campaigns to send even when your computer (or you!) are asleep, so that they arrive in your recipient’s inbox at the perfect time.
Search and Segment Like a Pro. Learn how to find and segment portions of your mailing list so that you an send targeted campaigns, or perform bulk editing operations.
You’ve spent all day perfecting your latest holiday email marketing campaign. The copy is perfect, the subject line irresistible. Now all that’s left is waking up at 4 AM to send it so that your subscribers across the country see it first thing in the morning. Wait, what?
Of course you don’t want to wake up early just to send an email. With Direct Mail, you don’t have to!
You can schedule your campaign to send at any date and time, even if Direct Mail is closed or your computer is turned off when that time arrives. Here’s how:
After you click Send, Direct Mail will queue up your campaign to send at the time you specified. If you switch over to the Report tab, you’ll see your campaign waiting to send.
No problem. In the Reports tab, just click the “Cancel Delivery” or “Reschedule Delivery” buttons.
If someone unsubscribes in between the time that you queue up the campaign and the delivery date, Direct Mail will automatically skip them when the campaign is sent.
If someone new subscribes to your list in between the time that you queue up the campaign and the delivery date, they will not receive the campaign (but will still be added to your list for the next campaign). For this reason, it’s best to not schedule campaigns too far in advance, especially if you are expecting a bunch of new subscribers.
