HaloCRM Guides

This initial release of Mail Campaigns in Halo will allow you to queue up templated emails to a Distribution List via the Mail Campaign Module. The future roadmap for this module contains open rate tracking, link clickthrough tracking, unsubscribe functionality and tracking as well as rule based Campaigns such as those that might be used for nurture campaigns.

Enabling Mail Campaigns

To create a Mail Campaign, first ensure you have turned on the Mail Campaign module (found in the main configuration page), and the Distribution Lists module(Found in Configuration > Users).

Fig 1. Enable Mail Campaigns module

Fig 2. Enable Distribution Lists Module

After the modules are enabled they should appear in your navigation menu (left hand side). If they do not you will need to log out and back in for the change to take effect. If they are still not visible you may need to add then into your screen layout profile. To see which screen layout profile you are using head to your profile (by selecting your icon in the top right) > preferences tab > screen layouts, under 'Navigation menu layout' you can see which layout you are using. To change the profile head to configuration > advanced settings > screen layout profiles > change entity to 'Navigation Menu' > select the layout you are using > button layout. Here you can see which modules are set to appear in the menu, if either distribution lists or mail campaigns are not visible here, add them in. If the button layout is set to 'default' both modules should appear. 

Fig 3. Navigation menu button layout

Ensure your agent account has the relevant permissions to create both entities, this will be inherited from a role or set within the agent profile. To check your permissions head to configuration > teams and agents > select your profile > permissions tab. Here the permissions highlighted in figure 4 will need to be set to 'Read and Modify'. If you have just changed your permissions settings you will need to log out and back in for them to take effect. 

Fig 4. Required agent permissions

Now you are ready to set up a campaign. 

Creating a Campaign

Go to the Mail Campaign module, and click new. Give your Campaign a name, and select create in Halo and a type of "Blast". Other types of Campaigns will come in later releases.

Fig 5. Setting up the Campaign

Save the details and more tabs will become available.

Email setup for the campaign

To add an email to the Campaign, go to the Email Setup tab, and add an email.

Fig 6. Email setup for campaign

Here you can design an email or apply a template for the email, set the subject and when it will send. The status of the email will determine whether it sends or not when the campaign starts, any emails that have a 'draft' status will not send out even when the campaign is started. When the status of the email is 'Ready' the email configured here will be sent out when the campaign is started. 

The 'Send type' field determines when the email is sent the options are as follows:

When the campaign starts - This will que the email to send out as soon as the campaign starts 

At a specific date and time - This will allow you to choose a date and time to send the email. The email will be sent at this date/time after the campaign has started. This allows you to configure various emails to be sent at different times, on the same campaign, so you only need to start the campaign once. 

A set time after the campaign starts - Allows you to set a countdown of days/hours/minutes for the email to be sent. This allows you to start the campaign in advance of the email being sent. 

Note: If an email is set to send at a specific time and this time is in the past the email will send as soon as the campaign is started.

The subject and body of the email can either be created within the email setup in the mail campaign, or can be determined by an email template. To use an email template choose which email template you would like to use in the 'email template' field, you will be able to choose from the custom email templates you have in your instance, standard email templates cannot be used here. 

To create a new email template to use head to configuration > email > email templates > change entity to custom templates > new. Here you can design the email that will be sent out. By default the rich text editor is used to design email templates, however we also have a HTML designer tool that can be used. To use the designer head to configuration > advanced settings, change 'HTML Template Editor Type' to 'HTML' designer. 

Fig 7. Enable HTML designer 

Once enabled you will be able to toggle the editor on/off on email templates as seen in figure 8.

Fig 8. Email template using HTML designer

Once you have created the template you need save it, head back into the campaign choose a template and click 'apply template'. Once applied you will be able to see a preview of the template. If you are using the HTML designer you will an additional option for how to preview the template (in the bottom left), this allows you to preview the template is desktop and mobile format. 

Once you are happy with the email, set the Status to 'Ready'. All emails must be set to 'Ready' before the Campaign can be started. 

Add distribution list

Now head to the 'Settings' tab, here you need to select the distribution list that the campaign will be sent out to. For information on how to create/edit a distribution list see our guide here. You can also set the from and reply to address for the campaign. 

Note: If any users in the distribution list have the setting 'Never send Marketing Emails (Unsubscribed from all)' enabled on their user profile, they will not receive emails from the campaign.

Now you are ready to start the campaign, go to the overview tab and click the 'Start Campaign' button. This will queue the emails to send. If the emails are set to send straight away, this cannot be undone. Emails set to send in the future can be cancelled using the 'Cancel Campaign' button. Once a campaign has started, is complete or cancelled, it cannot be edited but details of the campaign can still be viewed. 

Please note, once a Campaign is cancelled, it cannot be re-started.

Using Metrics

You will notice in the 'Overview' tab of the campaign there are some statistics.

Fig 9. Statistics for the mail campaign

Total Opens- The number of times the email(s) in the campaign have been opened

Total Unsubscribers - The number of recipients who have unsubscribed from this mail campaign

Total Clicks - The number of times a link in an email body has been clicked

Unique open rate - The rate at which emails in the mail campaign have been opened, this excludes the same email being re-opened. 

Unsubscribe Rate - Percentage of recipients who have unsubscribed to the email

Click rate- Percentage of users who have clicked a hyperlink in the email 

In order to track the open rate of an email in a Mail Campaign, you must add the variable $-BEACON to the email body (without the hyphen). You can add this anywhere in the email body. It will not show anything to the recipient, but will allow you to know if they have opened the email or not. Please note that this relies on the recipient allowing images within their email client.

Any hyperlink added to the email body will also track whether the recipient has clicked on this specific link or not. If a recipient does not allow images in their email client, but clicks on a link, it is inferred that they have opened the email, making the open rate more accurate.

All information related to the tracking of 'Opens', 'Clicks' and 'Unsubscribes' has been added to a new "Metrics" tab for each Mail Campaign. 

When a recipient opens or clicks a link, this can be added to their 'User Activity Feed', subject to the "Show a Users Mail Campaign activity in their Activity Feed" setting being enabled from within Configuration > Mail Campaigns, see figure 10 for this setting. 

Fig 10. Show a Users Mail Campaign activity in their Activity Feed setting

The 'Metrics' tab under the mail campaign detail the metrics in more detail.

Open metrics - shows the detail of each user that has opened the email

Click metrics - Shows the number of times each URL has been clicked

All clicks - Shows each time a URL was clicked, when and who by

Unsubscribe metrics - Show each time a user unsubscribed from the campaign and when 

These metrics allow you to track trends in your campaign, assisting you in improving the effectiveness future campaigns. 

History

The 'History' tab in the campaign shows when the campaign started/ended and each time an email was sent out. 

Allow Users to Unsubscribe from Mail Campaigns

In a Mail Campaign email, include the dollar variable $-UNSUBSCRIBELINK to generate a personalised link to allow the user to unsubscribe themselves from that Mail Campaign or all marketing emails. A user can also do this from their settings page on the Self Service Portal. You can also manually unsubscribe users on their user account page, under the preferences tab. 

Cancelling/Completing Campaigns

If a campaign is started prematurely it can be cancelled using the 'Cancel campaign' button within the campaign. This will prevent any emails that are due to be sent out in the future from sending out, any emails that have been set to send 'When the campaign starts' will still send out as they will already be queued to send. Once a campaign is cancelled it cannot be edited but can still be viewed. 

Similarly once a campaign is complete it cannot be edited but can still be viewed so you have access to the metrics. Any completed/cancelled campaigns will remain visible in the 'Mail Campaigns' module until they are deleted. To delete a campaign use the 'Delete' button in the top left corner of the campaign.