Your content for an optimal introduction to EMMExclusively from us - for you
This is an offer from us to familiarize you with AGNITAS E-Marketing Manager (EMM) so that you can send your first mailing promptly. This content will help you to find your way around EMM at the beginning.
Only basic functions are discussed in this tutorial. We recommend that you follow the steps as an example.
Mailing & target groups easily explainedFor a quick and smooth start to EMM
Information about:
- Creating your first mailing
- Sending a mailing
- Setting up your content for specific target groups
- The creation of mailing lists
Overview of all contents
Mailing
Standard methodCreate a mailing with HTML
To do this, click on the New button at the top right of the dashboard. Select the Create new mailing option.
EMM offers various methods for this:
Standard Mailing, E-Mail Creator, SMS or Import Mailing.
The standard method is particularly suitable if you prefer to design your mailing by entering HTML code or if you use a fixed basic structure for your newsletter.
AGNITAS E-Mail Creator (EMC)Create a mailing with the drag & drop editor
To do this, click on the New button at the top right of the dashboard. Select the Create new mailing option.
EMM offers various methods for this:
Standard Mailing, E-Mail Creator, SMS, Post or Import Mailing.
Use the Email Creator to create emails using the drag & drop modular principle.
First, enter the basic information for your mailing under General settings. The general settings are only visible in EMM. Here you can give your mailing a name so that you can find it again later. The name will be displayed for you later in the overview or in reports.
You can enter information about the target group or content in the Description field. The Advertising slider is activated by default. It prevents personal response data from being collected if a recipient has objected to tracking.
Important: Only change this setting if you have to prove the response data for legal reasons, for example with double opt-in mail.
The media types indicate the type of messages you will be sending.
It is best to leave the setting for format unchanged for the start.
You can also select a different character set.
If you do not want this, leave it at Unicode (UTF-8).
EMM also allows you to measure the opening rate of your emails. This can be done at the beginning or end of the mailing. You can also choose not to record the opening rate.
The archive is used to add your mailings to specific archives. This makes it easier to maintain and search for many mailings and offers additional options for statistical analysis.
You can set the planning date in the sender settings.
It appears in the calendar as long as the mailing has not yet been scheduled and supports you in planning your newsletter.
Here you can also enter the subject, pre-header, sender and reply-to email address.
Important: You can freely choose your sender data.
However, if you use DKIM, make sure that the email domain matches your DKIM signature. Otherwise, this will be interpreted as a spam signal.
Under Targeting Settings, select the mailing list to which your mailing is to be sent.
You can further restrict your mailing list in the Target groups section. Add one or more target groups if required. Once you have entered a target group, you can press Calculate and immediately see how many recipients would currently receive your mailing.
The advanced settings are not relevant for this tutorial, but we would like to explain them briefly.
Edit frame content: The underlying HTML construct of a standard mailing can be adapted here and the text version of the mailing can be edited.
Tip: To insert the web view of your mailing, simply use the agn tag for forms instead of a link so that the link is personalized correctly.
Important: Do not forget the unsubscribe link in your mailings.
You can also insert this with the agn tag for forms. You can use agn tags to create dynamic placeholders that you can then fill with content in the tab.
Tip: You can design the placeholders so that they are only displayed in the mailing if content is entered. The placeholders are used for both the tags and the HTML version.
Note: Since not everyone can receive HTML emails, we also advise you to store a text version. This also increases deliverability.
Confirm your entries with Save and create mailing. You will find the save button at the top right of EMM.
After saving, you can now see a preview. Additional tabs will also be displayed for you to try out.
Standard methodContent creation with HTML
In the content overview, you can see all placeholders, also known as content modules , on the left-hand side. Switch between the HTML and WYSIWYG editor as required.
Attention: The WYSIWYG editor is only available in the standard mailing.
Tip: The text modules are sorted alphabetically. If you want the order of the content to correspond to the display in the mailing, simply number your placeholders consecutively. To edit, click on the corresponding line.
AGNITAS E-Mail Creator (EMC)Content creation with the EMC
In the EMC, you will see all modules, also known as building blocks, on the left-hand side. You can insert these into your mailing using drag & drop.
To edit, simply click on the relevant building block in the mailing. You can add further modules to your mailing at any time using drag & drop. On the right-hand side, you now have several options for editing, depending on the specific building block.
Individual salutations can be inserted using an agn tag.
Excursus: You will find all standard salutations in the Salutation types menu. You can also create your own here.
Use the agn tags to specify whether you want to address recipients by their first name and/or surname.
You can find an overview of all tags in the manual – in Appendix A.
Tip: Pre-configure your content modules with agn tags so that you only have to insert them for your future mailings.
In addition to the content, you also define who should be able to see it in each module. You only need to enter something here if the content does not apply to all recipients of your mailing. You can add further content for other target groups at any time and create as many target group contents as you like.
Note: The target group content is processed from top to bottom during mailing generation. If your target groups overlap, then the smallest or most important target group must be placed first, followed by the next largest and so on. You can easily change the order in the editor using drag & drop.
You will then see in the overview that this module contains different content for the selected target groups.
On the right-hand side you will see a real-time preview of your mailing. This is already displayed as your test recipients will receive the selected mailing. It is best to check all target group content via the preview in the tab.
In the EMC, you can easily assign your content to target groups. When editing a building block, you can change which target group should see the block in this form at the top right.
Note: Content for different target groups can also be superimposed. You can recognize this by the border and the numbering.
Target group settings in EMC, using the example “Logo image”.
Further functions of EMM
If you would like to send attachments, add them here.
In the “Links” tab, you can optionally make further settings for the links in your mailing.
You can find out more in the online help.
In the “Preview” tab, you can check your finished mailing again for recipients with different target group characteristics.
If you are satisfied with the preview, it is advisable to send a test mailing to selected recipients. You can send this to the email addresses of your choice in the Testing section.
Under delivery information, the system shows you how many recipients you would send your mailing to.
Now set the date and time for dispatch under Dispatch settings. Further settings are optional.
Among other things, the Extended settings allow you to set what should happen after sending.
The status of your mailing indicates which phase of production your mail is in (you can find out more about this in the manual). After clicking on Send, you will be asked a security question. Confirm this once again with Send.
Your mailing is now scheduled for dispatch. Don’t worry – you can cancel it at any time up to one hour before dispatch.
Under Heatmap you can see which regions of your mail were most interesting for your customers and adapt your next mailing based on this. The regions are highlighted in different colors.
Your recipients
Target group creationThe correct mailing to the correct recipient
In email marketing, you often need target groups, e.g. for mailings, content or evaluations.
Open the Target groups menu item. Here you can see all target groups that have already been created.
If you have a large number of target groups, the filter will help you to find the right one quickly.
You can mark a target group that you need particularly often as a favorite. This way, it will always be displayed at the top of overviews and lists.
Settings
First, we assign a name for the new target group. The name will be displayed in various places in EMM.
The description helps you and your colleagues to keep an overview. Even after a long time, you will still know the purpose for which the target group was created and whether it is still needed.
If you do not always want to write to all test recipients for a test mailing, you can filter them with a target group.
Use the For admin and test mailing button to select the target groups that you want to use for test mailing.
Target group definition
You can use search rules to filter your recipients as you wish. A list of all available fields is displayed. The available fields are your created profile fields from the recipients in EMM.
Use the operators to specify how the field is to be searched.
Tip: All operators are explained in detail in the manual.
In the last field, enter the search criterion – i.e. what is to be filtered.
You can combine as many search rules as you like.
If the recipients must fulfill both criteria, then you need an AND link. If only one of the two criteria is to be fulfilled, use the OR link. If you want to work with AND and OR links in your search, you must nest them with rule groups.
You can easily reorganize your rules by moving them to the new location.
Our example:
All recipients who have a Gmail address and have selected a unique salutation (male or female).
Gmail address owners need the following rules:
- Operator:“email”
- Condition: Like (indicates that the following criterion is present in some form)
- Search rule: the mail ends on gmail.com → *gmail.com
- You need an OR link for the gender.
Now enter the value 0 for “man” in the first search rule for gender.
We then select the value 1 for “woman” for the second search rule for gender.
Create an import profile
- An import profile helps you with recurring imports.
- It saves you time and prevents errors.
- Click on the menu item Import profiles under Data management.
Here you can see all the import profiles created so far.
- Click on the New button to create a new import profile
- First assign a meaningful name
- Under Mailing lists, you specify the mailing lists for which the addresses are to be imported.
- Under Media types, you specify which medium the recipient receives, e.g. email, SMS or post.
- You can also enter several email addresses to which import reports and import errors for this import profile should be sent.
Now configure how your import file is structured.
- Start with the file type you want to import
- You then specify which separator you have used to separate your data. This is queried in general and in decimal form.
- The character set is particularly important.
This determines whether umlauts and special characters are displayed correctly. The default values can often be used for this.
If you have any questions about the selection options, we recommend consulting the manual or contacting your customer advisor. - Select the date format to be used for the export of your fields of type “Date without time”. This is required for further processing.
- The Zip password option is only necessary if you want to import a password-protected zip file.
Now define how EMM should import/assign your data.
You use the mode to define how the data is processed:
Here you decide how EMM should process fields that have no content in your import file.
- Use the key column to define the check criterion.
This determines whether a data record already exists or needs to be created. - Email is selected here by default.
- If you select “Yes” for Duplicate matching, EMM prevents an email address from being imported more than once.
- You can also select the standard mailing format for your new recipients.
- For pre-import promotions, please contact your customer advisor.
- After the import, you can also decide here whether a DOI action should be started for new recipients.
Please note: If you import an address that has previously unsubscribed from the newsletter, it will remain unsubscribed for legal reasons and only the profile data will be updated.
- If your file does not already contain EMM internal values for the gender, you can add these in the Setting for gender field.
- Now click on Save.
- The Manage fields menu item then appears.
- If you already have your import file to hand, you can select and upload it, otherwise simply use a sample file that has the same structure as your future import file.
- In the next step, you specify the profile field into which the respective column of your file is to be imported.
Tip: You can also add database columns that are not contained in your import file and have them automatically filled with a default value.
- Once you have assigned all the fields, either click Save or, if you have already uploaded your import file, click Save and start import.
Now we come to setting up your mailing lists.
Mailing lists are a practical tool for sending emails.
They combine several email addresses and thus enable a larger number of emails to be sent.
Note: Mailing lists are also used to manage opt-ins and registrations. However, these are not transferred to other mailing lists. This means that if a reader unsubscribes from newsletter A, they will still be in newsletter B.
Mailing lists can be easily created in EMM:
- Enter a meaningful name.
- Add a description.
- Specify the sender email of your mailing list.
- Define to which email address the replies for emails in this list should be sent by default.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Our team is always ready to make your work easier.
Congratulations! You can now create mailings, assign them to target groups, create content specifically for these target groups and cancel the mailing if necessary.
Use the knowledge you have learned and design your first campaign in 30 minutes.