Creating an email campaign action

Mass Email in vega is a general term that includes EDM Appeals, eNewsletters, and any group emails. Essentially, you are engaging a wide group of supporters with a personalised communication in 3 easy steps: 

1. Define your recipients, you may be using a vega preset query, a custom query, or a static list but you should know the audience of your email before you start.

2. Create the document that will be sent as the email content.

3. Create a Campaign.  This key function enables you to create a structure under which various actions and communications can be created and results tracked.  

Once you have created these three components, you are now ready to send a mass email.

• Go to the 'Engage' section in vega and click the Campaign you would like to generate a Mass Email for
• Select a Campaign from the list of Recent Campaigns, which will expand the view
• Click 'New Action' and select action type 'Send Email'

Name & Schedule Your Email

• Select a 'Name' for your mass email, e.g. 'Christmas Appeal EDM' and the code could be an abbreviation 'CAEDM' or other code as per your organisation's coding structure. You can leave it blank if not needed.
• If your mass email is a fundraising appeal you may want to include a fundraising 'Target'.  If it is a group email or eNewsletter, you can leave the target at zero
• If you are sending your mass email right away, click the 'SEND' button. If you want to schedule your mass email for tomorrow or a week's time, select the 'Start Date' and 'Time'. This is a useful tool if you want to create communications in advance and send at the same time each week for example.
• If you click on the 'Advanced Settings' you may include additional settings for EDM Appeals, e.g. the 'GL Code' which you would like to attribute any financial responses
• Also select a 'Response Letter' you would like supporters to receive to thank/acknowledge their payment
• And the 'Response Bank Account' for donations generated from your mass email

Select 'From' Email Address

• Choose the sender's email address from the 'Service Email' dropdown list. Your Service Emails were created during Vega setup for staff that directly engage supporters.
• If a name does not appear in the dropdown list, you will need to add the service email by going to the admin page. 
• Click 'Save and Continue' to go to the next step or 'Save as draft'. 

Select Recipient List or Query

• Your recipient list for your mass email will either be a predefined saved 'List' or preset Vega 'Query' or a query that you have created and saved yourself. 
• Select 'Preset Vega Query or Saved Query' and you will see a list of queries to choose from or select 'Saved List' to choose from
• Click 'Show Recipients' button to confirm volume and correct query or list
• You may also 'Add recipients' or 'Remove recipients' from your Query or Saved List
• Once you are happy with your Recipient List, you can complete the final step by adding your template 

Select/Edit Email Content (Template)

• Click 'Document Template' to select the template you previously created for this mass email send (and make any final edits)
• Once you are happy with your email content, you may either 'Save Draft' or 'Send Email' by clicking buttons in top right-hand corner
• If you 'Save Draft' your draft email will be attached to your Recent Campaign as a draft, click to expand view and it will be listed
• When you are ready to send, click your 'Draft Email' and a popup box will appear 'Continue Editing', click this button which will take you back to the Send Email page, and click 'Send Email'
• You will receive a green confirmation message in the top right-hand corner and the sent email will automatically save to supporter's record under the 'Campaigns' tab

Send Test Email Option

• This new feature helps to test if the email/s associated with the campaign is correctly delivered to its recipient. Before using this feature make sure the options 1, 2, 3 and 4 are completed within the campaign. 
• Note: To be able to display and populate the data from the #Merge Tags# on this test we now require an existing list to replace the older functionality of typing a single email address in the recipient field.  

• You can add your own or your entire team's profiles in a single list using the Add to a list button under the Contacts dashboard or by creating a list using the Vega Queries function. We recommend assigning a distinctive name to this list so that you can easily find it in the drop-down list under the Recipient field.

If you find it challenging to select a test list while using the Send test email function you can use attributes and a Vega pre-set queries to test email campaigns as follows:

Create and assign an attribute

1. Create an Attribute from Admin - Add New Attribute
2. Give it a distinctive name usually 'Email Approval Group'
3. Assign the attribute to all the people who will test or approve the campaign

From the campaign action settings 

• Go to Section 3 and click on the drop-down arrow in Select a Saved List
• Click on Select a Vega Pereset or Saved Query
• Select 'All Contacts by Attribute (OK to Contact)'
• Select Type 'Email Approval Group' and click Go
• Adding List to Recipients notification will show on the page
• The number of contacts must show in the Total Recipients
• Click on Show Recipients to confirm this is the group you want to send the test to use the menus at the bottom of the screen if you want to remove or add contacts to the list.