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 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. Learn more about Queries & Reports.

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 'Save and Continue' 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
• 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 Attributes or Tags

• You can select attribute or tags that need to be linked to the campaign. This is optional, if you don't wish to assign any, you can click 'Save and Continue'

Select Roles

• You can select contact and roles to the contact for the specific campaign. You can simply 'Save and Continue' if you don't wish to add any roles to the campaign.

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 click 'Save and Continue' to select your document.

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 and Continue' by clicking buttons at the bottom
• 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 you can continue by clicking on 'Edit' button which will take you back to the Send Email page, and click 'Send and Continue'
• Once you are happy with the summary, you can click 'Send test email' or 'Send'
• The test email 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. 
• 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