The Online Shop Designer Blog

The following guidelines have been prepared to help get you up and running with your first email marketing campaign as quickly as possible. If you need further information please refer to the detailed user manual.

Access

URL: http://www.tosd.com.au/sendstudionx/admin/index.php
Username: yourusername
Password: yourpassword

If you don’t know your Username and Password contact TOSD.

Overview

The Email Newsletter Marketing centres around “Subscribers”, who join a “Mailing List”, which is in turn assigned to an “Email Campaign”. The Email Campaign is the actual mailout.

Subscribers can be added manually, or via a web site subscription form. Subscriptions are automatically managed, meaning that users can subscribe and unsubscribe (from the link in every newsletter) without reference to yourself. In this way your mailing list is essentially self managing.

Templates

When you create an email campaign the newsletter is based on a template. This makes it easy to prepare the newsletter and also ensures that it goes out in a form that can be correctly read by the majority of email applications. Usually there are one or more templates available for your selection when you create a new campaign. If your business requires additional templates contact TOSD.

First Steps

1. Add the initial subscribers.

• Access admin (see above)
• Go to Subscribers / Add subscribers to add customers one at a time,  or Subscribers / Import subscribers to import a mailing list in bulk. If you need assistance with this contact TOSD.

2. Test subscription form

TOSD will have set up a newsletter subscription form on your web site. Add at least one subscription (e.g. your own details) to this form to check its operation. Once you have submitted your details the system will email you a confimation link. This must be clicked on to complete the subscription. It is a security precaution to ensure that a real person is signing up as opposed to an automated spambot.

3. Create an Email Campaign

• Select Email Campaigns / Create Email Campaign
• Give it a name e.g. Update Dec ‘07 or whatever
• Select a template
• Replace the template content (text and images)with your own (this will not overwrite the template)
  • Note: at the top left of the editor icon bar there is an icon that allows you to view and edit the newsletter in a full screen. When you have finished editing you will need to click the same icon again to return to the view with the “Save” buttons at the bottom of the screen.
• Save the Newsletter at intervals while you are working on it.
• In the ‘Email Validation’ section click on each of the two buttons to check your newsletter for words that may trigger SPAM traps and to ensure that it presents correctly in each of the common email clients listed. Both these checks are important to ensure the maximum open rate for your mailout.
• When it is done send a test preview to your own email address.
• Save to finish when you are satisfied.

4. Suggestions
Before you send your first mailout ask TOSD to check it.

It is also recommended to have a test subscriber list that has your own email address and details as a subscriber. This enables you to do a ‘real’ test sending. Much better to find a problem this way that send out a campaign to thousands of subscribers on your main list only to find out when it is too late that it had a problem. With email marketing testing is vital.

5. Send the email Campaign

• Select Email Campaigns / Send Email Campaign
• The first screen gives you the option to select some of your subscribers based on certain criteria. If you want to sent to all subscribers on your list click [next]
• Select the Email Campaign (the one you just created)
• Select the Firstname field (usually ‘First name’ from the pull down box to personalise the email.
• Uncheck (deselect) “Embed Images” – this is important.
• Click [next] then [Yes, send this campaign]

The sending is scheduled. It is not immediate. The actual time it will be sent is indicated onscreen.