These steps will walk you through the process of creating your first message, but it's important to note that we won't cover every available option and setting that Listrak offers. This article serves as a beginner's guide for getting up and running quickly.
⚠️ If you access the authoring page via another method than the one listed below (e.g. creating an automated Journey Hub message), some settings listed below below may not appear.
Make sure you are on the list from which you want to send your email. Select the list from the list navigation near the headline of the page.
Navigate to Messaging > Email > New Email Broadcast.
Next, you will fill out the properties in the settings.
Message Settings
From Name: The from name indicates who the messages is coming from when a contact opens an email in their inbox. This field defaults to the "From Name" field in your List Settings, but may be changed.
From Email: The email will be visible in a contact's inbox as the email address of the sender. This field defaults to the email address you listed in the "From Email" field in your List Settings, but can be changed.
To stay in compliance with CAN-SPAM, include a working return email address as the from email or elsewhere in the email .
Replies will be sent to the from address unless you specify otherwise in the Reply-To Email field below.
Reply-To Email: This field designates an email address where a recipient's reply will be sent if different from the From Email.
This field is not required. Also, the suggested example text (example@domain.com) will not appear in the sent message if the field is blank.
Subject: Subject is a required field. It will be visible to recipients in most email clients prior to opening the message. It is helpful if your subject line contains a brief, yet interesting, relevant, and persuasive description of the message.
Click the smile icon to add emojis to the subject line. Emojis render differently depending on the email client, however all emojis in the menu will render across all Listrak-supported inboxes.
⚠️ Emojis are not read by screen readers so should only be used for visual interest, not to convey necessary information.
💡 Don't know where to begin writing a subject line? Check out our blog post Inboxes are Where the Opens Happen for more insights and ideas.
Preheader: The text that is entered here will appear in the inbox (if supported) to provide additional context for the subject line, but won't display in the message.
Campaign: This field groups related messages together in your saved email section and in your engagement analytics reporting. You have several options for this field:
Add a new campaign by typing the name of the campaign in the text field.
To add your message to an existing campaign, select the campaign name from the drop-down list.
Choose "Non-Campaign" if you have a stand-alone message that doesn't need to be associated with any other messages.
💡 All Non-Campaign messages will be grouped together for analytics purposes in a group labeled "Non-Campaign."
Test Email: By clicking Send Test, you can deploy a test version of your message to the email address in this field. Your test email will explicitly contain "TEST" in the subject line so you can easily identify them. This field defaults to the email address of the user of the account. You can change the address here, however, you are limited to only one email address at a time.
Use this feature to test how your message will render or look, in different email clients such as Google, Yahoo, or Outlook.
To send a test message to multiple recipients, use the review group setting. Read more about how to send a test in the Send Test Message to Multiple Recipients article.
When to Send
The When to Send section is used to schedule a message for a future time, send now, or create a recurring cadence for a message.
Once: The message will be sent one time only.
Immediately: The message will be sent as soon as you click Send To List on the confirmation page.
Schedule: Using the calendar and clock icon, you will be able to schedule a message for a time in the future. The based on will specify a specific time zone. It defaults to the time zone associated with your user profile.
Recurring: Recurring sends will be sent on a specific cadence.
Daily: The message will send every "X" number of days at a specific time in the specified time zone.
Weekly: The message will send every "X" number of weeks on a specified day and time in the specific time zone.
Monthly: The message will send every "X" number of months or on a specific recurring calendar (e.g. first Monday) and time in the specific time zone.
Send Time Optimization: This feature allows you to customize your message's time of send based on the contact's activity or time zone. By toggling Send Time Optimization to "yes," you will see two options to send based on either of these two criteria.
Contact's Activity: This option will send an email when the subscriber has been most active engaging in your emails, regardless of the scheduled time. All messages are sent on the date scheduled and the active time can be before or after the default time. The only exception is if you are not scheduling the message in advance (at least the evening before).
For Example: If the send time was scheduled for 9 am and the subscriber's active time is 7 am, the message would be sent to the subscriber at 7 am the day it was scheduled (not the next day).
⚠️ This type of send cannot be scheduled before 12 AM of the following day.
Contact's Time Zone: The time zone option allows you to send an email to subscribers at a specific time in their time zone. This is best used for campaigns that need to be delivered at a specific time.
💡 The time you schedule your message must be far enough in advance that the earliest time zone (UTC+14) for your send has not yet occurred.
Considerations for Send Time Optimization
A notification will be displayed if the scheduled date does not meet the criteria referenced above.
Labels will indicate that the messages were sent using optimized send time or by time zone. These appear on the schedule messages, message history, and message activity pages.
As the emails are being sent over the 24 hour time frame, an In Progress label will be displayed that links to the Progress Monitor.
Contacts without a known location will be sent the message at the scheduled send time-based on the time zone in your account.
The option to send a multi-pass to non-openers is disabled when the STO feature is turned on.
For examples of message send schedules and options, read Scheduled and Recurring Messages.
Advanced Message Settings
Soft Bounces: Soft bounces occur when the recipient’s mailbox is either full, disabled, or being queued for delivery at the target mail server. Use the drop-down to select an option to resend the message for a specific number (between 1 and 14 days) or leave it at the default value of Do Not Resend and the message will not be resent.
If the message is still bouncing at the end of the specified number of days, it will NOT be unsubscribed from the list.
Tracking (enabled by default): This enables Listrak to track conversions (purchases) from your emails. You'll be able to view analytics and report on the performance of your email campaigns.
If tracking is turned off, any link clicks will not be tracked. As a result, click-to-open rates will not be reported. Read more about the dashboard in Conversion Dashboard.
External Tracking Universal Email Key (SHA256): This setting allows you to append a universal email key to your link tracking to include an encoded value for a contact's email address. If enabled in the list settings this option will be turned on by default. You can enable or disable the email key for a single message by adjusting the toggle.
Pass-Along: When enabled the pass-along setting allows recipients to forward the email to colleagues, friends, or acquaintances by clicking (the uneditable) pass-along button inserted at the bottom of the message:
If the 'Send To A Friend' button is clicked, the following form needs to be filled out by the original recipient, it will appear in their default browser.
The email message will be forwarded to the friend's email address will the form contents in the header of the message, for example:
💡 A few things to note when using the Pass Along link:
When the pass along link is used contact-specific content, like items in their cart, will not be included in the message. Contact-specific content often references the profile fields that can be viewed in the personalization control panel.
The system will not allow the original recipient to forward the same message to an email address more than one time.
The email address of the person to whom the message was sent will NOT be automatically subscribed, but they have the option to subscribe.
You can update the design of the pass-along link message by clicking "Edit Message" next to the Pass Along setting.
Then select the HTML or Text tab to make your edits.
Click Update Pass-along text to save.
You can manually code the pass-along link and brand it according to your style. If you'd like to edit the message that appears in the heading of the "passed" message.
HTML Compression (enabled by default): Used to help shrink the size of messages by removing white space and adding the appropriate character set. Individual components (e.g. images) will not be compressed before compressing the entire HTML message.
💡 Gmail will clip emails larger than 102KB.
Override Frequency Cap: Frequency cap limits the number of messages a contact can receive during a period of time. Check this to override the frequency cap to send this specific email even if a contact has reached their cap. Learn more about how to configure a frequency cap.
Analytics Integration
Google Analytics
Campaign Name: Use to group emails by a topic, theme, purpose, etc.
Campaign Content: Use to differentiate similar content within a campaign.
Listrak Conversion Analytics
Campaign Type: Categorizes a particular message and attributes the revenue earned to this Type - default is set to "Marketing/Other Campaigns".
The Campaign Value is appended to each link in an email. You will see a trk_module value added to each link followed by a three-letter code based on the campaign type. Here are all the available types:
Anniversary: ANN
Back-in-Stock Alert: BIS
Birthday: BDA
Browse Abandonment: BNA
Low Inventory Alert: LIA
Marketing/Other: No value is appended
Newsletter: NEW
Post Purchase: PPS
Price Drop Alerts: PDA
Recurring Automated Campaigns: RAC
Re-engagement: REG
Refer-A-Friend: RAF
Replenishment: PCO
Sale/Special Event: SPE
Shopping Cart Abandonment: SCA
Sweepstakes: SWE
Transactional: TRA
Welcome Series: WEL
Campaign Name: Use to group emails by a topic, theme, purpose, etc.
Version: Use to differentiate multiple messages in a single campaign.
Custom URL Variables
Learn more about how these work by reading this article.
External Analytics
Learn more about how to set these up by reading this article.
💡 For more helpful tips on setting tracking parameters in your emails, check out the Guide to setting Email analytics parameters article.
Filtering
Here you have the option of sending to a segment of your list or to the entire list. If you do not modify these settings, you'll send your message to your full list.
Read the following articles to learn more about using these different options:
Personalization Control Panel
This is optional but allows you to do things like including each contact's first name in the subject line or body of the message.
Click on the personalization field you want to use in your email.
The code for the field will appear on the right-hand side of the screen.
Copy this code and paste it wherever you want to add the specific attribute. Since this is an HTML code snippet, you can paste it anywhere within the subject line or body of the message.
To learn more about using personalization fields and how to use the advanced settings, read Personalize Content with Segmentation Fields.
Template
Select from the dropdown list of templates that have been created in the template library. Click load to apply the template to the authoring section.
To create a new one go to Content > Content Templates.
⚠️ This feature must be enabled in the list settings page to display on the message authoring page.
Dynamic Content
Use this feature to add dynamic content to your HTML messages. Learn more by reading the Adding Dynamic Content to emails article.
⚠️ This feature must be enabled in the list settings page to display on the message authoring page.
Email Composition
You have the option of using Composer, HTML, and/or plain text editors. If a template was selected in the above section it will be applied to this section.
Read the following articles to get a closer look at each of these options for design:
Saved Messages
The message name defaults to the subject line, but you can rename it by typing in the field. To save a new message click Save As.
Once it has been saved you have to option to continue to Save your work or Save As, which allows you to save this message as another version.
Review and Sending
Send Review: Send a test message to every internal contact that is listed in the Review group. 💡 This needs to be configured on the List Settings page.
Spam Score: Select an email to show the spam details related to the contact. Learn more about Spam details here. 💡 This needs to be configured on the List Settings page.
Send Test: Deploy a test version of your message to the email address in this field. Your test email will explicitly contain "TEST" in the subject line so you can easily identify them.
Preview: Get a preview of the desktop or mobile design of the email. You can also show or hide images or select a contact to view the preview from their perspective, which is valuable when using any of the personalization features when building an email.
Message previews display the From Name, Email, and Subject/Preheader above the message body. Below is a representative example of how it is displayed in an inbox. This helps to preview personalized content within the subject or preheader by allowing users to select a contact.
There are two options for sending the message:
If the When To Send is set to Immediately, you have the option to Send To List. which will send the message to the ⚠️ entire list.
If you schedule the message to send in the future, the button changes to Schedule To Send. Clicking this will direct you to a confirmation page to review the settings, give you the option to schedule a multi-pass, or cancel. Then you can schedule the message to send in the future.
Congratulations! You've just created your first email message.