This article is only applicable to users with access to the full Marketing module of Spotler CRM
The actions described in this article can only be performed if you have other marketing systems connected to your CRM. If you do not have access to this module, the steps in this article may not be relevant for you.
Overview Emails
From the Marketing menu, click Emails to display the summary grid of your past emails. If you have not sent any emails yet, the table will be blank.
As with all your CRM data tables you can click on any of the column headers to sort the data by that column. Depending on your security settings, you can choose to see My Emails, My Group’s Emails or All Emails from the dropdown menu above the column headings.
The Active Only checkbox will limit the list to just your active emails (i.e. the emails that you can use in your campaigns).
The search bar above the table allows you to search all the displayed fields: entering ‘Adwords’ will search for all emails containing the word ‘Adwords’.
To view or edit an email, simply click on the email name to open it. Click the checkbox to select one or more emails and new editing icons will appear at the top of your page, e.g. delete, export and more options.
Columns
You can change the view of your email grid to fit your requirements. To change the columns displayed on the table, click Columns and select/deselect the columns you wish to show. You can change the order of the columns by “dragging and dropping” from the title bar. If all the columns available don’t fit your screen size a “+” box will appear on the right of the table – click this to open and view all the data.
Creating a new email
You can create a new email either by clicking on Add or Add from template. By clicking on Add, you can create an email (and a new email template) from scratch. By clicking on Add from template, you create an email based on an already existing template.
Step 1 Create a new email
To create a new email without an existing template, click on Add. The Email Designer will open in a new screen. Our Simple and Advanced Marketing tools include an easy-to-use Email Designer to create professional looking emails without the need of a software developer or designer. Using simple “drag and drop” controls you can edit all the elements of the design, with no limitation to your creativity.
Step 2 Email Designer
The left side of the screen will show you a preview of the template and on the right side is where you create the email by using the different tabs of the Email Designer.
Settings tab
When creating your emails, we recommend you start in the Settings tab to log the email and template properties, but you can return at a later stage to do so.
Template and email properties
- Template name: default setting is your campaign name
- Active yes/no: an email needs to be Active in order to be sent
- Subject: make sure it's compelling as it’s the first thing the receiver sees in their inbox
- Sender name: this will most likely be your company name
- Sender email address
- Reply to email address: The system defaults to the user’s email address but these can be edited
- Notes: you can make references to the details of the email
- Enable view online link: enable or disable the view online link in the email template
- Edit mailing preferences: lets you create a landing page for unsubscribing. Read more on how to edit mailing preferences in this article.
Build tab
Under Build, you create the content of your email. Click, drag and drop the items you want into the Email Designer. If you wish to remove a section, simply click on it and this will display a small “X” in the top right corner. Click on the “X” and this will remove the section.
When you add a section to your design, clicking on it will open the appropriate control panel on the right to edit this particular section. Within each section there are further design options with tabs for Content, Style, and Settings.
The Text elements within the sections can be formatted in much the same way as you would a Word document. In the Content tab, you can change the font family, colours, font size and alignment, add bullet points, headings, set fonts to bold, add underlines and italics.
If you wish to add a link to a web page, highlight the text you wish to link using your cursor then click on the link icon. Add your link URL to the pop-up box and save.
You can personalise your email by using the data from your CRM database. For example, you might want to address the recipient’s by their first name, or include their company name, refer to products they have previously purchased, or other data you have collected. To do this, position your cursor where you want the personalisation to appear and click the “Personalisation” button. This will display a list of fields from your CRM to select from. For example, the contact’s first name will appear as {Contact.First}. Click on the term to add it to your email.
On the Settings tab, additional controls are available to customize the layout of your text box. Rather than using a single full-width column, you can adjust the section to display two or three columns.
Once you've completed your edits, be sure to click save to apply the changes.
To add an image, click on the image section and go to the Content tab. Click “Select Image” and this will open your Media Gallery.
In the Media Gallery, click “Add New Image” to upload an image. With the image selected you can add tags to filter and search on your images. To add an image to your design click “Select Image”. This will add the image to your email design and take you back to the Content tab in the Build section.
You can add a hyperlink to the image which will open a web page when your email recipient clicks on your image.
In the Style tab, you can edit the size of your image using the slider control. You can also change the image alignment, background colour and corner radius.
In the Settings tab under the Image tab, you can select to change your design to one, two or three columns, and collapse the borders so your images run to the edges of your design.
In the Button Content tab you can add a hyperlink to a web page and add your button text.
In the Button Style tab you can edit the button alignment, colour, font, size, padding and corner radius.
In Button Settings, you can select to expand the button to the full width of the page and collapse the edges. Then save your changes.
With a video section selected, in the Content tab, add the URL for your video. This will automatically add in your video and the thumbnail image. You can add videos that have been uploaded to YouTube and Vimeo.
In the Video Settings tab, click to select the options to play your video in Full Screen mode, launch with Autoplay, Loop and to collapse the borders.
With the Social Media section selected, you can set up your social pages by clicking the checkboxes to display the icons of those you wish to use. Once added, these will be available for all future campaigns.
Clicking “Set up here” will take you to a page where you can add your social URLs and these will be saved for future mailings.
Global Style tab
The Global Style tab lets you set the margins, font family, font size and colours for your overall email design. You can still vary the individual sections in the Build tab, if you wish.
You can set the background colours, font colour and link text colour using Hex codes or the colour picker. Hex codes are a colour format used online, usually displayed as a six-digit code preceded by a hashtag, for example white is #ffffff and black #000000. You can also select colours using the colour picker by clicking on the small coloured box. This will open the colour picker and you can then click in the rainbow panel to find the colour you want. If you wish to use the same colour elsewhere, copy and paste the hex code displayed. Then save your changes.
Attachments tab
Your Spotler CRM tool allows you to add attachments to your emails. Maybe you’d like to add a PDF report, white paper or an image with your mailing – formats that are supported include zip files, Word docs, Excel spreadsheets, JPGs and PDFs. In the Attachment tab, simply click “Select files to upload” and this will open your computer files to select from.
When you send the email your attachment will appear in the attachment window as normal.
Test & Preview tab
In the Test & Preview tab you can check how your email will look, and send test messages to yourself and your colleagues. To preview, click the Preview Email button.
This will display a preview of your email for both a desktop format and for a smartphone.
To test your email, using the dropdown list of email addresses, select who you wish to send the test message to. You can send to yourself and to any of your colleagues.
Add from template
To create a new email from an existing template, click on Add from template. This will open the template selection screen, where you can choose from a list of pre-designed templates. Select the template you wish to use by clicking on it. The selected template will be opened in the Email Designer, allowing you to modify and customize it as needed.
You can save your edited templates and emails to the Pinned section by clicking the “pin” icon at the top of the Email Designer, next to your email name.
You can edit the content and layout of the selected template just as you would with a newly created email. This gives you a head start with your email design by using a professional template that has already been set up with the basic layout, colors, and fonts.
Once you’ve selected the template, you can continue with the same process as described in the Add section to further personalize and finalize the design of your email before sending it out.