Campaign Tutorial: Membership Renewal

Client Objective

ABC Association wants to begin using e-mail as part of its membership renewal process. To set up a campaign that will send members a seried of three messages at 60, 30 and 5 days prior to their expiration date. Additionally, messages should be discontinued once a recipient renews.

Step. 1: Create the Campaign Elements

The first step is to create the campaign elements – i.e. the messages and groups that make up the campaign. This is done outside of the Campaign tool. Simply create messages and groups as you normally would in MagnetMail.
Element Name Description
Create Group “Expire_60days” Group will contain all recipients who are exactly 60 days from their expiration date.
Create Group “Expire_30days” Group will contain all recipients who are exactly 30 days from their expiration date.
Create Group “Expire_5days” Group will contain all recipients who are exactly 5 days from their expiration date.
Create Group “Renewed” Group will contain all recipients who were on the original list and actually renewed during the campaign. The campaign will check against this group to ensure that those who have renewed receive no further campaign messages.
Create Message “Expire_60days” Message to be sent to members who are exactly 60 days from their expiration.
Create Message “Expire_30days” Message to be sent to members who are exactly 30 days from their expiration.
Create Message “Expire_5days” Message to be sent to members who are exactly 5 days from their expiration.

Step 2: Use of a Custom Date Field

Recipients’ “Expiration Date” is a key data field for this campaign and requires the use of a custom date field. Click here to view instructions for Custom Date Fields. For this example, name the Custom Date Field “Expiration Date”.

Step 3: Upload Your List into MagnetMail

Upload the campaign list into MagnetMail as you normally would. Name the group "Renewal_Campaign”.

Step 4: Create the Campaign

Now that the elements are created and the list is uploaded, the campaign must be created. Click the “Campaign” tab. Under the option “Create New Campaign”, input a campaign name – for example “Renewal_Campaign” and click the red button.

Step 5: Create an Action – Creating the Groups

Next, users create the campaign’s actions. Let’s create the groups first. The first action we'll create finds all recipients whose expiration date is 60 days from today and adds them to a group.

  1. Name the action “Add_Expire_60days” and click the Next button.


    2. Create new Action


  2. From the Select Action Type page, select the “Add to Group” check box. Then select the group “Expire_60days” from the adjacent pull-down menu and click the Next button.


    3. Add to Group

  3. On the Select Search Method page, choose “By Advanced Search” and click the Next button.


    4. By Advanced Search


  4. On the Select By: Search for Recipients page, make three selections:
    • In the Groups row, select both “Recipients in group” and “Recipients not in group”
    • In the Custom Date Field row at the bottom of the page, select the “Expiration Date” check box and click the Next button.

    Search Criteria

  5. On the next page,
    • Select the “Renewal_Campaign” from the Group category
    • Select the “Renewed” group from the Not in Group category
    • For the Expiration date category, from the Select Next/Last No. of Days (Exact) pull-down menu, select the “Days from now” option, input the number 60 in the “Days” text box, and click the Next button.

    Search Criteria


  6. On the Schedule an Action page.
    • Select the action’s Start Date and End Date. This campaign should last for one year. Next year, a new campaign can be created.
    • Next, select the time of day the action should run using the Schedule Action Time options. It is recommended to run the add to group actions in the eraly morning hours. For purpose of this example, select 2:00 am.
    • Next, from the Interval pull down menu, select the frequency with which the action will run. For purposes of this campaign, select the Daily option and click the Finish button.

    Schedule an Action


A message confirming that the action has been created will be displayed.

The action is now set up. On a daily basis at 2:00 am, MagnetMail will look at each recipient's custom date field and determine if it is exactly 60 days from that date. If no, it does nothing. If yes, it looks to see if the recipient is In the “Renewal_campaign” group and Not in the “Renewed” group. If so, it adds them to the “Expire_60days” group.

Using the exact same steps as above, create actions to add recipients to a group whose Expiration date fields are 30 and 5 days away.

Accounting for Recipients who Rejoin

This campaign automatically removes recipients from the groups receiving the weekly messages once he or she has renewed their membership. It does so by following the command Not to add recipients to the “Expire_60days” if they are in the “Renewed” group. Consequently, the “Renewed” group MUST BE UPDATED WITH THE MOST CURRENT DATA BEFORE THE MESSAGE IS SENT.

Step 6: Create Actions – Creating the Messages

Next, we’ll create actions to send messages to the groups. First we'll create the action to send the message to members who are 60 days from their expiration.

  1. From the Manage an Action page, create a new action by giving the action a name (e.g. “Expire_60days”)


    2. Create new Action


  2. Select the Send Message Action Type and select the message to be sent from the adjacent pull-down menu.


    3. Send Message


  3. From the Send Message to Groups page, select the group(s) the message is to be sent to and input the Send Information.

    4. Send Message to Group (s)


  4. On the Schedule an Action page:
    • Select the action’s Start Date and End Date. The campaign should run for one year. Next year, a new campaign will be created.
    • Next, select the time of day the action should run using the Schedule Action Time options. For the purposes of this campaign, select 1:00 pm.
    • Next, from the Interval pull down menu, select the frequency with which the action will run. For purposes of this campaign, select the Daily option and click the Finish button.

    5. Schedule an Action

A message confirming that the action has been created will be displayed. So everyday at 1:00 pm, MagnetMail will send the message "Expire_60days" to the group "Expire_60days", and because of MagnetMail's De-duping capabilities, group members will recieve the message one-time only.

Next, using the exact same steps as above, create actions to send the campaign’s 2 other messages (e.g. Expire_30days and Expire_5days) to the appropriate groups.

The campaign now has been created.


Step 7: Tracking the Campaign

Access the campaign tracking by clicking on the Track tab and selecting Campaigns from the pull down menu in the upper left corner.

Two types of tracking are available: Campaign Overview and Message Tracking.

Campaign Overview
This report provides overview tracking for all actions associated with the campaign. The report shows each action's name, start date, end date, interval and type.

  • If an action is Send a Message, the message name and total number sent are displayed in the last two columns. The message name is a link that goes to the message's Overview Tracking page. Additionally, in the “Action Type” column, the word “Send” is a link that displays the groups programmed to receive the message.
  • If the action is Add to Group, the group name and total number of recipients in the group are displayed in the last two columns. The group name is a link that goes to the group's main management page.

 

Campaign Overview

Message Tracking
This report provides comparative tracking for all messages associated with the campaign. For each message, metrics for messages sent, delivered, opened, click-through, bounced and opt out rates are displayed. The message name is a link that goes to that message's Overview Tracking page.

 

Comparative Tracking


This is the end of the tutorial. If you have any questions, E-mail support@realmagnet.com
or call 301-652-5037