Blasts & Newsletters
If you click on Campaigns & Emails in DSS, you will find the Blasts & Newsletters section. Let’s click on Create New Blast. When creating an email, you’ll notice the first thing you need to do is select the recipients of your email. If you have tags set up in DSS, they will appear here. This is an easy way to tell DSS what contacts you want your email blast sent to. To include a tag, click on the plus sign. To exclude a tag, click on the circle with the line through it.
The next field you come to is the Publish Date. You can select the date and time you want your email to be sent. Be sure to double check your date so the blast isn’t sent before you want it to go out.
You will then see Sender Name and Sender Email. You can have the blast come from someone specific in your firm, or you can make it just come from your firm. Then, fill in the appropriate email address.
Then you’ll need to type in your Email Blast Subject. Remember, this is coming into their inbox where they receive tons of messages daily. Make sure you create a subject line that stands out and grabs their attention.
After that, you need to fill out your Email Blast Content. You can start entering the content of your letter in the Basic Email Editor, which is very similar to other word processing software. Or, you can click on Advanced Email Editor. This allows you to apply templates you have created to give your emails a more branded look. This is especially helpful if you are thinking of running email campaigns because you can give the emails the same look.
The next section you will see is Insert Links to Content Editor. If you want to link to a specific page on your website, you can grab the link here. You can search for the content you want, then click on the arrow icon under the Actions menu to add it to your email. Make sure to put your cursor where you want the link to appear.
Below that, you will see Google Custom Campaign URL Builder. These fields will help you better track where visitors are coming to your website from, which emails are working and which ones aren’t through Google Analytics. Let’s go into a blast we have sent to show you how this works.
The last section you will see here is Email Attachments. If you have already uploaded attachments, you will see a list of those here. If you need to upload something, you would have to Save your blast. Then go to Upload Attachment/File under the Email Templates section of the Campaigns & Emails tab of DSS.
One thing to keep in mind after you Save your email is that you have a chance to test it. You’ll notice the Save Option isn’t visible on the top right of your screen. Instead, it says Actions. If you click on this, you’ll see Preview and Save. If you click Save, you will be taken to the Success screen and you will see the Test Blast option. You can send it to yourself, or someone else if they need to approve it, and make sure everything looks like you want it to and works like you want it to.
All of the steps above are the same for the Create New Newsletter section.
And, you’ll see you have Search & Edit sections for both Blasts and Newsletters.