Would you like to easily communicate with your audience via automated email sequences? Well, you've come to the right place!
Email campaigns are automated email sequences designed to reach your subscribers at specific moments of their journey with you.
You can target subscribers based on specific tags, products they've signed up for, specific behaviors, and more!
Setting up your Email Campaign
From your Podia Dashboard, click on Email in the sidebar menu and select Campaigns.
Click the "New email" button, then select "New campaign" from the dropdown menu that appears.
Set up the campaign details, define conditions & more!
In this section, you will choose your campaign name and define entrance and exit conditions (more on those to come!)
Your campaign name should be something you can use to quickly differentiate this series of emails from other campaigns you create. The campaign name is only ever visible to you and is used for your reference only.
Defining Entrance and Exit Conditions
When setting up your campaign, defining entrance and exit conditions is crucial.
Entrance conditions determine which subscribers will receive your email sequence, while exit conditions specify when these subscribers should be removed from the sequence.
Entrance Conditions
We'll start by defining our entrance conditions.
People enter the campaign and start receiving emails once they match any entrance condition.
Click on "Condition" to pop the dropdown menu with all entrance condition options you can set up for your campaign.
Available options are:
Added to audience: Automatically targets all subscribers present in your audience and those who will be added in the future as well.
Exits another campaign: Easily link campaigns together by automatically adding individuals who have exited another campaign into the new campaign you're setting up. (Note: Tracking specific exit conditions began Dec 5th, 2023. The condition will only add people to a campaign if they exited the previous campaign after that date.)
Joins community: When a community member joins a free or paid community plan from your sales page or an embedded checkout.
Gains access to product: When a customer gains access to a product in any way — whether by purchasing it through checkout, being imported, manually invited, as part of a bundle, etc. (Note: Customers who purchase bundled products will be enrolled in the campaigns associated with each one of the products in the bundle.)
Tagged with: When someone is tagged with a particular tag within your audience.
Waitlists for product: When a lead enters their email address via a product's waitlist email capture or is imported into the waitlist.
You can add as many entrance conditions as you'd like. To do that, simply hit the Condition button again.
💡 If you have multiple entrance conditions, emails will be sent to subscribers who match any of the conditions.
Additionally, there’s a checkbox to select people who already meet your entrance conditions.
If you uncheck this box, your campaign will only reach people who meet your conditions after you've launched the campaign - this excludes any current subscribers.
Imagine you want to focus solely on new subscribers who sign up for your digital products, without involving your existing customers in the campaign - this feature allows you to do just that!
Lastly, you can see exactly who will get your campaign series by clicking "Show people" next to the entrance conditions area. This option lists everyone who will enter your campaign and get your emails.
Exit Conditions
All created email campaigns come with 2 default exit conditions: "Receives final email" and "Unsubscribes". Those conditions cannot be removed.
If you'd like them to leave sooner based on a specific action, that is where an exit condition comes into play!
Click on "Condition" to the right of the exit condition label to add new exit conditions to your email campaign.
Available options are:
Gains access to a product: When a customer enrolled in the campaign sequence gains access to a specific product.
Joins community plan: When a customer enrolled in the campaign sequence joins a specific community plan.
Tagged with: When someone is tagged with a particular tag within your audience. This will be helpful for excluding certain customers from a campaign!
You can add as many exit conditions as you'd like. Combine the available options to exclude specific groups from your campaign, if you think the message won't apply to them.
A note on the automatic condition of "receives the final email"
When your final email in the sequence is sent to a specific customer, they will exit the campaign automatically.
In the event that you add more emails to the campaign in the future, any subscribers who had previously exited the campaign will NOT receive any new emails added.
Creating Your Series of Emails
Now let's get to the fun part: creating and delaying your email sequence!
Click on "New Email" at the bottom of the screen to add a new email to your email campaign. You'll be taken to the email builder to edit the individual emails of your campaign.
We'll start by configuring the details of your email. Set a subject, preview text, and delays.
Subject: This is the subject line your audience will see when they receive the email.
Preview text: The preview text is displayed below your subject line.
Delays: Set the number of days after entering the campaign people should receive this email. Set it to “0” if you would like subscribers to receive it immediately.
To set delays, consider the total number of days in your sequence.
For example, if you want emails to send every 2 days, set delays at Day 0, Day 2, Day 4, and so on.
Now, let's dive into crafting the actual content of your emails!
Choose a starting point for your email. You can select a blank template, a template from a previous email, or one of our premade templates.
Once the template is selected, the email composer will open up. The email composer will be used to build and design your emails.
Use the Design tab at the right-hand side of your screen to adjust global design options for your email, such as colors, typography & more!
Whether you're using pre-made templates or starting from scratch, you can add new sections and modify existing ones.
To add a new section to your email, hover over the area you'd like to add a new section to and click the "+" icon. Then, pick the section you want to add from the right-hand menu.
To edit specific items and modify their content and look, click directly on the item you would like to edit and use the right-hand side menu to make adjustments.
Once you're done with the content of your email, click "Done" at the top of your page.
From there, you can Add a new email to the sequence or Finish later and go back to the campaign setup screen. There's also an option to Delete the email you just created.
If you return to the campaign setup page, you can also add new emails to your sequence by clicking on + New email. You can add as many emails to a sequence as you'd like!
Simply follow the same steps outlined above to edit any additional emails you add to your campaign.
Launching your campaign
Once you have added all the emails you would like to your sequence, it is time to launch your campaign 🚀
Review the information and - when you're ready - click on "Run" at the top of the campaign setup page.
You'll get to review your settings and the subscribers your campaign is set to target. If things look great, hit "Run campaign" to get your campaign up and running!
FAQ
Will my campaign send to existing people that meet the entrance conditions?
Will my campaign send to existing people that meet the entrance conditions?
It depends! You can control if you want to send your campaigns to existing people that match your entrance conditions or only to new subscribers.
You can control that by using the "Enter subscribers that already meet your entrance conditions" checkbox when setting up your entrance conditions.
If you uncheck this box, your campaign will only reach people who meet your conditions after you've launched the campaign - this excludes any current subscribers.
Imagine you want to focus solely on new subscribers who sign up for your digital products, without involving your existing customers in the campaign - this feature allows you to do just that!
Will email campaigns send to imported customers?
Will email campaigns send to imported customers?
Yes. Campaigns will send to all customers that gain access to a particular product no matter what their enrollment type was - checkout, manually invited, imported, etc.
Why did some of my subscribers exit the campaign already?
Why did some of my subscribers exit the campaign already?
When your final email in the sequence is sent to a specific subscriber, they will exit the campaign automatically.
In the event that you add more emails to the campaign in the future, any customers who had previously exited the campaign will not receive any new emails added.
If you want to keep someone in a campaign because you’re still working on adding more emails, you can add a placeholder email far in the future (like 365 days). This prevents them from receiving the current final email and exiting the campaign too soon.
How do email campaigns interact with product bundles?
How do email campaigns interact with product bundles?
When someone purchases a product bundle, email campaigns for each individual product will be triggered.
If you don't want individual emails to be sent, consider adding the product bundle as an exit condition for the campaigns.
How do email campaigns interact with community plans with included products?
How do email campaigns interact with community plans with included products?
When someone joins a community plan with included products, email campaigns for each individual product will be triggered.
If you don't want emails to be sent for all the included products, consider adding the community plan as an exit condition for the campaigns.
If a customer is removed from a product/plan, will they continue to get emails from the campaign?
If a customer is removed from a product/plan, will they continue to get emails from the campaign?
No. Customers removed from products/plans will stop receiving emails from any particular campaigns associated with it.
Note that for subscription plans, they would only be removed when the subscription is effectively canceled.
Do delays consider the date when the subscriber entered the campaign, or is it set considering the delay between email sends?
Do delays consider the date when the subscriber entered the campaign, or is it set considering the delay between email sends?
To set delays for emails in your campaign, consider the total number of days in your sequence.
Example: If you want emails to send every 2 days, set delays at Day 0, Day 2, Day 4, and so on.
Any questions about Podia's email features? Check out our comprehensive help docs, or click the purple icon to send us a message 💜