Create Email Campaign

Overview

Email campaigns reach your app or product users using the email channel. A marketing email is a type of email used for sending promotions, sales or discount offers, new features, or products.

You can send personalized emails to your users based on:

Target audience immediately or at a specific time (One-Time)
Target audience

Before you start creating email campaigns, make sure you have configured email settings.

To create an email campaign:

1. 1. Navigate to MoEngage Dashboard Campaigns using the left navigation bar.
  2. Click Create Campaign Email Campaign on the top navigation.
  3. Click Create button in the General Email Campaign.

Step 1: Target Users

Fill in the campaign details in the first step of campaign creation.

Campaign Name

Select a name that helps you identify the campaign while managing the campaigns later. The campaign name should have a minimum of five characters.

Campaign Tags

Campaign tags are used to provide context about the campaigns and describe the nature of the campaign or the campaign's central theme. For information on campaign tags, click here.

Campaign Content Type

There are two types of campaigns that can be sent using MoEngage, and they are promotional and transactional.

Promotional Campaigns

Promotional Campaigns are used to communicate details about offers, deals, recommendations, brand awareness, and what have you. They are all about promoting the brand in such a manner as to nudge the user to engage with the brand.

info	Note Including promotional content in transactional emails is liable for penalization if flagged. It is recommended to keep the promotional content out of transactional messages as users may not have the option to unsubscribe from them.

Transactional Campaigns

Transactional Campaigns relay messages about the user's interaction with the brand and denote a specific transaction made by the user. For example, invoice summary, shipping information, a summary of the conversation between the user and the brand's help system, any changes to the terms, guidelines, or regulations, and so on. In the case of transactional emails, the user is expecting to receive the information from the brand and thus they have higher open rates and consequently better engagement.

Examples of Transactional Campaigns

One Time Transactional Campaign

When there are changes in the regulations or guidelines or the terms of services, the brand can send a one-time communication (blast) to its users and this would be an example of a one-time transactional campaign.

Periodic Transactional Campaign

Any communication sent to a customer that is both transactional and regular/periodic in nature such as monthly bills, monthly account statements, and so on can be sent as a periodic transactional campaign.

Event Triggered Transactional Campaign

Event-triggered campaigns are sent when an event or customer action happens.

For example, when someone purchases an item, a transaction occurs. This 'event' can be configured to trigger a campaign to send an email pertaining to this transaction.

info	Note The following checks will not be performed for transactional emails: Delivery Controls (FC and DND), Unsubscribe, and Complaints. Control Groups will also be ignored for transactional emails.

Promotional Campaigns vs. Transactional Campaigns

Apart from differing in the nature of the content and purpose as explained above, promotional and transactional emails also differ in terms of which users can be targeted as part of the campaigns.

Configuration	Promotional Campaigns	Transactional Campaigns
Unsubscribed Users	Cannot be sent to unsubscribed users. Promotional campaigns should mandatorily have an unsubscribe link in the email to enable users to opt-out of receiving such emails in the future.	Can be sent to users irrespective of whether they have subscribed to or unsubscribed from receiving messages from the brand. MoEngage does not append the unsubscribe URL in the email body for transactional emails.
Frequency Capping	Promotional campaigns take Frequency Capping (FC) settings into account while sending emails. However, there is the option of ignoring FC for promotional campaigns. Click here for more information about Frequency Capping settings.	Transactional emails ignore Frequency Capping (FC) settings and emails will be attempted to be sent to users even if the FC limit for the day has been met.
DND Configuration	If Do Not Disturb is configured, promotional campaigns are not sent in the time frame specified in the DND settings. However, there is the option of ignoring DND settings during campaign creation for promotional campaigns. Click here for more information about DND settings.	Transactional campaigns are sent irrespective of whether DND has been configured. This means that even if the campaign is scheduled to be sent in a time frame that has been marked as DND, transactional emails will be sent.
Spam	If the user has marked any communication from the brand as spam, promotional campaigns aren't sent to them.	Transactional emails are sent to the user irrespective of whether a user has marked any communication from the brand as spam.

Email Bounce

In the case of both promotional and transactional emails, soft bounces are retried and hard bounces are not. In case the user's mail id has been quarantined owing to a hard bounce, the email (whether transactional or promotional) will not be sent to the quarantined user.

info	Note Only hard bounces and invalid email formats are checked for transactional emails.

Subscription Categories

Subscription categories are a means to help users choose the type of communication they receive from your brand. They can be configured in the Email Channel settings. For more information, refer to subscription categories.

Subscription Categories.png

You can choose a subscription category for your email campaign using this field. This would help you target only those users who have opted-in to receive communication about a specific category. For example, a travel company could have recommendations, updates, and deals as subscription categories. To email users who have opted to receive communication about recommendations, choose the subscription category in this field.

This is a mandatory field when subscription categories are enabled. However, in the case where subscription categories are enabled, and there are no categories added as yet or all the categories have been archived or disabled, this field will not be available in the Target Users step of email campaign creation.

Once you have started collecting preferences from the user, please make sure you respect those preferences. Sending an email from a category that the user has not subscribed to may end up in acquiring fines and also jeopardize the relationship with the user.

How does Subscription Category affect reachability?

The Subscription Category acts as an additional filter for the target audience chosen. For example, if a user is present in the Target Audience and if they have not opted to receive recommendations from the brand, they will be removed from the target audience list.

User attribute with email address

This field indicates the user attribute that stores the email address. When configuring the email channel, the user attribute that stores the email address is configured in the General Settings.

The attribute configured in the settings is selected in the User attribute with email address by default. You can override the same at the campaign level by selecting another attribute (from the dropdown)that contains the email address.

arrow_drop_down Business Event Triggered Campaigns

For business event-triggered campaigns, you can select the business event to be mapped to the campaign using the Select business event dropdown. The dropdown contains all the business events created in your MoEngage account.

Once the business event is selected, the event attributes associated with the business event are available in the segmentation filters. Business event attributes are available in the following segmentation filters:

segment by user property - you can map the user property to the business event attribute
segment by user behavior - you can map the attribute of an event executed by the user to that of the business event attribute
segment by user affinity- you can map the attribute of an event executed by the user to that of the business event attribute

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Note

- - The data types of the user attribute or event attribute chosen should match with that of the business event attribute for segmentation to work.
  - Show count is disabled for business event-triggered campaigns as business events are modeled to run on dynamic segmentation (based on the values with which the business event is triggered).

Select audience

Allows you to send the campaign to all the users of the app. When you use this option you cannot add multiple filters.

Allows you to target the users, based on user property such as first seen, last seen, city, and so on.

Select the User Properties and do the following:

Select desired user property and filter conditions.
Provide the filter value/s to create a rule.

For more information, refer to Create Segments.

Allows you to target the users, based on the behavior of the user or event such as app/site opened, viewed product, and so on.

Select the User Behavior and do the following:

Select the execution condition and the desired user activity (event)
Provide event frequency and time duration for the event execution
Add Event attribute with a filter condition
Provide the filter value/s to create a rule.

For more information, refer to Create Segments.

Affinity Segments are groups of users created based on the user performing an action with a specific attribute value.

For more information, refer to User Affinity.

Select User Affinity and do the following:

Select the desired user event or attribute.
Select the user affinity parameter from
- Predominantly Select affinity attribute with a filter condition and provide the affinity values
- Minimum of Select affinity attribute with a filter condition and provide the affinity values
- Most number of times: Type or use the arrows to provide the top or bottom percentage of users
- Least number of times: Type or use the arrows to provide the top or bottom percentage of users
Type or use the arrows to provide time duration for the event execution.
Click the Attribute button to add more attributes to the filter.

Select the Custom Segment section then select the desired custom segment to create a rule.

For more information, refer to Custom Segments.

Create multiple filters

Multiple User Property rules, User activity rules, and Custom Segment rules are combined to create a complex user segment.

Click Add Filter.
Click AND or OR button.
Select the Attribute or Event and logical filters associated with the attribute or events.

Exclude Users

Click Exclude Users to not include the users for the campaign.

For more information, refer to Preference Management.

Reset Filters

Click Reset Filter to reset the segmentation filters.

Show Count

Click Show Count to display the total number of users that are currently part of the configured segment.

Control Groups

Control Groups are enabled only for promotional campaigns. They are not applicable for transactional campaigns.

You can enable the control groups to which you want to send the promotional campaign.

In the Enable Control Group section

Click Global control to not send the campaign to all the users in the control group.
Click the Campaign control group to not send the particular campaign to the control group.
For more information about control groups, refer to Control Group.

Click Next or use the tabs on the top of the create campaign navigation to move to the "Content" tab.

Step 2: Content

To create email content you can choose between Drag and drop editor (either blank or pre-built WYSIWYG templates), and Custom HTML editor where you can upload your templates in HTML format or previously saved templates under My saved templates after you have saved your created templates.

After you select a template, on the next screen, you can enter email credentials and edit the content as follows:

Personalizing Subject, Content, and Sender Name

You can personalize the Email Subject, Email Content (including any URLs), and Sender Name. Type "@" and select among the list of user attributes. You will also need to select a fallback mechanism that applies when a personalization attribute is missing for a user. Read more about personalizing emails here.

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Note

- The Sender Name should be less than 320 characters while using Amazon SES (as it supports only up to 320 characters). When the Sender Name exceeds this limit, Test Campaigns will result in a "Transaction failed: Address length is more than 320 characters long" error, and published campaigns that send out emails will experience SMTPDataError.
- The personalized Sender Name will be sent as plain text. For example, if a link gets added as part of personalization, the link will be treated and sent as text instead of being treated as a URL.

Preview Text

Preview text is the text that appears below the subject line in the inbox. Preview text can help you connect with your users and increase your open rate. If you do not specify the preview text, the email clients pull the first line of test from the email content and display the preview text in the inbox (this may not be as appealing to the user as you writing the purpose of your email succinctly). You can add the preview text in the Preview Text field in the Sender details section.

For example, if you were to add the following in the Sender Details:

Subject - Let Your Summer Look Shine!

Preview text - Summer Sale - Infuse freshness in your wardrobe with our latest offerings.

The message would appear in the inbox as shown below.

Note: It is recommended to keep your preview text within 40 - 130 characters so that it looks ideal across email clients and devices. If the preview text exceeds the character limit, it will be shown only up to the maximum character limit in the inbox. If the preview text is too short (falls short of the lower limit of 40 characters), MoEngage will add an adequate number of non-breaking spaces (approx 100) to ensure that the preview text length is compatible with all devices.

From email address

Select a "from" email address from the drop-down. If you do not see any email addresses in the drop-down, it is likely that you have not added/verified "from" email addresses in email settings.

Other options

There are additional options to:

Personalize URLs & images
Preview your template in different environments and devices
Check for potential Spam Folder landing
See Email Tips
Preview the email for laptop/mobile
Save the template being created
- To save a newly created template, you can click on the "Save Template" option under "Template actions" present on the right top of the email editor. You can give a unique name to the template and save the same. You can find this newly saved template in the "Saved Templates" section.
- While saving the updates to a template, you can choose to update the existing template version with the new edits made. Note that once the current template is updated, the previous versions cannot be restored.
- Additionally, you can save the updates as a new template instead of updating the previous version. You can find this newly saved template in the "Saved Templates" section.
You can change the email template and choose a new one by clicking on the "Change Template" button.

info	Email Templates Use change templates to toggle between WYSIWYG and upload HTML. When you toggle the previously created email message is not retained or saved as a draft.

Do not forget to insert an unsubscribe link in your email template. Read more about the unsubscribe tracking mechanism here.

(Optional) Running Test Campaigns

Test campaigns enable previewing the campaign or testing for certain custom segments to make sure the emails are displayed with target segments - exactly the way it was meant to. You can test the campaign you have just created by either selecting a custom segment or entering comma-separated email addresses.

If you wish to test if the personalized data is rendering right for the users, you should test the template with the custom segment.

info	Note Test campaigns with any custom segment will target a maximum of 50 users from the chosen custom segment. The personalized user attributes will be seen as plain text and not resolved for Test Campaigns. To view the personalized user attribute, use the Personalized Preview option.

In the case of testing with email addresses, no personalization will happen - it is primarily used to see how your email actually appears.

After composing the email, click the Next button to navigate to the "Scheduling and Goals" tab.

Step 3: Scheduling and Goals

Add the campaign's delivery schedules, controls, and conversion goal information in this step.

Delivery Scheduling

Field

Description

As soon as possible

Sends the campaign immediately to the target users.

At a particular date and time

Send the campaign at the specified time, time zone, or predicted time.

Select one of the following:

Field

Description

At fixed time

Follow these steps to send the campaign on a specific date and time.

Select the campaign time zone
Set the start date
Set the send time at which the campaign is sent.
Select AM or PM

Send in user time zone

Follow these steps to send the campaign on a specific date and time within the time zone of the user.

Select the campaign time zone
Set the start date
Set the send time at which the campaign is sent.
Select AM or PM
Select Yes, send it to deliver the campaign in the time zone
OR
Select No, don't send it to not deliver the campaign in the time zone.

Best time to send (Sherpa)

Follow these steps to send the campaign based on the MoEngage intelligence determined date and time.

Select the campaign time zone
Set the start date
Set the start time at which the campaign is sent.
Select AM or PM
Set the time until which the campaign is sent to users. (Send messages based on best time only till)
Select AM or PM
Click View best time distribution to see how the best time is distributed in a graph.
Select Send message at start time or end time to send the campaign outside of the user best time.
OR
Select Do not send message to not send the campaign.
Select Yes, send message at 2:28pm to send the campaign in the set time when the user in not available during the best time.
or
Select send at the app best time to send the campaign based on the set best time in the app.
OR
Select Do not send to not send the campaign.

For more information, refer to the Best time to send.

Field

Description

At fixed time

Follow these steps to send the campaign on a specific date and time.

Select the campaign time zone
Set the start date
Set the send time at which the campaign is sent.
Select AM or PM
Frequency Selection: Select either Daily, Weekly, or Monthly in the Send Campaign radio button on the left pane as shown below.
- Send Daily - Select the number of days after which the campaign should be repeated
- Send Weekly - Select the day(s) of the week on which the campaign is to be sent (Eg. every Monday, Wednesday and Friday) and the number of weeks campaign should be repeated.
- Send Monthly - Select the method at which the campaign is sent using 'Repeat on' and 'Repeat every'.
  - Days of month: For repeating campaigns that are date specific. Select the date(s) of the month on which the campaign is to be sent(eg. 5th and the 25th).
    Note: For date(s) selected applied months shorter than the selected date, one campaign would be sent on the last date. (eg. For 30th and 31st is selected and the month is February, one campaign would be sent on 28th)
  - Days of week: For repeating campaigns that are specific to first, seconds, last etc days of a week in a month. Add a week and select the week in a month in a dropdown (eg. first, second, last) and select the day(s) in the week that the campaign is to be sent.
    Note: In case of a day of the week not existing in a month (Eg. Fifth saturday), the camapaign would be skipped for that instance. And in case of overlap (eg 4th Monday and last Monday), only one instance would be sent.
- Select the number of days after which the campaign should be repeated
Ends on
Select either Never to not set any end date
OR
Select On and set the end date
OR
Select After to set the number of occurrences post which the campaign will end.

Send in user time zone

Follow these steps to send the campaign on a specific date and time within the time zone of the user.

Select the campaign time zone
Set the start date
Set the send time at which the campaign is sent.
Select AM or PM
Frequency Selection: Select either Daily, Weekly, or Monthly in the Send Campaign radio button on the left pane as shown below.
- Send Daily - Select the number of days for which the campaign is sent to the user in Repeat every as shown below.
- Send Weekly - Select the days of the week on which the campaign is sent to the user every week and the number of weeks for which the campaign is sent in Repeat every.
- Send Monthly - Select the frequency at which the campaign is sent using 'Repeat on' and 'Repeat every'.
  - Days of month: Select the days of the month on which the campaign is sent to the user in Repeat on. Select the number of months for which this campaign needs to be sent using Repeat every. For example, choosing '7' in the calendar in the 'Repeat on' section and '3' months in 'Repeat every' means the campaign will be sent on the seventh of every month for the next three months. Note: Multiple days can be selected in a month.
  - Days of week: Select the days of the week on which the campaign is sent to the user in Repeat on. Select the number of months for which this campaign needs to be sent using Repeat every. With this feature, marketers can send campaigns on the first Mondays of every month or second Tuesdays and Wednesdays of every month and so on.
Select either Never to not set any end date
OR
Select On and set the end date
OR
Select After to set the number of occurrences post which the campaign will end.
Select Yes, send it to deliver the campaign in the time zone
OR
Select No, don't send it to not deliver the campaign in the time zone.

Best time to send (Sherpa)

Follow these steps to send the campaign based on the MoEngage intelligence determined date and time.

Select the campaign time zone
Set the start date
Set the start time at which the campaign is sent.
Select AM or PM
Set the time until which the campaign is sent to users. (Send messages based on best time only till)
Select AM or PM
Click View best time distribution to see how the best time is distributed in a graph.
Select Send message at start time or end time to send the campaign outside of the user best time.
OR
Select Do not send message to not send the campaign.
Select Yes, send message at 2:28pm to send the campaign in the set time when the user is not available during the best time.
or
Select send at the app's best time to send the campaign based on the set best time in the app.
OR
Select Do not send to not send the campaign.
Frequency Selection: Select either Daily, Weekly, or Monthly in the Send Campaign radio button on the left pane as shown below.
- Send Daily - Select the number of days for which the campaign is sent to the user in Repeat every as shown below.
- Send Weekly - Select the days of the week on which the campaign is sent to the user every week and the number of weeks for which the campaign is sent in Repeat every.
- Send Monthly - Select the frequency at which the campaign is sent using 'Repeat on' and 'Repeat every'.
  - Days of month: Select the days of the month on which the campaign is sent to the user in Repeat on. Select the number of months for which this campaign needs to be sent using Repeat every. For example, choosing '7' in the calendar in the 'Repeat on' section and '3' months in 'Repeat every' means the campaign will be sent on the seventh of every month for the next three months. Note: Multiple days can be selected in a month.
  - Days of week: Select the days of the week on which the campaign is sent to the user in Repeat on. Select the number of months for which this campaign needs to be sent using Repeat every. With this feature, marketers can send campaigns on the first Mondays of every month or second Tuesdays and Wednesdays of every month and so on.
Select either Never to not set any end date
OR
Select On and set the end date
OR
Select After to set the number of occurrences post which the campaign will end.

For more information, refer to the Best time to send.

Click Active continuously under Send campaign and do the following:

Field	Description
Campaign Time Zone	Select the campaign time zone in which the campaign is sent
Start Date	Set the start date at which the campaign is sent.
Send Time	Set the send time at which the campaign is sent. Select AM or PM
End Date	Set the end date at which the campaign is stopped.
End Time	Set the end time at which the campaign is stopped. Select AM or PM

Supported formats for Date and Time Attributes

Date/Time Format sent using MoEngage SDK
Date/Time values sent in String formats as under:
- “EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss Z yyyy”
- “EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss yyyy zzz”
- “EEE, MMM dd HH:mm:ss yyyy zzz”
- “EEE, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss zzz”
- “EEE,dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss zzz”
- “EEE, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:sszzz”
- “EEE, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss”
- “EEE, dd-MMM-yy HH:mm:ss zzz”
- “yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss.SSS zzz”
- “yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss.SSS”
- “yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss zzz”
- “yyyy.MM.dd HH:mm:ss”
- “yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm”
- “MMM dd yyyy HH:mm:ss. zzz”
- “MMM dd yyyy HH:mm:ss zzz”
- “dd.MM.yyyy HH:mm:ss zzz”
- “dd MM yyyy HH:mm:ss zzz”
- “dd.MM.yyyy; HH:mm:ss”
- “dd.MM.yyyy HH:mm:ss”
- “dd.MM.yyyy zzz”

ZZZ - Represents the reported timezone
EEE - Represents Day of the Week e.g. Tue
MMM - Represents Month of the Year e.g. Jun
HH:MM:SS - Time that represents the hour of the day, minutes of the hours and seconds of the minute
DD:MM:yyyy and DD:MM:YY are the date formats as most commonly used

warning

We do not support MM/DD/YYYY formats. In case if time-zone is not mentioned in your event property, it will be considered as UTC and notification will be sent accordingly.

To sum up, Event-Triggered campaign is a great way to engage the right users (through segmentation) at the right time (through event triggering).

The campaign will be sent only when

The event property/attribute which is being used to create these types of triggers (like flight_time example), is in a valid date-time format. If it is not in date-time format, the string should have data in one of the supported formats. If the selected attributes do not contain data in any of these formats, the campaign won't be sent to your users.
The date/time value from the attribute is greater than the time at which the trigger condition is fulfilled
The date/time value from the attribute is less than 30 Days + the time at which trigger condition is fulfilled e.g. If your trigger condition is fulfilled at date D, your notification will be sent only when the attribute value is less than D+30
The Intelligent Delay Optimization does not work for campaigns sent on the relative timing

Click Active continuously under Send campaign and do the following:

Field	Description
Campaign Time Zone	Select the campaign time zone in which the campaign is sent
Start Date	Set the start date at which the campaign is sent.
Send Time	Set the send time at which the campaign is sent. Select AM or PM
End Date	Set the end date at which the campaign is stopped.
End Time	Set the end time at which the campaign is stopped. Select AM or PM

When will business event-triggered campaigns be sent?

The campaign will be sent only when:

The data type(s) of the user attribute(s) or event attribute(s) mapped to data type(s)the business event's attribute(s) match.
The attribute(s) used in segmentation is passed in the trigger request for the business event.
The Intelligent Delay Optimization does not work for campaigns sent on the relative timing.

Conversion Goals

After deciding on the scheduling, you can set the campaign conversion goal to understand the conversion activity tracked from running the campaign. Through this, you can tie the success of the campaign to conversion activities such as Item Purchased. You can also associate an attribute such as "Revenue" with the conversion goal. Revenue performance tracking is optional. If toggled, you will need to define the revenue attribute. For example, use the order total attribute of the order successful event.

Marketers can add up to 5 Conversion Goals which can be tracked for a campaign. However, Revenue performance tracking can only be enabled for the Primary Conversion Goal only.

Set Attribution window

Attribution Window is the maximum time duration, from the time user received/clicked the campaign, for which a conversion goal will be tracked. The default duration is set for 36 hours while the maximum attribution window can be set up to 10 days. In the example below, the attribution window is set to 10 days.

Delivery Controls

Frequency Capping

This feature helps control the number of emails sent to a user in a day. Click here for more info about Frequency Capping.

info	Note This option is available only for promotional campaigns. Since transactional emails bypass Frequency Capping, this option is not shown for transactional campaigns.

Throttling

Throttling is a feature that allows you to control the sending rate of an email campaign.

ISPs place rate limits on IPs or domains from their end based on IP/domain reputation and sending pattern of the marketers. Normally there is an upper limit for volumes originating from an IP. Throttling helps prevent exceeding these limits, which could result in deferrals/blocks/reputation drop, especially while sending high-volume campaigns and/or scaling up the volume.

To create a campaign throttle, on Step 3 of Campaign creation, under Delivery Controls, select the Throttle time from the drop-down.

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Note

The throttling time refers to the number of email batches (batch size of 100) to be delivered in the user-selected time duration. For example, if a user selects 3 hours for a campaign with a segment size of 18000 (i.e. 180 email batches of 100 emails each), then 1 batch (100 emails) will be delivered every minute for 3 hours (i.e. 180 minutes)

Your campaign is now ready to be sent. Click on Publish button, confirm in the dialog box, and your campaign is created. Upon successful campaign creation, you will be taken to the campaign info page where you can view the campaign performance stats such as sent, opens, clicks, conversions, unsubscribes, bounces, and so on, as mentioned in this article.