How to Get the Most Out of Mailings

ListManager allows you to easily create, monitor, and then report on your mailings. The following is a brief description of how many users will approach mailings in ListManager. This is a workflow approach, outlining the step-by-step process which is common when working with mailings.

ListManager 7.8 has a new, revamped outgoing mail queue. For details on the benefits and new features, see New Outgoing Mail Queue in 7.8.

Creating Mailings

Creating mailings involves the general process of writing the content to be included in your mailing, defining the recipients (lists or segments), and testing the mailing. Once it has been approved, then it can be sent, where it will be sent concurrently with any other mailings that may be in progress.

1. Go to Mailings: New Mailing to create a mailing. From here the details for the message, recipients, tracking, scheduling, and internationalization can be specified.

2. Generally, when creating a mailing, you will have already created your content, which is then imported into the mailing.

3. On the Recipients tab, you can specify any segments to receive this mailing, if you would like to send it to a subset rather than the entire list. In addition, here, recipients can be purged (excluded from the mailing), and you may prevent those who have received too much email recently from receiving this message by editing the recency.

4. On the Tracking tab, you can set whether you would like to track opens and detect HTML capability. Generally you will want to set these to "yes", because this will allow you to then monitor the results of your mailing when it is complete (see below).

5. It is strongly recommended that you test your mailing prior to sending it, to verify that your content appears the way you intend it to, and that it is functioning properly.

6. ListManager also allows you to create advanced mailings, including triggered and sequential mailings, which work in conjunction with triggered segments. These allow you to create a mailing and then have it sent based on some specified action by a recipient, such as opening a previous mailing or clicking on a URL.

Approving Mailings

7. Once you have created your mailing, it will fall into the Needs Approval category, where you can edit the mailing again if necessary, retest it, schedule it, etc. Once it is approved it can be sent. Once it has been sent, you can monitor your mailing in the Mailing Status section of mailings (see below).

Monitoring Mailings

Monitoring, or tracking mailings involves viewing delivery reports, looking at the mail queue, and checking the general status of the mailing as it progresses. Mailings are sent concurrently with other mailings, so ListManager will attempt to resend to those who experience transient failures as many times as you specify. During this process, you can track what is going on.

1. Go to Mailings: Mailing Status, where you can see all of your outgoing mailings by date, completed mailings from the past week, and currently active mailings. These display a list of mailings, and show you the name of the mailing, the date it was created, the number of recipients, and any recipients that have yet to be delivered to. In addition, from here you can click on the mailing ID number, to view the outgoing mailing:

2. When you view an outgoing mailing you can see the message body and message header.

3. The recipients tab displays the current status of the mailing, including how many have been successfully sent, # of attempts, etc. From here you can see the individual status of each recipient receiving a message. The view recipient details button takes you to the Mailings: View Outgoing Mailing: Mailing Recipients page, where you can see each member (recipient), their status, and from there access their member information and the sending details. If there are any permanent failures, you can see the rejection messages here as well. This tells you the type of failure and displays the rejection message itself. The level of detail seen in the recipient log must be set in Utilities: List Settings: Basic Information: Enable Features.

4. The log tab displays the log for this mailing. This log is always available.

5. The mail queue tab displays current information about the mailing and allows you to pause the mailing when it is in progress. From here a mailing can be paused temporarily, and then stopped completely or continued.

Analyzing Mailings

Once your mailing has been completed, you will want to analyze the results. This includes viewing any errors that may have resulted, and checking the performance of your list, as well as evaluating the recipient actions, such as how many opened the mailing or clicked on a particular URL. Details can be seen on a per-recipient basis, allowing you to see exactly what happened with each message sent.

1. To view mailing errors, you can see any rejection messages that resulted. This displays any permanent or temporary failures, and allows you to access the member details directly from here as well.

2. There are many helpful reports and tables available in Reports: Mailings. With these you can check the performance of your list. The Delivery table displays statistical information about each mailing, including # and % of tries, # and % of sends, and fail #'s. The Mailings in queue statistics table shows the same information, but only for mailings which are currently running.

3. Some of the charts which are useful in analyzing list performance include:

1. The "Success and failure count" chart, which shows the historical performance of success and failures over time. This chart is accessible by going to Reports: Mailings: Delivery Statistics: Delivery Results: Historical Performance.

2. The "Success %" chart, which shows the last 19 mailings and compares their % of success. This chart is accessible by going to Reports: Mailings: Delivery Statistics: Delivery Results: Compare recent mailings. Also here are the "Success count", "Failure %", and "Failure count" charts, which can be useful as well.

3. Individual recipient information can be seen in Reports: Mailings: Delivery Statistics: Number of recipients.

4. The Mailing statistics table, accessible from Reports: Mailings, is very helpful because it displays information about recipients, opens, clickthroughs, clickstreams, purchases, and interest events. From here, charts of these individual items can be accessed by clicking on the number next to the desired information.

5. Tracking Statistics are also very helpful to find out what happens after the mailing is sent, regarding opens, clickthroughs, forwards, etc.

1. Mailings

2. How to Get the Most Out of Mailings

3. Mailings: New Mailing

1. Mailings: New Mailing: Message

1. Mailings: New Mailing: Import Content

2. Mailings: New Mailing: Recipients

1. Mailings: Choose Segments

2. Mailings: Choose Mailings to Purge From

3. Mailings: Choose Recency to Purge By

3. Mailings: New Mailing: Tracking

4. Mailings: New Mailing: Trigger