While email marketing isn't a new trend, it certainly should be a staple of your constituent communication. Why? It's fast, easy, inexpensive. Our research has found that an email has the highest rate of return on investment for any marketing channel—that’s $40 for every $1 spent.
Outgoing Email Default Settings
Before you send your first email, you or your system admin will need to manage default outgoing email settings:
- Click the Settings icon in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
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- Click the Switch To... button, and then select Email and Form Defaults.
- Set up your outgoing email defaults. We will populate the following as the default for each campaign. While you can make changes to these later, add something that we can validate now so you don't get mistaken for a spammer.
- From Name—Let your supporters know who their email is coming from.
- From Email Address—A professional domain specific to your organization is best. Be aware that some email providers, like AOL and Yahoo, do not allow their addresses to be used here.
- Reply-To Email Address—Even when you don't ask for responses, some folks may want to write you back. Pick a reply-to email address that is checked regularly and is not someone's personal address. "info@" is a typical reply-to address option. It doesn't have to match the from address, but it can.
Email Creation Workflow Overview
When you want to send an email blast to your supporters, there are a few aspects to consider:
- What your email will look like.
- Who will receive your email?
- What your email will say.
- When they will receive your email.
Our number one recommendation in the email marketing blog post at the top of this article is to "Keep It Simple (and Short)". By default, Engage limits the size of the HTML code that builds an email to 0.5 MB. This size limit is enforced when trying to publish Email Blast and Email Series messages.
Email size might be affected by any images that were not added via the Engage asset process, such as any images that may have been pasted in via Word or some other program.
The Visual Editor will not show the current size for your emails. The system only checks the email size when it tries to send your email. An error indicates whether your email is bigger than allowed.