Email Direct Marketing

Read time 9 min Level Intermediate Prerequisites Client contacts in your CRM; your account on the Business platform mode

In a nutshell: Email Direct Marketing sends marketing email - newsletters, announcements, offers - to the contacts held against your clients. Create a campaign on CAMPAIGNS, write the email on 1. COMPOSE, add downloadable files and your contact details on 2. CONTENT, check it in the Email Preview, then choose recipients and send on 3. SEARCH & SEND. Results land on ENGAGEMENT REPORT.

What you will learn

Where the screen lives and who can see it.
What each of the six tabs is for.
The personalised fields in the Insert content panel, and how files reach the recipient.
How recipients are chosen, and what is filtered out for you.
What the engagement report measures.

Where it lives

Open the BUSINESS menu and choose Email Direct Marketing.

That item only appears when your account's platform mode is Business. On the Pitch, Report and Campaign modes it is not in the menu at all. An administrator sets the mode on the Admin page, under Platform Mode.

There is no role restriction on the screen itself. Admin, Power and User accounts can all use every part of it.

This screen is for your clients and prospects. Email Pitching, on the PITCH menu, is the journalist-facing equivalent.

The six tabs

Only CAMPAIGNS is on screen when you arrive. Open a campaign and the other five appear.

CAMPAIGNS: Your campaign list, with a period selector, a KPI strip and a Volume and read rate over time chart above it. Click a row to open that campaign.
EXCLUSIONS: People and organisations you have chosen to leave out of this campaign.
ENGAGEMENT REPORT: Results for the open campaign: headline numbers, charts, and who did what.
1. COMPOSE: Write the email. Subject, body, and the Insert content panel of personalised fields.
2. CONTENT: Add the files people can download, and the contact details that appear in the email. Next saves and opens the preview.
3. SEARCH & SEND: Choose who receives it, set the sender and the send time, and send.

The campaign list

Above the list sit a period selector and six figures for the period you chose: Campaigns sent, Emails sent, Avg read rate, Total reads, Avg engagement and Total downloads, then the Volume and read rate over time chart.

Each row in the list shows Campaign, Last activity, Sent, Read, Read Rate, vs Avg, Downloads, Bounce Rate and Status. Any heading sorts the list, and Load more brings in the next page.

Create New Marketing Campaign, on the right of the toolbar, opens a window headed Add EDM Campaign asking for a Title (required) and a Description. Click Save, then click the campaign in the list to open it.

If your agency has more than one office, a location selector appears on the left of the toolbar so you can scope the list to one of them. With a single location it is hidden.

Writing the email

On 1. COMPOSE, click Add New Pitch. Fill in a Pitch Description (your own label, never seen by recipients) and the Email Subject. Both are required. On a brand new one you can also pick a starting layout from Apply Template; that choice is offered when you add the email, not when you come back to edit it.

To the left of the editor is a panel headed Insert content. Click an item to drop it in at the cursor, or drag it where you want it. It holds:

Email block - a ready-made layout: a greeting using the recipient's first name, a blank paragraph for your message, a line introducing the downloads, and a sign-off with your contact details.
Recipient name, Brand, File downloads.
Contact name, Contact email, Contact mobile, Contact phone - the details you enter on 2. CONTENT.

Insert these from the panel rather than typing them. Each one shows as a small labelled tag in the editor and is replaced with the real value for every recipient when the email goes out.

One campaign can hold more than one email. The list at the top of the tab shows the ones you have already written, so you can open an existing one instead of starting again.

Files and contact details

2. CONTENT has two parts.

Downloadable Files. Use Add File to pick something already uploaded for this campaign, or Upload New File to add one now. Each row takes an optional Description, which is the wording the recipient sees on the link; leave it blank and they see the file name. You can have up to 30, and a counter beside the heading shows how many you have used.

These files are not attached to the message. They become clickable download links wherever you placed File downloads in the body, which is also how the downloads get counted. If a file has been removed since you added it, its row is flagged Missing and the send is refused until you remove or replace it.

Your Media Contact Details. The Contact, Email, Phone and Mobile that fill the contact fields in the sign-off. Contact, Email and Mobile are required. Add Contact saves a person so you can reuse them, and the saved list sits above the fields.

Next saves the tab and opens the Email Preview.

Preview and self test

The preview shows the email as it will arrive: the From address, the Reply-To if one is set, and the assembled body, with your download links, your contact details and the subject already in place.

Two placeholders are still showing on purpose. The recipient's first name and their organisation differ for every person on the list, so they stay on screen as {UserName} and {brand}, and a note above the email lists them under Resolves at send. That same note is how you catch a real problem: anything it calls an Unfilled placeholder is not recognised and will reach the inbox exactly as shown, and anything it calls an Empty placeholder is recognised but has nothing behind it. Fix either before sending.

Send Self Test sends a copy to your own address so you can read it in a real inbox. The window says Links won't work in test emails, and that is expected. In the test copy your own first name stands in for the recipient's, and the organisation still shows as {brand}, because there is no recipient behind a test. Accept & Continue closes the preview and takes you to 3. SEARCH & SEND.

Try this: Create a campaign, open 1. COMPOSE, click Add New Pitch, insert the Email block and type a short message into the blank paragraph. Go to 2. CONTENT, fill in the contact details, click Next, then Send Self Test. Read the note above the email and check every placeholder is one you meant to leave.

Choosing who receives it

3. SEARCH & SEND asks how you want to find contacts:

Contact Group: A group you have already saved. Quickest when you send to the same audience repeatedly.
Brand Type: Everyone whose client is of a given type - NFP, Edu, Gov, Religious, Asn, Brand, Agency, or ALL - narrowed by Country, by the regions you tick under Search Area, and by Client Relationship, which is how long since you last did paid work with any brand the person belongs to.

Click Search for Contacts. Two switches above the search, both on by default, keep the list clean: Apply Exclusions honours this campaign's exclusion list, and Prevent Re-send skips anyone already sent or already queued for this campaign. Whatever they removed is summarised in the Exclusions Auto Applied panel above the results.

Two things come out of every search whether the switches are on or not: people who have unsubscribed, and addresses already known to be undeliverable.

Then tick the people you want. Select All, Deselect All, a filter box, and Advanced Selection for including or excluding in bulk by keyword.

Sending

Under Send Settings, choose the Sender Display Name and set the reply address. That second field is labelled Reply-To Group on accounts that send through Buzzscribed's own mail service, and Sender Address otherwise.

Send Settings also shows your Time Zone, which is the zone Send Time is read in. Leave Send Time blank and the email goes straight away; set a date and time and it is held until then. The Out of Office switch asks recipients' mail systems to hold automatic replies - most honour it, and real replies and bounce notices always come through either way. Then click Send Email.

An Email quota strip at the top of the tab shows how much of your monthly sending allowance you have used. Learn more about send options, just above Send Settings, explains the same fields in a short window.

The engagement report

Seven headline numbers: Sent, Delivered, Read, Bounced, Downloads, Read Rate (Delivered) and Engagement Rate (Delivered). Click Bounced to open Who did not receive it, which names them and has an Export button.

Below that, under Performance Charts: cumulative over time, reads and opens over time, a conversion funnel, downloads by file, and the ten most engaged companies. Then two lists - Engagements / File Downloads and Engagements / Email - naming who did what.

Before the campaign has been sent the tab shows an empty state reading Nothing to report yet.

Finishing a campaign

On the CAMPAIGNS list each running row shows a green Active status and an archive button at the end, tooltip Close (archive) campaign. Closing marks it Closed and drops it from the default list; nothing is deleted. Turn on All Campaigns to see closed ones, and use the re-open button on the row to bring one back.

Key takeaways

BUSINESS menu > Email Direct Marketing, and only on the Business platform mode.
CAMPAIGNS first, then 1. COMPOSE, 2. CONTENT and 3. SEARCH & SEND, with EXCLUSIONS and ENGAGEMENT REPORT alongside.
Files travel as download links, not attachments, and are placed with File downloads from the Insert content panel.
Apply Exclusions and Prevent Re-send are on by default; unsubscribes and dead addresses are always removed.
Closing a campaign is the archive button on its row, and it is reversible.