Email campaigns
First, create and save your new campaign
Next, select your email format
About email campaigns
Use email campaigns to create, schedule, and send beautiful, branded emails to your constituents.
To locate your email campaigns, sign in to your CRM account and choose Emails → Email Campaigns from the top menu.
Your email campaigns are displayed in a table format with live stats provided for each.
Use the status and date filter options in the upper-left to filter your list of campaigns.
- Email Name: the name assigned to the campaign when it was created.
- Opens: the number of recipients who opened the email campaign.
- Clicks: the number of recipients who clicked a link within the email campaign.
- Audience Name: lists the Email Audiences included in this campaign.
- Updated On: The last saved date and time.
- Updated By: the Neon CRM user who made the last change.
- Status: Indicates what stage this campaign is currently in.
- Draft - The email is in draft mode and can be edited.
- Scheduled - The email is scheduled and can only be edited if unscheduled.
- Processing - The email is in the process of being sent. Campaigns with more recipients make take longer to process.
- Sent - The email has been sent.
- Error - Something has failed, causing the email to not be sent. This status is rare. Should you encounter it, please contact our support team for assistance.
Create a new email campaign
First, create and save your new campaign
- Sign in to your CRM account
- Choose Emails → Email Campaigns from the top menu
- Click New Email Campaign in the top-right
- Complete the New Email Campaign form
- Assign a Name to the campaign
Be as specific as you need to be for your internal use. This name will not be visible by any recipient of an email campaign. - Include an Email Subject, which appears as the subject line of the email and is prominently displayed to recipients.
- Personalize your subject line by including tokens. To add tokens to your email subject line, simply type { plus the name of your token. You’ll be presented with your full token list in dropdown format. Results will narrow as you type.
- To include an emoji in your subject line, use the emoji selector to the right of the subject line field.
- Select the Audience you’d like to receive this email campaign. You may only select one audience.
- Input your Sender Name and Sender Email. This will appear in the recipients’ email as the person and address that sent them the message.
- Choose your method for including content.
- Build an email - this option will take you to our email builder, a user-friendly interface that allows you to create and customize the content of your email.
- Upload an email - this option is great for any users who have custom HTML created for the email.
- Assign a Name to the campaign
- Click Continue
Next, select your email format
- Choose from the three options
- Choose a Template - Your Email Templates from global settings are included, providing your custom header and footer. Choose a template and add your email content in the next step.
- Choose a Layout - Build a new campaign from scratch. Our layouts offer many options for sectioning your content into rows and columns. These layouts can still be edited in the next step.
- Copy from Existing Emails - Choose from existing emails and copy the entire email including content, layout, and style options.
Then, edit your content
In the main portion of your screen, you’ll enter the content of your email. This includes text, links, videos, images, tables, HTML, and more. Use this rich text editor to create and format your message. This section also acts as a preview of your campaign and will autosave as you work within it. Note the autosave date and time in the upper-right corner of the content.
Along the left, you’ll find options for customizing the campaign. Your preview will update as you make changes in the selections on the left.
- Add your content: In the preview to the right, place your cursor within a content block. A toolbar will appear. Use this toolbar to edit your text and add other elements such as images, videos, links, and buttons to your campaign.
Here are a few more tips to creating and editing your content:- Add images by clicking the image icon
in the toolbar to open the insert image window. Enter either the image URL or click to browse your CRM library. Browsing your library will also allow you to upload new images right from within the campaign build process.
- Add a video by clicking the video icon
in the toolbar to open the insert video window. Then type or paste your video URL where the video is hosted. Be sure to use publicly accessible URLs only. Your preview will generate based on the video but can be replaced, and your caption text will appear beneath the video preview image within your campaign.
- Create and format buttons by choosing Insert Button
in the toolbar. Buttons can be linked easily to a Neon CRM form of your choosing or you can insert a link.
- Images and other content can be aligned (left/right/center) using the text alignment tool in your toolbar.
- You may add new sections in your campaign by clicking the insert option which will appear when hovering between sections. Your campaign may include up to seven 1- or 2-column rows, including the header and footer.
- Insert tokens with ease. Use the toolbar to search and insert from your list of tokens or simply type { plus the name of your token. You’ll be presented with your full token list in dropdown format. Results will narrow as you type.
(rotating gif above demonstrates adding an image using a URL)
- Add images by clicking the image icon
- Adjust Email Settings:
- Display Share Link - adds an option to share your campaign. The recipient is provided with a share button. When clicked, they have the ability to share through email.
- Display View Online Link - Allows the recipient to open your campaign in a webpage.
- Include Unsubscribe Link - Include a link for your recipients to optionally unsubscribe from all future emails. Unsubscribing will remove them from all of your Neon CRM communications and categorize them as unsubscribed.
Note: Emails must have an unsubscribe option, but users can disable the toggle, choosing instead to include it manually in another location of the email.
- Display Social Media Links - this option will add social media icons to your campaign which will route to your social pages when clicked. If enabled, complete the following options:
- Icon preference: dark icons have better visibility against light backgrounds. For dark backgrounds, choose light icons.
- Social Links: under Type in your Social Media Options, click icon to select what type of social entry you’re making. Then enter the address for this link. You may enter as many social icons as needed.
For example, choose the website type and enter your organization’s web address.
- Email Styles - customize the look and feel of your campaign. With these tools, you can match your brand or the tone of your message.
- Heading Font - will update text within your campaign with the Heading paragraph style in the text editor.
- Body Font - will update text within your campaign that is not using the Heading paragraph style in the text editor.
- Header Background Color - will only update the background of the header section of your campaign
- Body Background Color - will only update the background of the body or main sections of your campaign
- Footer Background Color - will only update the background of the footer section of your campaign
- Backdrop Color - will update the backdrop surrounding your campaign sections.
- Once complete, click Continue in the lower-right
(rotating gif above demonstrates adjusting social links and background colors)
Review your campaign
- On the next page, you’ll be presented with your campaign selections. Any section with an error that would prevent your campaign from sending is displayed with an
icon. To edit a section and make changes, simply click the Edit link to the right.
- Optionally, you may send yourself a test email to review your campaign outside of Neon CRM before sending it to your constituents.
- Click Send a test email just under your campaign preview at the bottom of the page.
- In the window provided, fill in the email address where you’d like to send the test.
- Click the Test button to send the test email
- In this step, you can either choose Save Draft in the lower-right to save this campaign and come back to it later or click Schedule and Send to continue
Schedule and Send
- Select an option to send your email:
- Schedule: allows you to specify a date and time for when this campaign should be sent. This includes a time zone option to ensure accuracy.
- Send Immediately: your email will be immediately queued and set.
- Schedule or Send to complete your campaign!
Pro Tips!
- Personalize your emails by using tokens in your subject line and in the body of the email. Type { to bring up the token menu and select from the list.
- Make your emails stand out by including emojis in your subject line that are relevant to your content and help you communicate your message.
- Research shows that using a person’s name as the sender of an email, rather than an organization, improves open rates.
- Create draft email campaigns for emails that you send often such as newsletters, board member updates, donor appeals, etc. Because these campaigns and their entire contents can be easily copied, these drafts can serve as a full-content template to build from each time you send.
- To send the same campaign to multiple audiences, use the campaign copy feature. This ensures that your campaign statistics are tracked individually for each unique audience.
- Track your stats in the Statistics area to gauge how each campaign is performing.