How to get going with SEMSblast

SEMSblast offers a simple way to send email broadcasts to your customers and track the results. There are three key steps to sending a campaign to your users; 1) Having some subscribers to send to, 2) Creating an email to send, and finally 3) Sending the campaign and tracking the results.
     

Contents

• Adding Subscribers
• Creating Emails
• Sending Campaigns
   

Adding Subscribers

The most important part of any email marketing campaign is to actually have some recipients that will be able to receieve your message. SEMSblast offers a number of ways to either start capturing new subscribers or importing your existing subscribers if you have any.
When you login to the SEMSblast control panel you will see a Subscribers option on the left hand side of the screen, clicking this will take you into the Subscribers area. Here you can Add new Groups, edit existing groups, and much more. For now click "Add a new Group".
A popup will open where you will be prompted to give your group a name. This is just for your reference so pop anything in here and click "Create new group". You will see your new group has appeared on your screen. Click the edit button and you will be taken into your new group. This is usually where you would see any subscribers that have signed up. Now we need to get some subscribers into the group. To do this you have a number of options available...

1. Import subscribers from a Spreadsheet
2. Copy and Paste subscribers from anything at all
3. Import subscribers from another system such as Capsule CRM
4. Design a form that you can put on your website or facebook page.

Use one of the above methods to start adding subscribers to your account. If you plan to use our "Unlimited Sending" plan we recommend sticking to one subscriber group if possible and then segmenting the group when you send to it, as we bill you for the number of subscribers you have in the system at any one time, so best not to duplicate emails across several groups.

Creating Emails

The next step to marketing success is to create great looking emails to go out to your subscribers. SEMSblast has a number of options available that will help you design the right email wether you are a complete novice or an email marketing professional.
To get started, login to your SEMSblast control panel and click the Newsletters tab at the left of the page. Next click "Add a new Newsletter" and you will be presented with the following options:

1. From a Template.
   You can choose one of our basic templates and then use our ezCreator email editting software to really easily design a newsletter by simply dragging and dropping email "blocks" onto the screen. This is the easiest way to get started.
2. Using a Wysiwig Editor
   If you are looking to design a more "Traditional" email you can use our Word style Wysiwig editor to create newsletters from scratch.
3. Using HTML Code
   If you are using an external HTML editor to design your newsletters, or just love coding your stuff from scratch our HTML editor gives you a beautiful interface with which to work. You can even toggle between Wysiwig mode and HTML editor mode.
4. Import from a File or Website
   You can even upload an HTML file, or enter a website address and we will attempt to create a newsletter for you from the source.

Important Note: 
It doesnt matter how you add your newsletter, you must have an unsubscribe option available. You can easily add an unsubscribe link using our code [UNSUBSCRIBE] anywhere in your newsletter. If you don't use an Unsubscribe tag, don't worry! We'll detect that and put one at the bottom of your email automatically when you go to send your campign.

Sending Campaigns

So you've got some subscribers, and you've produced your beautiful newsletter, you're ready to send it out to your subscribers. On the SEMSblast Control Panel, click the "Campaigns" option on the left of the page, and then click "Add a new Campaign".

You will be taken through a simple 5 step wizard which will enable you to schedule up a campaign with ease. The wizard takes you through the following steps...
 

1. Enter a Subject, a sender email address and the senders name.
2. Pick the email  you want to send (the one you created earlier!)
3. Pick the group you want to send to (You can segment your group here!)
4. Enter a date and time that you would like the campaign to be delivered.
5. Your campaign is on it's way out to your subscribers.....

Once you've added a campaign you will be taken back to the Campaign Overview screen where you will see your new campaign scheduled up. You can edit campaigns that haven't been sent yet, and you can delete campaigns but only 5 days after they have been sent.

Once your new campaign has been sent, you will be able to click on the "View" button next to it where you can see in real time who's reading your email, who's clicking links, who's unsubscribing and much more.