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Time Estimate

About 15 mins

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Schedule a Series of Emails

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

  • Understand how segments are created.
  • Explain two ways to find campaign KPIs.
Note

The example marketing effort described in this unit can be accomplished in Salesforce Starter and Marketing Cloud Growth.

Event Follow-Up Email Series

Back at Ursa Major Solar, Erin has returned from the Alternative Energies Expo and has an idea for engaging all the new people that the team met. She goes to customer pros, Lincoln and Ada, to round up common questions and recommendations. Lincoln develops a timely series of emails to send to people who expressed interest in solar technology. Ada wants to learn more about Salesforce Starter, so she raises her hand to help build the email series. 

Ada and Lincoln are sitting in an office, talking about how to organize the campaign.

Plan an Email Series

Before Ada starts building, the team jots down a few to-do items.

  • Get some images from the marketing team.
  • Plot out the timing and content for each email.
  • Identify criteria to segment the recipient list.
  • Identify some target KPIs.

When it’s time to review KPIs, the team hopes to have a solid click-through rate and some new sales opportunities.

Ada will schedule three emails over 2 months, and focus content on solar benefits, cost offsets, and installation FAQs. To target the right group, she’ll build the segment off lead source and opportunity fields.

Build an Email Series

Ada starts by logging in to Salesforce and creating a campaign. She chooses Message Series, and names it Expo Follow-Up. 

Message Series tile.

A message series campaign is created in Flow Builder, a tool that helps you automate complex activities into multistep processes called flows. Like a single email campaign, the series campaign contains three primary parts: a schedule, audience segment (1), and content (2). 

The flow canvas shows highlighted areas for the Audience, Content, and Schedule areas.

There are two ways to create a message series: Open the flow and add or create each part from the canvas, or build the segment and content first and then bring them together in the flow. Ada decides to build things first, and then work in Flow Builder.

Identify the Audience

The audience for a campaign is based on a segment, which works like a dynamic list of targeted recipients. In a series, everyone in the segment receives each email based on the same schedule settings. Ada’s ready to get started. Let’s look at how it’s done.

  • Click the Marketing tab, and then select Segments.
  • On the Segments home, click New.
  • Give the segment a name, such as AEE Leads.
  • On the segment canvas, drag two attributes from Related Attributes and set the AND/OR selector.
    • Lead | Lead Source: AEE 2023 (1)
    • Lead | IsConverted: False (2)
    • Selector: AND (3)
      The segment canvas shows Lead Source and Is Converted values.
  • Click Save & Activate.

Now, Ada’s segment is available to use with emails. 

💡Tip: If you schedule emails more than a day or two in advance, check the segment population before you send. Someone with the System Administrator profile can check the population against your current email send usage on the Company Information page in Advanced Setup.   

Create Email Content

Since Ada chose a message series, her campaign record comes preset with two draft emails. To get started, she reopens the AEE Follow-Up campaign that she created and opens the emails for editing. Here’s how it’s done.

  • Open the email for editing.
    • From the campaign, click Edit In Flow and find the first Send Email Message element.
    • Click the element, and then click Edit Element. 
    • Next to the email name, click the menu down arrow, and then select Edit.
      Select Email to send panel shows dropdown menu expanded with Edit selected.
  • On the Settings tab, enter important information about the email.
    • Title: AEE Follow-Up 1 
    • Description: First email in Expo Follow-Up series. 
    • Message Purpose: Promotional
    • Subject Line: So you’re interested in solar?
    • Preheader: How solar panels can benefit everyone for years to come.
  • Replace the email header image or drag an image component onto the email canvas.
  • Continue adding components and content as needed, as described in the previous unit. (See examples in this video playlist.)
    • Add the required Physical Address and Unsubscribe Link merge fields.
    • Add merge fields to personalize content in paragraph and heading components or in the subject line field.
    • Decide whether to customize styles for the email or specific components.
  • To check formatting and verify that merge fields render as expected, click Preview.
  • In the toolbar, click Save.
  • To add it to the campaign, click Publish.

You can also create emails from the Content sub-tab by clicking Add and then choosing the content type Email.

Example email layout

Combine Work in a Campaign

With a segment and the emails complete, Ada’s ready to bring the pieces together and build this series of flow elements.

Flow canvas shows AEE Follow-Up 1 email, wait 10 days, AEE Follow-Up 2 email, Wait 30 days, and then AEE Follow-Up 3.

Here’s how it’s done.

  • Open the Expo Follow-Up campaign.
  • Click Edit In Flow.
  • In the Start element, click Select Segment.
    • In the Segment field, search for AEE, and then select the AEE Leads segment.
  • Add the first email.
    • Click the Send Email Message element, and click Edit Element.
    • In the Email panel, replace the default email with AEE Follow-Up 1 in the Select Email field.
  • Configure the wait time between emails.
    • Click the Wait for Amount of Time element, and click Edit Element.
    • In the fields provided, enter 10 days.
  • Add remaining emails and wait times to build the email series.
    • To add an element, hover over the Add Element icon Circle icon, click theCircle icon with plus-sign inside, and then select the appropriate element type.
    • In the element’s editing panel, configure the fields.
  • Open the Start element, and click Set Schedule.
    • In the Set a Schedule panel, select Start Immediately after Activation.
  • In the toolbar, save the flow, and then click Activate.

Right away, Salesforce checks the data for leads that originated from the expo mixer. Those people are added to the segment, and the first email is queued for sending immediately. In 10 days, the same people (minus any who have converted to contacts with open opportunities) will receive the second email, and so on.

Ada and Lincoln celebrate in front of a positive-tracking graph.

Email Series Outcome

Ada checks the Performance tab on the campaign, and sees awesome click-through rates on the email. She sets a reminder to check again in 2 weeks.

Creating an email series allowed Ursa Major Solar to schedule emails in advance for a targeted group. They can also continue to monitor performance and tweak the content over time. Nice work, team!

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