Setting up email campaigns: common scenarios and key considerations

Here are the situations members run into most with campaigns, and how SleepPRO™ handles each one.

1. Sending order

Emails send from top to bottom. A new email you have not activated yet sits at the top of the list with a grey dot. It has no "send after" setting yet, so it is not part of the sequence.

2. Adding an email in the middle

A new email at the start or middle of a sequence only reaches parents who have not reached this step yet. Parents further along do not receive it.

For example, email 1 went to 9 contacts and email 2 went to 12 contacts. You insert a new email between them. Contacts waiting after email 1 get the new email next. Contacts who already received email 2 do not.

3. Adding an email at the end

A new last email goes to every parent still subscribed to the campaign. Parents stay subscribed after their last email unless you remove them, so they all receive the new one.

4. Delays on new emails

Delays count from when a parent received the email before, not from when you added the new one.

For example, email 1 sends 5 minutes after sign-up and email 2 sends 24 hours later. A parent joins January 1 at 10:00 AM, gets email 1 at 10:05 AM and email 2 on January 2 at 10:05 AM. On January 15 you add email 3, 24 hours after email 2. This parent receives email 3 straight away, because more than 24 hours have passed since January 2.

5. Sending conditions

An email waits until every condition is met. You can set:

• A delay: days, hours or minutes after the email before.
• A time: the hour it sends.
• Days: the days of the week it can send.

For example, email 2 sends 2 days after email 1, at 10:00 AM, Monday to Friday. Email 1 went out on Thursday at 3:00 PM. Two days later is Saturday at 3:00 PM, outside the allowed days, so email 2 goes out Monday at 10:00 AM.

6. Changing conditions in a running campaign

New conditions only apply to parents who join after you save the change. Parents already in the campaign keep the conditions from when they joined.

Think of a train on a track. Carriages already on their way follow the old route. Only new carriages follow the new one.

For example, 200 parents are due to receive email 3 on Friday at 3:00 PM. You change email 3 to Saturday at 3:00 PM. The 200 parents still receive it on Friday. Parents who join after the change receive it on Saturday.

7. Turning emails off and on again

If you deactivate every email in a campaign while parents are still in it, turning them back on sends them again to everyone currently in the campaign, even parents who already received them.

Duplicate emails hurt your sender reputation and lead to spam complaints. Instead:

• Only deactivate an email when it should never go out again.
• For big changes to a running sequence, build a new campaign.

8. Unsubscribed or bounced parents

A parent who unsubscribes from your marketing emails, or whose address bounces, stays in the campaign. They keep moving through the steps on schedule, they do not receive the emails. If they subscribe again later, they pick up from wherever they are in the timeline. A campaign never pauses.