Begin An Email Campaign
Before creating your emails, configuring a campaign is the place to start. Think of a Campaign as a collection of emails with a common goal, theme, and audience.
You can have as few or as many emails as you want in a single Campaign, but creating Campaigns helps you keep your emails organized in their appropriate collections.
Most importantly, Campaigns help you keep your Audiences separate from each other to ensure that only the appropriate people are receiving your emails from a specific Campaign, which helps you maintain healthy subscriber lists who want to receive your emails about certain topics.
To begin, go to the Messages app, and then select Campaigns. Click here for a quick link.
In this guide, we'll cover the following topics. Click on any one to jump ahead.
Add A New Campaign
Starting a new Campaign is easy! From the Campaigns tab in Nucleus Messages click the Add New button. Then type in the name of your Campaign and Save Changes.
On the page you're redirected to click the Begin Setup button.
From here, simply select your type of Audience to choose where the Campaign is pulling the information from if you select Fixed or Dynamic, and then click Save Changes.
Create & Define Your Audience Of Subscribers
Yep, it’s that easy 😎 But let’s explore what each type of Audience is. There are three different types:
- Manual Audience
- Fixed Audience
- Dynamic Audience
First and most simply, you can create a Manual Audience, meaning you can add in all your subscribers one at a time, or in bulk by entering their name and email address into the fields provided.
Or you can create a Fixed Audience. This means anyone that currently matches the rule of where to pull your audience from will be added to your subscriber list immediately, but anyone in the future who matches that specific rule will not be added as a subscriber. This helps you limit your audience to a certain group from a certain point in time
To make sure anyone who currently matches the rule of where you’re pulling your audience from and ALSO anyone who matches it in the future, you’ll want to select a Dynamic Audience.
Note: You can always select a fixed or dynamic audience and then manually add subscribers (one at a time - or in bulk) later on if you need to. Click here to learn how to manage your Audience and subscribers.
When choosing a fixed or dynamic audience, you can pull subscribers from four different areas of your Nucleus:
- Connection Type
- People List
- Flow, or
- Giving Fund
To learn more about Connection Types and custom People Lists, and how to add people to those lists, click here.
As an example, selecting a fixed audience associated with a particular Flow, you could easily send everyone who signed up for the Fall Food Drive a thank-you message. You can also use this method to notify those particular church members about an update of how much food was donated, and how those donations are making a difference in people’s lives.
Another example: by selecting a dynamic audience associated with a particular Flow, you can send all new visitors who fill out an “I’m New Flow” an automated sequence of emails that provides them with opportunities for connection and ways to get to know your church more. (This would allow any new visitor who fills out that Flow in the future receive the same set of emails.)
Or if you have a monthly newsletter you want to send out to your church, you can create a Campaign with a dynamic audience so that anyone who fills out a particular Flow will be added as a subscriber to receive any future emails sent out!
Note: You cannot change the type of Audience on a Campaign once it’s been selected, so make sure you’re confident with your selection before saving and moving on. Of course, as mentioned above, you can always manually add additional subscribers, but you cannot switch between a fixed or dynamic audience, nor can you change a manually created Audience to be fixed or dynamic from a particular list or Flow.👉 That being said, you can always duplicate a Campaign, which will require you to create a new Audience. So, if you have all your emails already created, but want to change your Audience, duplicating the Campaign is an easy way to accomplish this.
Once you’ve defined and created your Audience, you’ll be able to manage your subscribers, including adding new ones. You can read all about how to do that here.
Make Use Of Smart Campaigns
There's certainly a time and a place for configuring your own campaigns by hand, but surely your schedule could benefit from a bit of automation. Introducing, Smart Campaigns. Each and every time someone takes a next step through your church's website built using Nucleus – whether that be subitting a prayer, giving a gift, joining a people list, being assigned a connection type, or subscribing to a Post (coming soon...) – they'll automatically be added as an audience member to a Smart Campaign that is related to that step.
Note: Flows are excluded from Smart Campaigns, as there already exists a custom follow-up Message in the Flows editor.
Because these campaigns are Smart, and by nature created automatically in Nucleus according to the steps that your church members take, they cannot be edited or archived.
They are Smart lists that are meant to be leveraged when you want to target specific audiences. Smart Campaigns are ideal for following up with first-time givers, contacting everyone in your volunteer list, or simply targeting everyone who is connected to your church with a one-off email.
This world is entirely your oyster to explore. Simply click on a Smart Campaign of your choice and begin writing your emails. There's no configuration of the Audience to be done, as that's the smart part of it!
What Next?
Now that you’ve established your Campaign, you can begin creating your emails. There are three different types of sending methods you can use, so be sure you select the correct type before writing your emails. Click below to learn more: