The toolbars are slightly different. The one in Classic Editor always sits across the top of the screen whereas the toolbar in Campaign Designer appears when you click on an editable section.

Campaign Designer

Click on an icon on the image below to take you to a description of its function.

Classic Editor

Click on an icon on the image below to take you to a description of its function.

Glossary

Undo/redo

These buttons do exactly what they say on the tin. If you’ve made a mistake, you can undo your last few actions back to your most recent save. Don’t worry if you go too far back, you can redo them again too. You can also use the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y to undo and redo actions respectively.

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Bold text

This button adds a <strong> tag to highlighted text, making it appear in bold. You can also use the Ctrl+B keyboard shortcut.

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Italic text

This button adds an <em> or ‘emphasis’ tag to highlighted text, making it appear in italics. You can also use the Ctrl+I keyboard shortcut.

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Underlined text

This button underlines highlighted text. You can also use the Ctrl+U keyboard shortcut.

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Strikethrough text

This button puts a line through highlighted text so it appears crossed out.

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Align text

These buttons allow you to align text to the left or right, centre align text or justify it (this spaces text so that it aligns both the left and the right margin).

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Bullet points and numbering

When creating a list, you can add bullet points or numbering to make your content clear.

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Horizontal line

Use this tool to add horizontal lines to help break up your campaigns and separate sections.

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Font family

This tool can be used to customise the font of text in your email campaign. It’s important to specify this so that the font doesn’t change when it’s delivered to different email and webmail clients. Highlight the required section of copy and then make a selection from the drop down menu.

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Font size

This changes the size of the copy. It’s important to specify the font size so that it doesn’t change when it’s delivered to different email and webmail clients. Highlight the required section of copy and then make a selection from the drop down menu.

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Font colour

This changes the colour of the copy text. You can select a colour from the colour picker or use a hex code if you know it. It’s important to specify the colour so that it doesn’t change when it’s delivered to different email and webmail clients. Highlight the required section of copy and then make a selection.

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Remove formatting

This strips out all of the styling applied to highlighted text. This is really useful if you find that the formatting of the text is changing when your campaign reaches the inbox (something that often happens if you copy and paste text from a word processor). Simply remove all of the formatting and then reapply it with the font family, size and colour tools.

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Add and modify tables

Adding a table is the best way to get images in your email campaigns to line up side by side. Once you’ve added a table, you can then specify the heights and widths, borders and padding, alignment and all of the other options using the modifications drop down menu.
Click here for more on using tables
A few common table problems and how to fix them

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Toggle spell checker on and off

If you want to check your spelling, toggle on the spell checker. It’s static, so you’ll need to turn it off then on again to refresh it once you’ve made changes, and it won’t check your punctuation or grammar.

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Insert a symbol

Add symbols or special characters to your campaign. It’s important to use this tool because it inserts the correct character code into the HTML and so will render correctly in the inbox.

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Insert or edit a link

Use this tool to insert hyperlinks, send an email to a specific address, or add campaign links such as unsubscribe or forward to a friend links.
Click here for more on inserting links

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Remove a link

Highlighting copy which has been linked and then clicking on this tool will remove the link. If you are working in a copy of a campaign and are trying to update an older link you should always remove it first and then re-insert it. This will ensure the link is correctly updated.

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Add an anchor tag

Using anchor tags allows you to link to other parts of your email. For example, you could have a menu at the top and then clicking on an item in the menu would take you to that article in your email.
Click here for more on using anchor tags

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Add personalisation

You can use personalisation to add information to your email which is specific to a subscriber. For example, address them by their first name or use unique information you’ve collected from custom subscriber profile fields.
Click here for more on adding personalisation
Click here for more about creating your own subscriber profile fields

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Add social sharing buttons

This tool allows you to add links to your social media pages, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. These links come with ready-made icons which your subscribers will be familiar with.
Click here for more about adding social sharing buttons

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Add or edit an image

Here you can upload your images to your library, where we’ll host them for you. Choose the size of your image and the alt text which should appear if the image isn’t downloaded. Then insert it into your campaign.
Click here for more about adding images

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Toggle full screen mode

This tool makes the editor take up the full height and width of your display screen.
This feature is not available in Campaign Designer mode.

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Print your campaign

This tool sends your campaign to a printer, if you have one set up for your computer or device.
This feature is not available in Campaign Designer mode.

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Clean up messy code

This tool will tidy your HTML code so that it’s arranged with each tag on a new line. This organises your code so it’s easier to manage and work with.
This feature is not available in Campaign Designer mode.

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Cut

This tool removes anything you have selected but retains a copy of it which you can then paste back into your campaign. A great shortcut for this is to use Ctrl+X on your keyboard.
This feature is not available in Campaign Designer mode.

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Copy

This tool takes a copy of anything you have selected, which you can then paste into your campaign. A handy shortcut for this is to use Ctrl+C on your keyboard.
This feature is not available in Campaign Designer mode.

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Paste

If you cut or copy an item, you can then insert it into your campaign again by pasting it. We have three different paste tools here:

• Paste copies anything, including all formatting. The shortcut for this is Ctrl+V on your keyboard.
• Paste as plain text will remove all formatting from the selection which you are pasting in. This is really useful if you are pasting in copy from a website or a word processor, as the formatting can often create confusing HTML which is then misinterpreted by email and webmail clients. This can lead to text which looks fine in the editor, but looks different in the inbox.
• Paste from Word can be used if you’ve copied text from a Microsoft Word document which has already been formatted. This tool attempts to convert the Word formatting into the correct HTML formatting. Unfortunately, due to the numerous versions of Word and the complexity of this task, the tool doesn’t always get it quite right and copy may end up looking odd in the inbox. If you’re having this difficulty, we suggest removing all formatting and then re-applying it from within the editor.

This feature is not available in Campaign Designer mode.

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Indent

The indent tool moves items away from and towards the margin against which they are aligned.
This feature is not available in Campaign Designer mode.

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Text background colour

This tool adds a colour in behind copy, making it look as if it’s been highlighted.
This feature is not available in Campaign Designer mode.

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Format text

This tool allows you to apply previously defined formatting (font family and font size) to highlighted copy.
This feature is not available in Campaign Designer mode.

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Related guides

• Get your email marketing off to a flying start with our quick start guide
• Some of our favourite email designs to give you some inspiration
• A guide to transforming a template to match your branding

Find out how your open rate, click through rate and unsubscribe results compare to the averages for your industry.

Either view our 2013 email marketing benchmark report online or download the PDF version.

Did you know you can compare your campaign results with the averages for your industry directly in your Sign-Up.to account? Follow these simple instructions to setting your industry.
 

Sign-Up.to form stats

The statistics for a form can be found in ‘Form manager’ under the Collect tab. Simply click the ‘Show form statistics’ link at the top right of the page.

Each of the form icons will change to show you data about that form.

Form views

The total number of times your form has been viewed is represented in the bar chart as a blue column.

Top tip: Is your form not getting much traffic? Try placing it on a high traffic page on your website or use our app to add it to your Facebook page.

Subscriptions and conversions

The green column shows how many confirmed subscriptions you have had through the form. The green value in brackets is the conversion percentage; in other words, the percentage of people who have viewed your form and then completed a subscription.

Top tip: Do you want to improve your conversion percentage? Try offering an incentive to complete it, simplifying your form so it’s quick and easy for people to fill it in or customising the opt-in email with compelling calls to action.

Form usage

See when someone first completed your form and when it was most recently completed.

Top tip: Has no one completed your form recently? Maybe it’s on a web page which is obsolete or it contains old information which is no longer relevant.

Subscription breakdown by list

If you have forms which are connected to multiple lists, you can see a breakdown of how many subscribers opt-in to other lists. To see this, you’ll need to toggle the stats off by clicking the ‘Hide form statistics’ link in the top right. Then click on the form icon to open the form properties popup.

The number in brackets next to each list name tells you how many subscribers have opted in to other lists.

Top tip: Not many people opting-in to secondary forms? Try offering an incentive to make your call to action more enticing.

Please note:

We aren’t able to provide accurate usage statistics for your form if you embed it on your website using the open form HTML. If you’re using this method, you may want to consider using Google Analytics tracking (see below) instead.

Adding Google Analytics tracking

If you want more detailed statistics and you have a Google Analytics account, you can add a tracking code to your form.

Firstly, you’ll need to set up a new tracker in Google Analytics using the URL for your form. This URL can be found by clicking the ‘Promote’ button in the form properties popup and then selecting the ‘Link to this form’ option.

Once you’ve input this URL into your GA account, you’ll be given a tracking code which starts with ‘UA’. To add this to your form, open it in the form builder and click the ‘Form options’ link next to the save and exit links.

This opens the form options window. Here, you’ll need to check the box to switch on GA tracking and then copy and paste in your tracking code from your GA account. Finally, click the ‘Apply’ button to close the window and then save your form.

Google Analytics tracking will now be added to your form and the results will appear in your Google Analytics account.

Please note:

if you have previously added your form to your website using the open HTML feature, the code will need to be updated with the added tracking information to begin sending information to your Google Analytics account.

Related guides

• Create a data capture form
• Promote your form
• How to gain new subscribers

1. Collect

‘List manager’ under the Collect tab is where you can find all of your subscribers. It’s always worth popping by to remind yourself which list you want to send a campaign to.

Useful articles:

• Tutorial on creating a list and organising your data
• A beginner’s guide to segmenting data

2. Create

‘Campaign manager’ under the Create tab is the home of our outstanding Campaign Designer editor tool. Open up the editor and select an email template which you’d like to use to build your campaign. With the easy to use tools, you can create amazing campaigns without having to know any HTML at all.

• Edit copy
• Insert links
• Add personalisation
• Insert images
• Add social sharing and send to a friend buttons

It’s really important to save often, and when you save you can edit the subject line and from name for your campaign. Generating a plain text version of your campaign helps to avoid spam filters and makes your emails accessible to more recipients.

When you’re happy with your campaign, our Inbox Testing tool makes it quick and easy to see what your email will look like in a variety of email and webmail clients. This can help you to ensure that your email always looks great when it reaches your subscribers.

Useful articles:

• Video guide to using our Create tools
• A guide to the toolbars in our campaign editors
• Transforming a template in six easy steps

3. Send

Finally, you’re ready to send your campaign. Head to ‘send campaign’ under the Send tab. Select which list of subscribers you’d like to send to, or send your campaign to all of them. Next, select the email campaign you want to send and decide what time you want to send it. Click the ‘schedule for delivery’ button and you’re all done!

Useful articles:

• A tutorial on scheduling an email campaign
• What happens to your email once it’s sent?

A few last things…

If you want to check the progress of your campaign, cancel it or look at the analytics once it’s sent, click the ‘campaign analysis’ link under the Analyse tab.

Our Knowledge base has tutorials on all of the tools available in your Sign-Up.to account and our blog has lots of articles on every aspect of online marketing. You can access these resources and find contact details for our award-winning and forever friendly Support team by using the Support icons in the top left of your account.

Useful articles:

• A tutorial on viewing your campaign results
• A guide on the analysis overviews available on your Home page

Find out how your open rate, click through rate and unsubscribe results compare to the averages for your industry.

Either view our 2012 email marketing benchmark report online or download the PDF version.

Did you know you can compare your campaign results with the averages for your industry directly in your Sign-Up.to account? Follow these simple instructions to setting your industry.
 

This isn’t our most recent guide

For the latest, most up-to-date statistics, check out our 2013 email marketing benchmark report.
 

What is responsive email design?

It’s a way of coding emails that allows them to fold down beautifully when viewed on smaller screens. It essentially allows a design to be versatile enough to play nice on all devices. For example, your email might look like this on a PC:

Then like this on a smartphone:

Note how the image resizes appropriately, and the text re-wraps to accommodate the narrower screen without becoming smaller. The overall design remains ultra accessible to the reader and avoids them having to zoom or horizontally scroll to get the full message.

Interested in building your own responsive emails? Check our our full guide for details.
 

Related guides

• How to code emails for Campaign Designer
• Select one of our free email marketing templates
• Our good email design series can offer inspiration

To the left of the Home page you’ll see your credit balances, as well as any new tips and news stories.

On the right you’re able to switch between the three online marketing channels – email, SMS and social. This is where we’ll guide you through the permission marketing cycle to help you get the very most from your marketing efforts.

In the ‘Email overview’ tab we’ve broken the key tasks down into four distinct areas; collecting and managing your subscribers, creating great looking email campaigns, sending your campaign and finally analysing the results. Each task contains handy links to the relevant section of your Sign-Up.to account – see an example below.

Once one area is completed, we’ll walk you through the next step. Don’t worry, you can return to all sections simply by clicking the ‘Previous’ link.

If all sections have been completed we’ll show you some quick analysis of campaigns sent through your account. You’ll also see some handy stats to the right of the tab, including how many active email addresses you have within your account and how many days since you last sent an email campaign.

You can also set your industry on within the ‘Email overview’ tab. Click here to read our guide to setting your industry.

The ‘SMS overview’ tab works in a similar way to the email one, but in the screenshot below you’ll notice that we’ll guide you through setting up an SMS keyword – great if you’re looking to receive messages from your prospects and customers.

The tab also walks you through creating and sending professional SMS messages and analysing the results from those campaigns.

The social section walks you through integrating your Facebook and Twitter pages with your Sign-Up.to account as well as helping you to create and share posts using our powerful Share tools. You’ll also be able to analyse your results to help you measure the success of your social posts.

The ‘Recent activity’ tab gives you an overview of all account activity, from user logins to emails scheduled and edited.

The ‘Subscribers’ tab becomes active when you have collected two or more subscribers in your account. The graph shows the total number of subscribers in your account and the number of subscribers added over the last 31 days.

In the ‘Exports’ tab, you can view recent exports and download the csv file again by clicking on the export name.

Manage your data

Using our Subscription Manager API and Subscriber Notifications API guides, you can automate the following processes, saving you time and effort:

• Merge your website and other online data capture forms with your Sign-Up.to account and CRM system to update simultaneously when a new prospect subscribes. Adding subscribers to your account straight away means you can start emailing them as soon as they sign up using Marketing Automation, providing immediate engagement with your new subscribers.
• Allow existing subscribers to manage their email preferences and update their contact information for themselves, without having to contact you.
• Update opens, clicks and unsubscribes to your CRM system as they happen.

If implemented appropriately, these features can enable you to manage your data easily and accurately, with the ability to access your most up to date records however and whenever you want. Potentially, you’d never have to export a CSV file from one location and upload it to another again!

Manage your campaigns (email or SMS)

Using our Campaign Manager API and SMS Messaging API, you can create and send email or SMS campaigns through our system.

If you already have a system that your day-to-day users are trained on, you can simply use this programme to create your email campaigns. Similarly, if you offer your own online marketing platform or CRM system, you can add the functionality of creating and sending email or SMS campaigns as an extra feature on your existing interface, and still benefit from the reputation of Sign-Up.to’s sending channels.

Analyse your results and gauge ROI

With our Account Statistics API and Goal Tracking API you can export details of your email marketing performance such as subscriber numbers, new subscriptions per day and email campaign tracking.

If you already use the Sign-Up.to interface to measure the success of your online marketing campaigns, you can add even more tangible statistics to your per campaign analysis with Goal Tracking. Using this guide, you can add information to your website to see exactly how many recipients completed a process or made a purchase, allowing you to accurately calculate the return you’re getting from each campaign you send.

To get API integration up and running between us and your other systems, you’ll need someone who knows their way around code, for example PHP, who has access to your Sign-Up.to account and the other systems you want to integrate with (such as your website). They’ll need to get a few things set up in your Sign-Up.to account first which the API setup guide explains – then you’re ready to go! Once it’s done, it shouldn’t need any ongoing management until you want to change something, so it doesn’t cost anything to maintain.

The campaign itself is set up using tools available in all Sign-Up.to accounts and in this guide we’ll walk you through the features used. This includes creating a data capture form, setting up a custom opt-in email, creating email campaigns using the Campaign Designer mode and, of course, using our Marketing Automation tools.

First things first, the campaign itself is made up of the following:

• Collect: creating a list, custom opt-in email, and a data capture form.
• Create: six email campaigns designed to send based on the readers’ interaction with the campaign.
• Send: 18 Marketing Automation rules (across six email campaigns).

Collect: creating a list, custom opt-in email, and a data capture form.

Once a folder and list is created in Collect it’s a good idea to create a custom opt-in email campaign. A custom opt-in email is sent to a subscriber at the point where they’re added to your database, when using one of our forms. It’s important to brand the email to your branding to ensure they recognise who has sent it to them.

Once the above ‘Create custom opt-in email’ link is clicked we were then able to add our standard HTML template and some copy.

Looking at the data capture form is a good next step. A form is often the central hub of any campaign; it’s where people will sign up to receive more information so it has to be concise and appealing.

Within your Sign-Up.to account you can decide what information to capture on the form; we opted for the subscriber’s email address, first name and surname. Paragraphs can be inserted to guide subscribers through the form process (see below).

You can also add images in the form builder. We added the Sign-Up.to header and footer as the top and bottom images for all three pages.

After this you can consider the style of the form. For this campaign it was really important that it matched our branding, so we used the “Lively” theme and changed the form background colour to white.

Click here to see our ‘show me how’ data capture form in full.

Create: six email campaigns designed to send based on the readers’ interaction with the campaign.

Once all of the email content is prepared each email can be created using the Campaign Designer mode.

Below we’ve listed three handy tips you might need when setting up your email campaigns.

1. If you’re setting up multiple campaigns and need to keep the formatting consistent, you can use our ‘Copy’ feature which sits on the main Create page (see the image below).

2. Tables are easy to set up and a nice way of showing images and text.

3. Setting a plain text email can happen with the click of a button and means more people are likely to read your email. Just click the ‘Generate plain text’ button in the ‘Save’ window, as shown in the screenshot below.

Send: 18 Marketing Automation rules (across six email campaigns).

Before setting up your rules it’s good to work out which triggers are needed for each campaign. For example, we knew there were five rules needed for the first email in this campaign, one for each of the icons shown below.

To avoid confusion it’s best to approach setting up multiple rules in groups, for example one campaign at a time. You can see the rules set up for the first campaign in the screenshot below (click the image to see full size).

It didn’t take long to set them up, but planning ahead is important to ensure no rules are missed. When setting up a similar set of rules, try creating them one group at a time, name them clearly and don’t forget to test them!

That’s it, you can see the campaign in full for yourself here – we’d love for you to get involved.

Send is the place to go to target your subscribers, using powerful search and filtering options.

Within Send you can schedule both email and SMS campaigns. Use this section to target contacts on one or many lists using advanced search and exclusion options. You can also use the information you have about subscribers to target particular groups with relevant content and offers.

Our system allows you to set the email send speed, so your business can deal with the response. This is ideal for small teams or for preventing website crashes.

Within Send, you can run split tests of up to five versions of your campaign. Compare content, calls to action and subject lines to continuously improve your results.

Under the Send tab, you’ll find our powerful Marketing Automation tools. These can be used to create actions which are automatically triggered by subscriber events such as joining a list, opening a campaign, clicking a link or celebrating their birthday.

Detailed tutorials on all of our Send features can be found by visiting our Knowledge base.
 

These rules can be based on subscriber activity – opening a particular email, clicking on a certain link – or on profile data like birth dates.

Once you’ve set up a rule it will run constantly until you pause or delete it, without you needing to take any further action. You could set up a campaign to be sent to subscribers seven days before their birthday and then leave it running for an entire year. Sign-Up.to will automatically send out your chosen email to each subscriber at exactly the right time for them.

To break it down, you can create a trigger when:

• It’s the subscriber’s birthday
• A subscriber opens your email
• A subscriber clicks on a link within your email
• A subscriber is added to a list

The above bullet points are links to handy guides which will help you get started with Marketing automation and show you some fantastic examples of how you can use it for your business.
To have a look at Marketing Automation click through to the Send section of your account, and then follow the Marketing automation link.

Here you’ll see the main Marketing Automation page. This is the place where you can set up new rules and edit, delete or pause existing ones.

To create a new rule, simply click the ‘create a new rule’ button at the top of the page.

In the new window you can select what action the rule is based on. Remember, you can create as many rules as you like! We’ve created individual guides for each of these events, so check out the links towards the top of the page for more information.

As mentioned before, on the main Marketing Automation page you can edit, delete and pause current rules. These options display to the right of the page and to put them into action simply click the relevant link.

Also, if you click the arrow next to the name of the rule you’ll see some drop down text showing you more details about the rule.

That’s a brief introduction to this wonderful feature, but to see more information check out our further guides on Marketing Automation.
 

When a subscriber is added to a list (within Collect) you can have the system perform an automatic action, this can happen straight away or after a specified delay. These auctions allow you to comprehensively manage your data. The available actions are:

• Send a notification to a specified email address
• Send the subscriber an email campaign (auto-responder)
• Send an SMS message to the subscriber
• Copy the subscriber to another list
• Move the subscriber to a different list
• Remove the subscriber from this list

To do any of these things you will need to have already prepared any follow up content in the Create section of your account, i.e. email or SMS campaigns. As well as this you will need to have organised the appropriate list(s) in the Collect section.

The process in detail is as follows:

Go to the Marketing Automation tools, within the Send section of your account.

Click on the Create a new rule button.

Choose ‘When a subscriber is added to a list option’ then on the right, select the list that you would like the rule to apply to.

Clicking next will take you to a screen which allows you to set your desired follow up action in response to the subscriber being added to a list.

• The first option is to ‘Send a notification to…’, with you specifying the email address to be notified in the box to the right of the window. This triggered action could be useful for letting a member of the team know when a subscriber has joined the database. You may wish to use this if you need to follow up with any new subscribers.
• The second option allows you to send the subscriber an email campaign – historically known as an auto-responder. Simply choose the relevant campaign from the list on the right. You may wish to use this to welcome subscribers to your mailing list, or send them useful information about your business.
• Following on from this you also have the option to send the subscriber an SMS message once they’ve joined your mailing list. Browse on the right for the SMS campaign you’d like to send and set a delay if appropriate.Please note, using this action will cost the standard amount in SMS credits (as specified when creating the campaign) and relies on you having a subscriber’s mobile number in the system. If there are not enough SMS credits in the account or you have no number associated with your subscriber, then no action will be taken. Similar to email, this action could be used to send a welcome message, or even a reminder about an event taking place.

The next three options allow you to cleverly manage your data and how it’s all organised:

• Copy the subscriber to another list. You may decide that subscribers added to a list need to belong in multiple lists – for example, you may have a welcome list but also need to keep them in a central location. Having this option allows you to store the subscriber information in multiple locations.
• Move the subscriber to a different list. In the below section of the guide you’ll notice that you can choose when the action takes place, and with this option you may find it useful to send the subscriber an email or SMS message when they join the list, but then move them to another list after a set period of time. This option used to be known as list expiry.
• Remove the subscriber from this list. Similar to above you may look to use a list temporarily and here you can set to have the information removed from the list in question.

With all of the above options you’ll be able to decide when the action should take place. Those actions are:

• As soon as possible. This means that the action will be without delay. Please note that this option is not available if the subscriber is being copied, moved or removed from the list.
• After a fixed period of time. Here you’re able to determine how many minutes/hours/days after the event the action takes place.
• At a specific time. This option let’s you set a specific time (as well as time and date). This is ideal if, for example, you’re looking to send an email campaign to subscribers at a specific time of the day or you’re looking to avoid weekends.

Once you have set up your rule, you will need to name it and save it.

Your new rule will now appear in the list on the Marketing Automation page. You can see a summary of the rule by clicking on the arrow icon to the right of the rule name.

From here you are also able to edit any part of the rule, for example the action to be taken, the subsequent campaign to be sent or the timed delay.

You are able to disable the rule at any time by clicking Pause (it can easily be resumed), or you can remove it altogether by clicking Delete. A rule will remain active until it is either paused or deleted.

All the key information you need, in brief to-the-point guides which you should be able to get through in a coffee break. Yep, we thought long and hard about naming these.

Guide to email marketing

Topics include:

• Quick ways to build your email mailing lists
• Planning your email campaign
• Tips for designing and building your email
• Vital checks to make before your press send
• The most important email marketing statistics and what they mean

Read the coffee break guide to email marketing

View the email marketing guide as a PDF

Guide to SMS marketing

Topics include:

• Choosing between shortcodes and long numbers
• The anatomy of an SMS message
• Creating text-in services
• Building your SMS lists
• Using concatenated SMS
• Managing unsubscriptions

Read the coffee break guide to SMS marketing

View the SMS marketing guide as a PDF

Guide to social media marketing

Topics include:

• What you’ll need to consider before taking on social media
• Choosing the appropriate platform(s) for your business
• Tips for finding your voice in the social environment
• How to achieve your goals

Read the coffee break guide to social media marketing

View the social media marketing guide as a PDF

Guide to email delivery

Topics include:

• Why delivery matters
• Factors affecting delivery
• Filtering explained
• How to collect and manage data to improve delivery
• How email content affects delivery

Read the coffee break guide to email delivery

View the email delivery guide as a PDF
 

Post directly to multiple Facebook pages and Twitter accounts simultaneously.

Tutorial >

Share photos and links with your fans and followers as easily as posting a standard copy-only update.

Tutorial >

Schedule posts for the future to maintain your presence even when you’re out of the office.

Tutorial >

Post email campaigns to Facebook and Twitter as soon as they are sent out to your subscribers.

Tutorial >

Quickly and easily access key post statistics to measure how successful your posts and Tweets are.

Tutorial >

Grow your subscriber base by adding a data capture form to your Facebook page using our simple app.

Tutorial >

Share is free for all Sign-Up.to accounts, so why not try it out for yourself and see if you can get more from social media?
 

Related guides

• A short tutorial on how to integrate your Facebook pages and Twitter accounts with Sign-Up.to
• Seven quick tips to being successful in social marketing
• A guide to the results you can expect with Twitter marketing

 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/share/introduction-share/feed/ 2 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/account/how-to-add-a-user-and-set-permissions-within-their-account/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/account/how-to-add-a-user-and-set-permissions-within-their-account/#comments Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:00:49 +0000 Leanne Beale https://howto.sign-up.to/?p=186 Continued]]> Within your account, you may wish to have more than one user. User accounts make it easy to give different people access to your account and control what functions and data they can see. Setting up user accounts is simple:

First, click the cog icon on the navigation bar and then click ‘Settings’. If you are a monthly or annual paying customer, you will now have the option to purchase additional users from the Marketplace.

Click the ‘Add new user’ link to the right of the ‘Account users’ blue bar to start creating a new user.

On the ‘User details’ page you can decide on a username and add the users’ first name, surname and email address.

Once you click next, you’ll be able to decide on the functions the user will have access to – broken down by the Sign-Up.to sections.

If you choose for the user to be able to see the ‘List manager’ page, you’ll be able to specify which folders they can see by ticking the tick box at the bottom of the page. Furthermore, If you choose for the user to be able to view the ‘Campaign manager’ page, you’ll be able to determine if that user can view other users’ campaigns and results.

After saving, you’ll be able to see the new user added to the ‘Account users’ section. The user will also receive an email detailing their login information.
 

Related guides

• How sub-users can help you to get more from your Sign-Up.to account

 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/account/how-to-add-a-user-and-set-permissions-within-their-account/feed/ 3 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/select-free-email-marketing-templates/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/select-free-email-marketing-templates/#comments Sat, 11 Feb 2012 11:00:19 +0000 Leanne Beale http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/?p=2433 We provide a range of free email template designs that you can use as the basis for your email campaigns. These templates have been designed specifically for targeted email marketing and work in all major email clients.

1. Choose your editing mode

Navigate to ‘campaign manager’ under the Create tab and decide if you want to create an email in the Campaign Designer or Classic Editor mode. We recommend using the Campaign Designer as it offers lots of flexibility in your email design, and we’ll use it for this guide.

2. Open the template library

On the next page you’ll see lots of templates for you to choose from. If you have any custom templates these will appear at the top of the page, with our free templates sitting beneath them. If you hover over a template you’ll see a description and be able to preview the template in a new window. By clicking the thumbnail of the template it’ll automatically open in the editor.



3. Toggle on the filtering tools

The template browser also providers you with a set of search and filtering tools, just click the ‘Filter by layout, colour and theme’ link to see the options.



4. Use filters to find your perfect template

Here you can filter by layout, colour and theme – and you have the option to select multiple options. On choosing filters the template section will automatically update so you can see the most relevant templates.



5. Open your chosen template in the editor

Once you’ve chosen a template click the template thumbnail and it’ll then load, ready for editing.



Change template at any time

If at any time you chose to try out a different template simply click the ‘change template’ icon in the navigation bar at the top of the page.



Fancy trying your hand at coding your own template? Check out our guide.

 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/select-free-email-marketing-templates/feed/ 18 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/add-remove-articles-campaign-designer-mode/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/add-remove-articles-campaign-designer-mode/#comments Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:00:19 +0000 Leanne Beale http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/?p=2387 With the Campaign Designer mode you can add and remove articles (blocks of content) and move them up and down in your email, making it easy to tailor each template to suit your content.

First, open the campaign you’re working on.



Next, to add an article, click ‘Insert new article’ icon. Here you also have the option to clone the article with exactly the same content.



Here, you’ll see the new article, which you can edit with text and images.



You can also move articles around. To move an article, click and hold the arrow icon at the top of the article and move it down or up to where you want it.



Now you’ll see the articles have been moved.



To remove an article, click the bin icon in the bottom left hand corner of the article.


 

Related guides

• Add images to your campaign
• Add links to your campaign
• Six easy steps to customising a template

 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/add-remove-articles-campaign-designer-mode/feed/ 6 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/change-background-colour-email/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/change-background-colour-email/#comments Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:00:19 +0000 Leanne Beale http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/?p=2413 Within the Campaign Designer mode in Create, you can change the background colour of your email. This allows you to quickly change the appearance of your email and maintain the style subscribers may recognise as being part of your branding.
1. First, open your campaign in the Campaign Designer mode.
2. Next, click the Colour button at the top of the page.
3. This will open up a new window where you can select the background colour. Click in the text box to open the colour field and move your cursor around to find the colour you want. Alternatively, type in the hex code for your desired colour and press enter. The background of the email will change as you select different colours to show a preview of what your campaign will look like.
4. Once you’re happy with your selection, click the ‘OK’ button. If you decide you don’t want to change the background colour, click ‘Cancel’ instead.

 

Related guides

• Adding and removing articles in Campaign Designer
• Add an image to your campaign
• Avoid the spam filter by creating a plain text version of your email

 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/change-background-colour-email/feed/ 1 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/how-to-schedule-a-campaign/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/how-to-schedule-a-campaign/#comments Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:57:37 +0000 Leanne Beale https://howto.sign-up.to/?p=179 Sign-Up.to allows you to schedule your campaigns for delivery at the optimum time. Email marketing campaigns can be scheduled up to 12 months in advance.

To schedule a campaign that you’ve already created, navigate to ‘send campaign’ under the Send tab in your account. Next select the list of subscribers you want to send your email to.



Once selected, click the ‘select email’ button.



On the next page you can select the campaign you’re sending and schedule the send time. Below this you can select whether to exclude subscribers who have been contacted in the last two weeks.



Choose your send speed – the options available are either as soon as possible or limited to a certain number of emails per hour. When limiting the send speed, an estimated completion time will appear. Limiting the send speed is useful if you don’t want to overload your website or call center.



At the bottom of the page a final summary will be given and the number of subscribers your email will be sent to is displayed. Once you’re happy with the details, click ‘schedule for delivery’. A new page will then appear clarifying that your email has been scheduled for delivery.

If you need to cancel a scheduled campaign you can do this by going to ‘campaign analysis’ under the Analyse tab.
 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/how-to-schedule-a-campaign/feed/ 7 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/schedule-sms-campaign/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/schedule-sms-campaign/#comments Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:37:05 +0000 Leanne Beale http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/?p=3070 Sign-Up.to allows you to schedule your campaigns for delivery at the optimum time. SMS campaigns can be scheduled up to 12 months in advance.

To schedule a campaign that you’ve already created, click ‘send campaign’ under the Send tab in your account.

On the next page you can select the list of subscribers you’re sending to. Once selected click the ‘select SMS’ button.



Once you’ve selected the campaign you’re sending, you can choose the send time. Next, check over the details and click ‘proceed’. The page will reload, telling you how many credits will be used. Again, click ‘proceed’.



A new page will then appear clarifying that your SMS has been scheduled for delivery. You can view and cancel scheduled campaigns by going to ‘campaign analysis’ under the Analyse tab in your account.



Email campaigns can also be scheduled up to 12 months in advance. Click here for our tutorial
 

Related guides

• Create an SMS campaign
• View your SMS message delivery reports
• Use SMS marketing to collect new subscribers

 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/schedule-sms-campaign/feed/ 2 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/add-image-email-campaign/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/add-image-email-campaign/#comments Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:00:18 +0000 Leanne Beale http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/?p=2453 It’s easy to add images to your email campaigns in Sign-Up.to – we’ll even host the images for you. You can add an image to your campaign in both the Campaign Designer and Classic Editor mode. This guide will explain how to add an image in the Campaign Designer mode.

Once your email campaign has loaded you can add images within an article (section) by clicking inside the box. Once open, click the insert/edit image icon on the toolbar (circled red, below).

This will bring up an image options window where you can create and organise all of your images. This window will also show you existing images that you’ve already uploaded. In this guide we’ll add a new image so click the upload image button, at the bottom of the window.This will bring you to the upload image window where you can upload up to 10 images in one go. First select browse and then select the image from your computer.Next click the upload button.You’ll be presented with an image uploading box, followed by a message telling you the image(s) have been uploaded successful, so click close.Next, click insert and you’ll see the image in your email campaign.
If you need to edit your image at any point simply click the image and then the insert/edit image icon and you’ll see the image options window. Here you can add borders, alternate text and change the size of the image.

 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/add-image-email-campaign/feed/ 4 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/insert-link-email-campaign/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/insert-link-email-campaign/#comments Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:00:19 +0000 Leanne Beale http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/?p=2479 Sign-Up.to makes it easy to insert links to web based content in your emails. We’ll automatically track clicks on any links you include in your campaigns.

When you first log into your account, click Create and then Campaign manager. You can insert a link to your campaign in both the campaign designer and classic editor mode, and this guide will explain how.


Campaign Designer

Once your email campaign has loaded you can add links within an article (section) by clicking inside the box.

Next, click on the article with text you would like to have a link in. This will bring up the editing window. Here, highlight the text you would like to link and click the insert/edit hyperlink button on the toolbar.


A new window called ‘link options’ will open. There are three tabs to choose between, depending on what type of link you’d like to insert.

Web address: Here you can add a website address. If you click the ‘advanced’ button you can also add any link personalisation (if applicable).


Email address: In this tab you can create a link which will allow people to send you an email. You can choose the address, subject line and any email text you’d like people to include in the email.


Campaign link: This allows you to include any campaign personalisation, such as an option for recipients to unsubscribe or send your email to their friends.


You can also choose the colour of the link and whether it is underlined.



Once you’ve added your link, click OK.


In the editing box you will now see the link has been added, so here click apply.


Classic Editor

First open the campaign you would like to add a link to. Next, highlight the text you would like to make a link and click the insert/edit hyperlink button.

A new window called ‘link options’ will open. There are three tabs to choose between depending on what type of link you want to insert.

Web address: Here you can add a website address. If you click the ‘advanced’ button you can also add any link personalisation (if applicable).


Email address: In this tab you can create a link which will allow people to send you an email. You can choose the address, subject line and any email text you’d like people to include in the email.


Campaign link: This allows you to include any campaign personalisation, such as an option for recipients to unsubscribe or send your email to their friends.


You can also choose the colour of the link and whether it is underlined.



Once you’ve added your link, click OK.

Back in the editor mode, you will see the text which has been made a link.

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/insert-link-email-campaign/feed/ 9 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/sharing-google-calendar-events-email-campaigns/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/sharing-google-calendar-events-email-campaigns/#comments Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:55:28 +0000 Leanne Beale http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/?p=7684 Do you regularly run events that you want to keep in the forefront of your email subscribers’ minds? Thankfully, there’s an easy way to allow subscribers to add your events to their own Google Calendar.

What is Google Calendar?

Google Calendar is a cloud based time-management web app offered by Google. It is provided free to consumers as a part of the Google Account offering, and is integrated into Google Apps for Business, used by thousands of corporations worldwide. Anyone with access to either of these account types will have their own Google Calendar.

Creating a Google Calendar event

The first step in adding a calendar event to your email campaign is to set up the event itself. This can be set up on the Event Publisher Guide. Once you arrive on this page click the ‘Let people save an individual event from your site’ link.

Here you’ll want to add as much information as you can. This information will be pre-populated when the recipient clicks the link in your email, so you want to make sure the user recognises both your company and the event itself. Below is an example of a fictional Sign-Up.to event.



Next, click the ‘Create button HTML’ and you’ll see both the button and full HTML that can be added to your campaign. Here, depending on the Sign-Up.to editor you’re using, you have two options:

1. If you’re using our Classic or Code View editor you can copy and paste the full HTML into your email campaign.

2. If you’re using our Campaign Designer editor, or one of the above editors and want to just include a link, copy the actual URL from the HTML code (see the highlighted copy below). This URL is the element that’ll be added to your email campaign. It’s really easy to pick out the URL, as it’ll be framed by the quotation marks.



To see it for yourself, click here to see the example calendar invite we’ve set up for this guide.

Adding the Google Calendar event to your email campaign

If you’re using our Classic or Code View editor and want to include the Google Calendar button in your email campaign, copy and paste the entire HTML (shown above) into your email campaign.

If you’re using our Campaign Designer editor, or just want to include a link, first type the call to action you want to use to entice subscribers to click and save your event.



Next, paste the URL into the ‘Link options’ window in the editor and click ‘Apply’.



Making sure it works correctly

At Sign-Up.to we always recommended testing your email campaigns thoroughly before sending. To test that the calendar invite is behaving as you intended simply send yourself a preview of the email campaign and click the link, which will launch a view similar to that shown below. At this point the recipient will just need to click the ‘Save’ button. Depending on their personal calendar settings they’ll receive a reminder about your event as it draws closer. This is a great way of reminding people about your events in a non-intrusive way.



 

Related guides

• Google Calendar invites – a smart added touch to your email campaign.
• Insert a link into an email campaign.
• Adding social sharing buttons to your email campaign.

 

 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/sharing-google-calendar-events-email-campaigns/feed/ 0 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/send-quick-sms-message/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/send-quick-sms-message/#comments Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:56:25 +0000 Leanne Beale http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/?p=2889 The quick SMS sub section in Send allows you to create an SMS message quickly and schedule it for delivery. First, make sure you have the SMS credits before sending a message.

Navigate to ‘quick SMS’ under the Send tab in your account. This opens a page where you can enter all of the information for the message you’re sending.



Once you have entered your message click ‘send SMS’ and the message will be sent.
 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/send-quick-sms-message/feed/ 0 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/send-a-campaign-to-more-than-one-list/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/send-a-campaign-to-more-than-one-list/#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:51:45 +0000 Leanne Beale https://howto.sign-up.to/?p=91 Sign-Up.to makes it easy to send to more than one mailing list at once. You can set up rules that combine multiple lists, de-duplicate the contacts on those lists and even perform advanced filtering based on subscriber profiles. All of this is done without affecting the actual data in your lists, instead you create Searches – rules which tell Sign-Up.to how to process your data.

To start, navigate to ‘send campaign’ under the Send tab in your account and click the ‘create search’ button in the ‘select lists’ box.



A new page will appear where you can name the search you are creating. We recommend naming the search with something you’ll remember, so that you can use it again easily.

In the folder list select the folder(s) the lists you want to select sit in, and then select the appropriate lists (hold down ctrl or the apple key to select multiple lists). At the bottom of the screen you’ll find additional options to exclude subscribers on specific lists and further refine your selection. When you’re done, click the ‘save search’ button.



You’ll now be taken back to the send page and your search will be selected. In the ‘subscribers matching your criteria’ you can see the total number of unique subscribers selected by this search.

Now to send your email campaign click the ‘select email’ button.
 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/send-a-campaign-to-more-than-one-list/feed/ 3 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/adding-social-sharing-buttons-email-campaign/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/adding-social-sharing-buttons-email-campaign/#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:10:50 +0000 Leanne Beale http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/?p=3855 Using our ‘Go social!’ tools you can now easily add a variety of social sharing buttons to your campaign. These tools are available in both Campaign Designer and Classic Editor modes in the Create section of your account.

In Campaign Designer you first need to click on the article in which you’d like the share buttons to appear. Then click on the ‘Go social!’ button in the toolbar to bring up the tools. In Classic Editor, the ‘Go social!’ button appears in the main toolbar at the top of the editing window. Before clicking on it be sure to have placed your cursor where you’d like the share buttons to be inserted.



From here the process is the same for both editor modes. You will be presented with a new window containing two tabs: ‘Get followers’ (to promote your social network pages) and ‘Go viral’ (to promote your campaign).



Get followers

Adding buttons using this tab will allow you to link to your social network pages.

1. Select social networking platforms

Tick the box for each social network page you have and would like to promote. Doing so will add the relevant icon to the preview pane on the right. You will also need to enter the URLs for each of your social network pages into the appropriate boxes on the left.



2. Align the buttons

Use the horizontal and vertical options to change the way in which the buttons line up and enter a number into the spacing field to customise the size of the gap between buttons.



If you’d like to change the order in which the buttons appear, simply drag and drop to switch them around.



3. Add the buttons

Clicking the ‘Add’ button will insert the share buttons into your campaign in the arrangement you have specified. They will appear in your campaign in a table and this is shown as a dashed grid, but the grid will not appear in your final campaign.



Go viral

Adding buttons using this tab will allow others to share your campaign on their own social network pages. The ‘Send to a friend’ button also allows your subscriber to easily send your campaign to a number of their friends.



1. Select social networking platforms

Tick the box for each platform that you’d like your subscribers to be able to share through. Doing so will add the relevant icons to the preview pane on the right.



2. Align the buttons

Use the horizontal and vertical options to change the way in which the buttons line up and enter a number into the spacing field to customise the size of the gap between buttons. If you’d like to change the order in which the buttons appear, simply drag and drop to switch them around.



3. Add the buttons

Clicking the ‘Add’ button will insert the share buttons into your campaign in the arrangement you have specified. They will appear in your campaign in a table, this is shown as a dashed grid, but the grid will not appear in your final campaign.



Using custom images as buttons

Should you want to, you are able to use custom images in place of the standard buttons and still retain the share functionality. To do this, insert the standard buttons then click to highlight the one to be amended. Next click on the ‘insert/edit image’ tool and select the new image from your image library. Clicking ‘insert’ will add the custom button to your campaign in place of the default.



 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/adding-social-sharing-buttons-email-campaign/feed/ 0 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/filter-subscribers-using-subscriber-profiling/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/filter-subscribers-using-subscriber-profiling/#comments Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:00:24 +0000 Leanne Beale http://howto.sign-up.to/?p=1883 Within the Send section of your account, you can filter your subscribers using subscriber profiling. The benefit of this is that it allows you to target specific subscribers within your database.

1. When you first log into your account, click Send.

2. Next, click create search in the ‘select subscriber profile’ box.

3. Here you will need to name the search you are creating.

4. Then click the refine search button at the bottom of the page and this will expand the section above to include the profiling you have created in the Collect section of your account. Once you have selected the subscribers you want to filter by click the save search button.





 

In this section you can also filter your subscribers by other factors, for example gender – if this information has been collected in your data capture form.

1. To filter subscribers by gender, first click the create search button in the ‘select subscriber profile’ box.

2. Again, on the new page you will need to name the search you’re creating. Then click the gender you want to filter your subscribers by and click the save search button.

3. This will take you back to the Send section and in the subscribers matching your criteria box, you will see how many subscribers have been filtered.

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/filter-subscribers-using-subscriber-profiling/feed/ 2 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/preview-email-campaign/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/preview-email-campaign/#comments Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:00:03 +0000 Leanne Beale http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/?p=2496 It’s important to preview your email marketing campaigns as an email, before they’re sent to your subscribers. This allows for proof reading and internal feedback before the campaign is finalised.

Email clients render HTML differently to web browsers and this means that things may differ between what you see on screen when designing your campaign and how it’s displayed in recipient’s inboxes. Sending a preview to your email address is crucial to make sure your campaign appears as expected.

1. Firstly, navigate to ‘campaign manager’ under the Create tab and click ‘options’ next to the campaign you want to preview. This will bring up the options pop up box with the campaign details.

   

2. Here, if you click the image of your email it’ll open in a new browser.

   

3. Back in the options pop up box you can also email yourself a preview. To do this, click the ‘send preview’ button, enter the email address and select if you’d like to send yourself a multi-part, HTML or plain text preview. Then click ‘send preview’.

   

4. Don’t forget you can also preview your email while creating it, by clicking the preview button in the top right hand corner of the screen. 
5. This brings up a smaller window where you can enter your email address, sending it straight to your inbox.

Want to quickly test your campaign in a range of inboxes?

Different email clients display things slightly differently. Our ‘Campaign Designer’ tool takes this into account but if you have coded your own email you may want to test in multiple email clients to make sure things work as you expect. This can be very time consuming, so try using our quick and easy Inbox Testing tool to test your campaign in a range of email and webmail clients.
 

Related guides

• Test your campaign in a range of inboxes with just a few clicks
• Preview responsive emails
• Techniques for avoiding the junk folder
]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/preview-email-campaign/feed/ 7 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/previewing-responsive-emails/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/previewing-responsive-emails/#comments Sun, 05 Feb 2012 12:23:54 +0000 Tamara Bond http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/?p=5551 It’s really important to preview your email marketing campaigns before you send them to ensure they look great. Sign-Up.to allows you to send free previews to yourself so you can see how your campaign looks in your email client. We also offer Inbox Testing – a quick and simple way to preview your campaign in the top email clients.

With many of us choosing to read emails on mobile devices, we’ve created a handy tool which lets you preview emails to see how they’d look on tablets and smartphones. This tool is available for previewing emails created using responsive Campaign Designer templates and campaigns created in Code View. For more information about responsive email design, check out our guide.



You can preview emails created using responsive Campaign Designer templates and any campaigns created using Code View by selecting them in campaign manager, hovering over the image of the campaign and clicking “preview in browser”.



You can also preview your campaign while you’re creating it. In Campaign Designer, to preview your campaign in a browser window click “preview” in the top right of the editor and then click the “Preview in browser” button.



In Code View, click the “preview in browser” icon at the bottom left to open responsive previewing.



Please note that our preview in browser functionality is only intended for use as a guide and is not designed to reflect exactly how your email will look in any particular combination of device type, operating system and email client. If you want more accurate testing, run an Inbox Test or send a preview to your own mobile device.

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/previewing-responsive-emails/feed/ 0 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/excluding-subscribers/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/excluding-subscribers/#comments Sat, 04 Feb 2012 10:08:21 +0000 Leanne Beale http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/?p=2713 Within your Sign-Up.to account you can easily exclude subscribers from receiving emails. There are two ways of doing this, depending on why you wish to exclude them.

Exclude subscribers who are in certain lists

For example, you may wish to exclude someone who has entered a competition but is an existing subscriber.

Go to ‘send campaign’ under the Send tab in your account and then click the ‘create search’ button in the ‘select lists’ box.



The next step is to name the search you’re creating. Once named, you can select the subscriber list you want to send to. First select the folder they’re in and then the specific list(s).



Next, if you want to exclude any subscribers, click the ‘do not include subscribers on these list’ tick box. This will bring up a list of the folders and lists you have, and here you can select the subscribers you don’t want to send to.



Once selected, click the ‘save search’ button. In Send, you will now see your search has been created.



Not sure which list a subscriber is in?

You can use subscriber manager to search for them – click here for a tutorial on subscriber searches.

Exclude anyone you have contacted recently

You may wish to do this so that your subscribers don’t feel they’ve been contacted too frequently.

Firstly, click ‘send campaign’ under the Send tab in your account and select the list you’re sending your email to.

Next, click ‘select email’. On the next page you can schedule your email to send.

Once you’ve chosen the email you’re sending and when it’s being sent, you’ll see an option to exclude people contacted within a certain time period.



Once you’ve selected this option you can schedule your email to send. This will exclude anyone who has been contacted within this time frame.
 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/excluding-subscribers/feed/ 0 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/testing-emails-range-inboxes/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/testing-emails-range-inboxes/#comments Sat, 04 Feb 2012 10:05:40 +0000 Leanne Beale http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/?p=3890 Using our Inbox Testing feature you can ensure your email looks its very best in the ten most popular email clients. It’s a great way of spotting any potential errors before sending your email and feeling confident that subscribers will see your email as you intend.

To run an Inbox Test, first head over to ‘campaign manager’ under the Create tab in your account.

If you have edited and saved the campaign in the last 30 minutes, you can start an Inbox Test by clicking on the orange banner at the top of the page.



Alternatively, click the ‘options’ link next to the name of your campaign. This will open the options pop up box with details of your email. To start your test click the ‘start Inbox Test’ button.



A small box will now appear asking you to confirm the test, so click the ‘start test’ button to begin.



Next you’ll see a page where the test results are generated and after a couple of minutes will appear.



The results can take a few minutes to generate. You can come back and check on your results at any time by clicking on ‘Inbox Testing’ under the Create tab.



To the left of the page you can see previously run tests and delete tests by hovering over them and clicking the bin icon. There’s also a reminder of how many tests you have left.



Each grey box on this page outlines the email client your campaign has been tested in and to view your email in full size click the box.



Within this page window you can now test your email in the following ways:

Showing the preview pane or the full email. This will help you decide which content should sit at the top of the email, where you’re most likely to grab your subscriber’s attention.



Turning images on or off. This is particularly useful if you have an image heavy campaign and to check that you’ve added alt text to each image.



Within this window you can also flick between results, making it really easy to view the results from your Inbox Testing.



This feature is automatically available for main account users. To add it for sub users check out our guide on setting sub user permissions.
 

Related guides

• Another way to test for common errors and spam triggers
• Improve your delivery by creating a plain text version of your email
• 10 more tips for avoiding the junk folder

 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/testing-emails-range-inboxes/feed/ 1 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/how-to-run-an-email-split-test/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/how-to-run-an-email-split-test/#comments Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:30:20 +0000 Leanne Beale https://howto.sign-up.to/?p=121 Split testing enables you to find out what resonates with your readers, making your campaigns more relevant. Our split testing feature allows you to carry out A/B testing on your campaigns so that rather than gambling with your content you can find out exactly what works to maximise your open and click through rates.

The first step is to create the campaigns you want to test; this is done in the same way as a standard campaign.

In this example there will be two campaigns and the only difference will be the subject line. To replicate this, once you’ve saved the first email campaign, click ‘copy’, rename and save it – adding a different subject line. At Sign-Up.to we tested this for ourselves for our monthly newsletter and noticed a substantial difference by adding the company name to the subject line.

1. Select a list

Now, to run the split test head to ‘send campagin’ under the Send tab in your account and select the list of subscribers you want to send the email to. In the ‘send your campaign’ box, click ‘run email split test’.



A new page will then appear where you can schedule the split test.

2. Select the emails

Here you select the campaigns you are testing. You can select up to five variants to test.



3. Select the test parameters

This section allows you to decide whether you want to send to a percentage or a specific number of subscribers. You can also decide if you want to exclude any subscribers recently contacted and determine how the winning campaign is identified.



4. Select the results output

Here you can decide whether to automatically send the winner to the remaining subscribers or to be just told the results.



5. Name and schedule the split test

In the next two sections you can name the test and decide when to send it to the selected subscribers. Confirm the details and click ‘schedule for delivery’. A new page will appear telling you the test has been scheduled.

Once the test has run you’ll be sent an email telling you the winning combination and the statistics for each test variant. The full results will be available to view in ‘campaign analysis’ under the Analyse tab.
 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/create/how-to-run-an-email-split-test/feed/ 14 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/account/add-company-branding-forms/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/account/add-company-branding-forms/#comments Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:42:47 +0000 Tamara Bond http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/?p=7528 With our form builder, it’s really easy to create custom data capture forms to collect new subscribers. To make this process even quicker, we offer company branding settings. By pre-defining the colours and fonts of your forms, you can instantly customise each form to match your website or Facebook page with just the click of a button.

The company branding settings can be found in ‘Settings’ under the cog symbol in your Sign-Up.to account.

Set your company branding



You can pre-set the colours for the background, foreground, text and any links, and specify the font for your form. If you know the hex codes for your branding colours then you can type these in, or use our colour selector to pick shades which complement your brand.

Once you’ve made your selections, click the ‘Save changes’ button.

You can change your company branding as often as you like, but please note that any forms which have already had branding applied will not have their themes changed.

Apply company branding to a form

When you create a form, you can apply your branding with the click of a button. While editing your form, open the ‘Theme’ tab and click the ‘Apply company branding’ button. Here’s some more information about styling a data capture form.



 

Related guides

• Create a data capture form
• Customise the opt-in email
• Tips for creating company branding guidelines

 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/account/add-company-branding-forms/feed/ 0 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/marketing-automation-%e2%80%93-triggered-subscriber%e2%80%99s-birthday/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/marketing-automation-%e2%80%93-triggered-subscriber%e2%80%99s-birthday/#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:00:26 +0000 Leanne Beale http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/?p=3669 Marketing automation allows you to perform an automatic action based on certain criteria, for example how your subscribers interact with your campaign or profile data on the subscriber themselves. This guide will demonstrate how this works when the trigger is a subscriber’s birthday.

You can have the system perform an automatic action around or on the date of a subscriber’s birthday, this can happen on the day or a set amount of time before or after their special day. The available actions are:

• Send another email campaign to the subscriber.
• Send an SMS to the subscriber.
• Send a notification to a specified email address.
• Add the subscriber to a list in Collect.

To do any of these things you will need to have the subscriber’s birthday on file in the Sign-Up.to system. You will also need to have already prepared any follow up content in the Create section of your account, i.e. email or SMS campaigns.

The process in detail is as follows:

Go to the Marketing Automation tools, within the Send section of your account.

Click on the Create a new rule button.

Choose ‘When it’s the subscriber’s birthday’ from the list.

Clicking Next will take you to a screen which allows you to set your desired action to be carried out on the appropriate date.

• The first option is to ‘Send a notification to…’, with you specifying the email address to be notified in the box on the right. This triggered action could be useful for letting a salesperson know that the subscriber has a birthday coming up. They might want to call and offer a promotion or discount.
• The second option allows you to send the subscriber an email. Simply browse for the relevant campaign on the right.This action could be could be used simply to wish your subscriber a happy birthday, alternatively you might want to send them a voucher or promote an event they could attend and celebrate at.
• The next option allows you to send an SMS to a subscriber. Browse on the right for the SMS campaign you’d like to send and set the appropriate time for them to receive the message by using the options at the bottom of the box. Setting a time here is more important for SMS than email, as people might not want to receive a text at midnight (which is the default setting!).Please note, using this action will cost the standard amount in SMS credits (as specified when creating the campaign) and relies on you having a subscriber’s mobile number in the system. If there are not enough SMS credits in the account or you have no number associated with your subscriber, then no action will be taken.As with email, this action could be a nice way to wish your subscriber a happy birthday. But you could go further and give them some kind of voucher to simply be brought in on the day and shown on their phone.
• The final option allows you to add the subscriber to a list, and choose the list within Collect that the subscriber will sit in.



With the above options you’ll be able to decide when the action should take place. Those actions are:

• As soon as possible. This means that the action will be triggered at 00:01 on the subscriber’s birthday. Please note that this option is not available if the subscriber is being added to a list.

• Before/after a fixed period of time. Here you’re able to determine how many minutes/hours/days after or before the subscriber’s birthdate the action takes place.

• At a specific time. This option let’s you set a specific time (as well as time and date). This is ideal if, for example, you’re looking to send an email campaign to subscribers at midday on their birthday.

Once you have set up your rule, you will need to name it and save it.

Your new rule will now appear in the list on the Marketing Automation page. You can see a summary of the rule by clicking on the arrow icon to the right of the rule name.

From here you are also able to edit any part of the rule, for example the action to be taken, the subsequent campaign to be sent or the timed delay.

You are able to disable the rule at any time by clicking Pause (it can easily be resumed), or you can remove it altogether by clicking Delete. A rule will remain active until it is either paused or deleted.

 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/marketing-automation-%e2%80%93-triggered-subscriber%e2%80%99s-birthday/feed/ 1 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/marketing-automation-%e2%80%93-triggered-subscriber-opening-campaign/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/marketing-automation-%e2%80%93-triggered-subscriber-opening-campaign/#comments Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:30:59 +0000 Leanne Beale http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/?p=3629 Marketing Automation allows you to perform an automatic action based on how your subscribers interact with your campaign. This guide will demonstrate how this works when the trigger is a subscriber opening the email.

When a subscriber opens your email you can have the system perform an automatic action, this can happen straight away or after a specified delay. The available actions are:

• Send another email campaign to the subscriber.
• Send an SMS to the subscriber.
• Send a notification to a specified email address.
• Add the subscriber to a list in Collect.

To do any of these things you will need to create an appropriate rule that is associated with the original campaign. You will also need to have already prepared any follow up content in the Create section of your account, i.e. email or SMS campaigns.

The process in detail is as follows:

Go to the Marketing Automation tools, within the Send section of your account.

Click on the Create a new rule button.

Choose ‘When a subscriber opens…’ then on the right, select the campaign that you would like the rule to apply to.

Clicking next will take you to a screen which allows you to set your desired follow up action in response to the subscriber opening the email.

• The first option is to ‘Send a notification to…’, with you specifying the email address to be notified in the box on the right. This triggered action could be useful for letting a salesperson know that the subscriber has opened the campaign, allowing them to then follow this up.
• The second option allows you to send the subscriber a follow up campaign. Simply choose the relevant campaign from the list on the right. This action could be could be used to provide more information on a promoted product, or perhaps if you are promoting an event you could send a follow up reminder.
• The next option here allows you to send an SMS to a subscriber after they have opened your email campaign. Browse on the right for the SMS campaign you’d like to send and set a delay if appropriate.Please note, using this action will cost the standard amount in SMS credits (as specified when creating the campaign) and relies on you having a subscriber’s mobile number in the system. If there are not enough SMS credits in the account or you have no number associated with your subscriber, then no action will be taken.Similar to email, this action could be used to send further promotional information, or a reminder about an event.
• The final option allows you to add the subscriber to a list, and choose the list within Collect that the subscriber will sit in. This is a great option if you’re looking to store and segment your subscribers in the future.



With the above options you’ll be able to decide when the action should take place. Those actions are:

• As soon as possible. This means that the action will be without delay. Please note that this option is not available if the subscriber is being added to a list.

• After a fixed period of time. Here you’re able to determine how many minutes/hours/days after or before the event the action (such as adding a subscriber to a list) takes place.

• At a specific time. This option let’s you set a specific time (as well as time and date). This is ideal if, for example, you’re looking to send an email campaign to subscribers at a specific time of the day or you’re looking to avoid weekends.

Once you have set up your rule, you will need to name it and save it.

Your new rule will now appear in the list on the Marketing Automation page. You can see a summary of the rule by clicking on the arrow icon to the right of the rule name.

From here you are also able to edit any part of the rule, for example the action to be taken, the subsequent campaign to be sent or the timed delay.

You are able to disable the rule at any time by clicking Pause (it can easily be resumed), or you can remove it altogether by clicking Delete. A rule will remain active until it is either paused or deleted.

 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/marketing-automation-%e2%80%93-triggered-subscriber-opening-campaign/feed/ 1 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/marketing-automation-triggered-subscriber-clicking-link-campaign/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/marketing-automation-triggered-subscriber-clicking-link-campaign/#comments Sun, 29 Jan 2012 15:40:35 +0000 Leanne Beale http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/?p=3655 Marketing Automation allows you to perform an automatic action based on how your subscribers interact with your campaign. This guide will demonstrate how this works when the trigger is a subscriber clicking on a link.

When a subscriber clicks a link in your email you can have the system perform an automatic action, this can happen straight away or after a specified delay. The available actions are:

• Send another email campaign to the subscriber.
• Send an SMS to the subscriber.
• Send a notification to a specified email address.
• Add the subscriber to a list in Collect.

To do any of these things you will need to create an appropriate rule that is associated with the original campaign. You will also need to have already prepared any follow up content in the Create section of your account, i.e. email or SMS campaigns.

The process in detail is as follows:

Go to the Marketing Automation tools, within the Send section of your account.

Click on the Create a new rule button.

Choose ‘When a subscriber clicks a link…’ then on the right, browse for the campaign that you would like the rule to apply to.

The next step is to pick the relevant link to be the trigger from the drop down list on the right. You can also choose ‘Any link’ from the list. You cannot choose more than one link (but fewer than all), this would require you to set up multiple rules. Click ‘Select’ to confirm your choice.

Clicking Next will take you to a screen which allows you to set your desired follow up action in response to the subscriber clicking the selected link/s.

• The first option is to ‘Send a notification to…’, with you specifying the email address to be notified in the box on the right. This triggered action could be useful for letting a salesperson know that the subscriber has shown interest in something specific, allowing them to then follow this up.
• The second option allows you to send the subscriber a follow up campaign. Simply choose the relevant campaign from the list on the right. This action could be could be used cross or up-sell by promoting related products or services. You could also utilise it to include a ‘Tell me more’ button, which when clicked delivers more detailed information right into your subscribers inbox.
• The next option here allows you to send an SMS to a subscriber after they have clicked on a link in your email campaign. Browse on the right for the SMS campaign you’d like to send and set a delay if appropriate.Please note, using this action will cost the standard amount in SMS credits (as specified when creating the campaign) and relies on you having a subscriber’s mobile number in the system. If there are not enough SMS credits in the account or you have no number associated with your subscriber, then no action will be taken.As with email, you could use this action to provide additional information on a product or service, but why not get creative and include something like a ‘Text me directions’ button in your campaign?
• The final option allows you to add the subscriber to a list, and choose the list within Collect that the subscriber will sit in. This is a great option if you’re looking to store and segment your subscribers in the future.



With the above options you’ll be able to decide when the action should take place. Those actions are:

• As soon as possible. This means that the action will be without delay. Please note that this option is not available if the subscriber is being added to a list.

• After a fixed period of time. Here you’re able to determine how many minutes/hours/days after or before the event the action (such as adding a subscriber to a list) takes place.

• At a specific time. This option let’s you set a specific time (as well as time and date). This is ideal if, for example, you’re looking to send an email campaign to subscribers at a specific time of the day or you’re looking to avoid weekends.

Once you have set up your rule, you will need to name it and save it.

Your new rule will now appear in the list on the Marketing Automation page. You can see a summary of the rule by clicking on the arrow icon to the right of the rule name.

From here you are also able to edit any part of the rule, for example the action to be taken, the subsequent campaign to be sent or the timed delay.

You are able to disable the rule at any time by clicking Pause (it can easily be resumed), or you can remove it altogether by clicking Delete. A rule will remain active until it is either paused or deleted.

 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/send/marketing-automation-triggered-subscriber-clicking-link-campaign/feed/ 2 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/analysis/2011-email-marketing-benchmark-report/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/analysis/2011-email-marketing-benchmark-report/#comments Mon, 12 Dec 2011 09:08:57 +0000 Tamara Bond http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/?p=7989 The 2011 edition of our email marketing benchmark report is available to download or view online.

Find out how your open rate, click through rate and unsubscribe results compare to the averages for your industry.



Either view our 2011 email marketing benchmark report online or download the PDF version.

Did you know you can compare your campaign results with the averages for your industry directly in your Sign-Up.to account? Follow these simple instructions to setting your industry.
 

This isn’t our most recent guide

For the latest, most up-to-date statistics, check out our 2013 email marketing benchmark report.
 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/analysis/2011-email-marketing-benchmark-report/feed/ 0 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/introduction-collect/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/introduction-collect/#comments Mon, 17 Oct 2011 16:39:18 +0000 Leanne Beale http://howto.sign-up.to/?p=2078 Collect is where you manage your lists and data. Below is an overview of the key sections:

List manager

Options



• Add action: This is where you can choose if you want the list to expire to another list after a certain period. You may wish to do this if you import a list of new subscribers, send them an email and then want to add them to your main subscriber list.
• Add a note: Here you can add a note to your list, for your own reference. Your subscribers won’t see this note and it’s a great way of allowing you to organise your email list effectively.
• Create custom opt-in email: Here you can customise the email sent to subscribers when they confirm their email address after signing up through a data capture form. Check out our guide to creating a custom opt-in email for more information on how to do this.

Subscribers



• Add subscribers: Here you can manually add or remove individual subscribers. However, if you wish to add a large number of subscribers you may find it more beneficial to import a list into your account.
• View/Remove subscribers: This is where you can view all your subscribers or remove any who you don’t want on the subscriber list.
• Import subscribers: Here you can import large quantities (if applicable) of subscribers. To find out more about this check out our guide on importing data into your account.
• Export subscribers: Exporting subscribers is a good way of keeping a back up of all your information, though all data is stored securely within your account. To find out more about exporting check out our guide.

Form manager

Create data capture (subscription) forms to gather new subscribers, or design survey style forms to collect information about existing subscribers.



Promote your forms easily on website, emails, or even your Facebook page.



Access a variety of statistics to identify how successful your forms are.



Subscriber profiles

Create custom data fields using our Subscriber profiles tools. Then add these to data capture forms or use them to segment your data and filter marketing communications.



 

Related guides

• Why do subscribers become suspended? A guide to bounces
• How to gain new subscribers
• How to get the most from your subscribers

 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/introduction-collect/feed/ 0 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/create-a-list-and-organise-your-data/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/create-a-list-and-organise-your-data/#comments Sun, 16 Oct 2011 15:39:33 +0000 Leanne Beale https://howto.sign-up.to/?p=85 Organising your data makes it easier to segment your subscribers, keep track of email marketing campaigns and ensure your messages reach the correct recipients. Within Sign-Up.to you can use folders and lists to keep your data under control.

All of your subscriber data can be found in ‘campaign manager’ under the Collect tab. When your account is first created, a default folder is automatically created.

Viewing lists within a folder

To view the lists within a folder click the arrow next to the folder name. Folders are purely for organisational purposes – they don’t affect your data in any way and you can move lists to different folders easily.



Creating a folder

To create a folder, click the ‘Add folder’ button.  This will bring up a small window where you can name the folder. Once written, click OK and the folder you’ve created will appear in the list manager view. You can add lists to folders at any point.



Adding lists to a folder

To add a list within a folder click the ‘Add list’ button. A small window will appear and here you can enter the name of the list and chose whether it’s an email or SMS list. Click ok once you’ve named your list and you’ll see the list in the chosen folder.


 

Related guides

• Import subscriber data
• Gather new contacts using a data capture form
• More ideas about keeping your data organised

 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/create-a-list-and-organise-your-data/feed/ 7 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/create-a-data-capture-form-subscription-form/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/create-a-data-capture-form-subscription-form/#comments Sat, 15 Oct 2011 11:00:47 +0000 Leanne Beale https://howto.sign-up.to/?p=102 Data capture forms are a great way to build your mailing list. By creating a form using Sign-Up.to and embedding it on your website or Facebook page, you can make it easy for people to subscribe to your newsletter, enter a competition, fill in a quick survey and much more. The subscriber data will be put straight into the chosen list in your account.

Data captured through forms is validated using a confirmed opt-in process. After completing a form, each subscriber is sent an email with a unique link in it which they must click to finish the subscription process and appear in your lists. This is to stop people signing up others without their consent, and prevent worthless junk data being stored in your account. Once you have created your form you can customise the confirmation email that is sent, or use the default one we create for you.

To create a data capture form, select ‘Form manager’ under the Collect tab and then click on the ‘Create a data capture form’ button.

Connect your form to a list

The first step is to select the list or lists you want subscribers to be added to when they complete the form (make sure you’ve created a list first!)



The ‘Connect a list’ button will open a view of all your folders and lists. If you connect multiple lists, subscribers will always be added to the primary list and will be able to opt-in to the secondary lists. You can come back and edit the lists connected to a form at any time.



Once you have selected at least one list to connect to, click the ‘Continue’ button to open the form builder.



Build your form

In the ‘Layout’ library on the left hand side of the screen, you’ll find fields which you can add to your form. Clicking on a field will add it to your form and you can remove a field (except for the compulsory email field) by clicking on the bin symbol in the editor.



Add as many images, headings, paragraphs or HTML sections as you need to customise and guide your subscribers through the form. Then select from our range of standard fields or your own custom subscriber profiles to gather the data you need.



Once you’ve added all the fields you want, you can arrange these in the editor by dragging and dropping them.

Edit question field properties

Clicking on a field in the editor also opens the properties window on the far right. Here you can change the name of the field, decide if it’s a compulsory or optional question and move its position in the form. You can also remove a field (except for the compulsory email field) by clicking ‘Remove’ in the field properties.



Answer assistance text appears in grey in the form and can be used to suggest what a subscriber should enter in the field. This text isn’t submitted if the field is not edited by the subscriber.



Pre-filled answer appears in black in the form and this text will be submitted if the subscriber doesn’t edit the field.



Secondary lists

If you’ve connected more than one list with your form, tick boxes will automatically be added so that subscribers can choose to also add themselves to these lists. You can change the text next to these tick boxes to make them more relevant to subscribers and entice them into signing up to additional lists.



Build your confirmation and thank you pages

The tabs along the top of the editor allow you to toggle between the form page, the confirmation page and the thank you page. You can add images, headings and paragraphs to the confirmation and thank you pages.



Style your form

The ‘Theme’ tab allows you to change the colours and fonts on your form, confirmation page and thank you page to match your branding. Clicking on the customisation field applies it to your form. To remove a customisation, simply click on it again in the library.



You also have the option to set your own company branding and then apply these colours and fonts to your form. Or if you’re stuck for a style, why not choose one of our stock themes and make it your own?

Once applied, your chosen theme and any customisations will be applied across all three opt-in pages.

Rename your form

Don’t forget to choose a name that’s memorable.



Form options

Clicking the ‘Form options’ link next to the save and exit links in the top right of the editor opens the ‘Form options’ window. Here you can add Google Analytics tracking (click here for a detailed tutorial).

You can also choose to skip the confirmation step for existing subscribers. This is useful when you’re trying to gather additional information about subscribers to help with data segmentation and targeting. For example, if your form is in the style of a survey, existing subscribers won’t have to click on a link in an email to submit their answers.



Save your form

Toggling between the ‘Layout’ and ‘Theme’ tabs requires a save to ensure the system remembers your changes. You can also save your form at any time by clicking ‘Save and publish’ in the top right. Whenever you save, any changes to your form will go live straight away and, if your form is already embedded on your website or Facebook page, subscribers will be able to see the changes.

Promote your form

Once saved, you can find the unique URL for your form at the bottom of the form editor. Alternatively, click on its icon in the form manager and then click the ‘Promote’ button.



Find out more about the ways in which you can promote your form in our detailed tutorial.
 

Related guides

• Add company branding to your form
• Create a custom opt-in email
• Promote your form
• View your form usage statistics
• Some tips on how to gain new subscribers

 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/create-a-data-capture-form-subscription-form/feed/ 36 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/analyse/how-to-cancel-a-scheduled-campaign/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/analyse/how-to-cancel-a-scheduled-campaign/#comments Sat, 15 Oct 2011 08:32:27 +0000 Leanne Beale https://howto.sign-up.to/?p=106 Within the Analyse section of your account you can easily cancel a campaign that has been scheduled for future delivery.

To cancel your campaign head to the Analyse section of your account where you’ll see any scheduled campaigns at the top of the page.



To cancel, click the ‘cancel’ link to the right of the page.

This will bring up a smaller window asking you to confirm you wish to cancel the scheduled campaign. Don’t worry if you change your mind, simply click the ‘No’ button.



Once you click ‘Yes’ the page will refresh and the campaign will no longer appear as scheduled.



You can now continuing editing your campaign or schedule it for another time!
 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/analyse/how-to-cancel-a-scheduled-campaign/feed/ 0 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/remove-or-add-an-individual-subscriber/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/remove-or-add-an-individual-subscriber/#comments Sat, 15 Oct 2011 08:02:23 +0000 Leanne Beale https://howto.sign-up.to/?p=119 This function is useful when you want to add or remove one or two subscribers quickly. For larger numbers, we recommend importing a data file.

Firstly, navigate to ‘list manager’ under the Collect tab. Click the ‘subscribers’ link next to the desired list to open the subscriber options box.

Removing a subscriber

To remove a subscriber, click the ‘view/remove subscribers’ link in the subscriber options box.



A new page will appear, and here you can enter the subscriber’s email address.



Once entered, click ‘search’. The page will reload and show the email address. 



To remove the subscriber, click the ‘remove’ tick box and then click the ‘remove from list’ button above. A confirmation page will then show and you need to click the ‘remove’ button to confirm. The same page will then tell you the subscriber has been removed.

If you’re trying to remove a subscriber and you don’t know the list they subscribed to, try searching all subscribers instead.

Adding a subscriber

To add an email address, click the ‘add subscribers’ link in the subscriber options box.



A new window will emerge, allowing you to enter the email address.



Once you’ve entered the email address, click ‘add’.



The window will remain, allowing you to enter further details about the new subscriber. Once written, or if you’re happy with just the email address, click ‘save’ and then click the cross icon in the corner of the page to return to the list manager.



You may need to refresh the page for the new subscription count to be calculated.
 

Related guides

• Add many subscribers simultaneously using our import function
• Search for a subscriber in your account
• A demonstration and tutorial on targeting subscribers

 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/remove-or-add-an-individual-subscriber/feed/ 4 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/analyse/view-your-email-campaign-results/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/analyse/view-your-email-campaign-results/#comments Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:11:59 +0000 Leanne Beale https://howto.sign-up.to/?p=112 Continued]]> Sign-Up.to provides a wealth of statistics for each email campaign that you send. We recommend analysing your campaign results regularly, as these can help you identify important trends, key customer groups, your best performing promotions and much more.

When viewing your detailed campaign reports you can click on each number to view more detailed information, an explanation of the statistic and any additional reports which are available.

First head over to Analyse where you’ll see a list of your campaigns under the ‘Sent campaign reports – email’ heading. To view more in-depth details for a specific campaign, click the campaign name.

Below is a breakdown of information you’ll see on the next page.

At the top of the page you will see a thumbnail image of the campaign as well as a recap of basic details including the subject line and what time the email was sent. You can also see a preview by clicking the weblink.

To the right of this you can see some quick statistics about how many people your campaign was sent to, as well as who opened, clicked and unsubscribed from your email.

Under key statistics you’ll see a large amount of information covering the following:

• Sent show you how many people your email was sent to as well as the deliverability on your email.
• Bounces are emails that we unfortunately haven’t been able to deliver for a variety of reasons ranging from full inboxes to invalid email addresses. Bounces are divided into hard (or permanent) bounces, and soft (or temporary) bounces. Our systems constantly monitor bounces, automatically suspending or re-activating email addresses as appropriate to minimise your bills and preserve your reputation, maximising the effectiveness of your campaigns
• Opens are measured when a recipient loads images or clicks links within your email campaign. As such, this is very much a worst case figure – plenty more recipients are likely to read your email, but unless they load images or click a link we can’t be certain. This percentage is therefore most useful as a relative figure, permitting comparison within the Analysis section with your other campaigns, or on the Home page with our other customers in your industry.
• Clicked shows how many people clicked the links within your email.
• Shared illustrates how many subscribers forwarded on the email to their friends. If you post your campaign on Twitter, you’ll also see how many people viewed the campaign on Twitter.
• Unsubscriptions explain how many people unsubscribed from your mailing list as a result of the email you sent

With opened, clicked and the number of unsubscriptions, you’ll be able to compare the figures with industry averages once the industry has been set. These figures are displayed on the right hand side of the page.

Underneath these stats you will see a graph displaying your email opens, web views and also views on any social media pages you have shared the campaign through. Each line on the graph can be toggled on or off by clicking its name. 

Towards the bottom of the page is a box showing how many people clicked the links, and what links within your email campaign. There are lots of additional reports including targeting subscribers when they perform a specific action.

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/analyse/view-your-email-campaign-results/feed/ 8 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/import-subscriber-data/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/import-subscriber-data/#comments Fri, 14 Oct 2011 15:38:35 +0000 Leanne Beale https://howto.sign-up.to/?p=83 If you have existing opt-in subscriber data when you join Sign-Up.to, you’ll need to import it into your account.

Navigate to ‘list manager’ under the Collect tab in your account and click the ‘Add list’ button. Name the list and then click the ‘OK’ button. If you already have a subscriber list set up there’s no need to set up a new list.



Next click subscribers, and a small window will appear so here click ‘import subscribers’.



On the next page you can choose your data file and choose which kind of import you’re doing. We give you three different options – adding, adding and updating, and adding, updating and deleting (existing data).



You’ll also need to accept our terms and conditions on this page. We only allow 100% permission based data to be imported. Once selected click the ‘Upload’ button.

Once the import begins you’ll see a message telling you your .CSV file has been submitted. On this page you have the option to return to Collect or import more subscribers into your list.



If you see a page asking you to review your column headers this is because our system has had difficulty recognising your data.  You’ll see two columns, the headers you’ve used against our supported headers, and here you can select the correct header to use. If you can’t find a suitable header you can also add a new one to the right of the page. At the very bottom of the page you’ll see a preview of your import.



When your import has completed you’ll receive an email detailing how many records were imported and which were rejected. Only unique subscribers will be added to your list.

If you want to add subscribers to an existing list click subscribers and a box will appear and here you can select ‘import subscribers’ to import further data.
 

Related guides

• How to format your data as a CSV file
• Just add one or two subscribers to a list
• A quick guide to segmenting your data

 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/import-subscriber-data/feed/ 9 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/analyse/target-subscribers-by-activity/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/analyse/target-subscribers-by-activity/#comments Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:54:38 +0000 Leanne Beale https://howto.sign-up.to/?p=89 Sometimes you’ll want to send a follow-up campaign to people who performed a particular action with one of your email campaigns. Perhaps you want to send an email with specific product information to anyone who clicked on a link about your latest product, or want to send a reminder invitation to people who didn’t open your original launch party invite. Our target subscribers by activity tools make this easy.

The first step is to head to the Analyse section of your account where you’ll see the list of email campaigns you’ve sent. Now click the email campaign you’d like to target subscribers from.



You’ll now see the campaign results page so scroll down to ‘additional reports’ and click the  ‘create a list of subscribers who performed particular actions’ link. Here you can also download a CSV file of your email campaign results.



This will bring up a new window where you can choose which activities you would like to filter your subscribers by. You can filter them by opened, unopened, forwarded, links clicked and unclicked as well as goal tracking (if you’ve set this up).



Beneath this you can choose whether you’d like to add the data to an existing list or if you want to create a new list (this will also let you decide which folder the list sits in). These lists sit in the Collect section of your account. Now click the ‘OK’ button to save the list.



The page will then refresh and you’ll see a green bar telling you your list has been saved.



In Collect you’ll now see the subscriber data which you can use to send targeted email campaigns.
 

Related articles

• Automate your targeting process using our nifty Marketing Automation tools
• Target subscribers using custom data fields
• Cutting edge targeting techniques

 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/analyse/target-subscribers-by-activity/feed/ 5 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/format-data-correctly-for-importing-in-to-sign-up-to/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/format-data-correctly-for-importing-in-to-sign-up-to/#comments Thu, 13 Oct 2011 08:19:14 +0000 Leanne Beale https://howto.sign-up.to/?p=100 If you’re importing your opt-in subscriber data in to your Sign-Up.to account it’s important to have it formatted correctly.

1. Open your data using a spreadsheet program

If you’re importing a large batch of data, you’ll probably find it easiest to format your data using a spreadsheet program like Excel. To be recognised by Sign-Up.to, files must be saved in CSV (comma separated variable) format. Any spreadsheet program can create and save this type of file.

2. Arrange your subscriber data

When viewing your data in a spreadsheet program, it should be arranged so that each subscriber record is on a separate row of the spreadsheet. The data on each subscriber is then arranged in columns.

In the very first row, you should include a heading for each column which tells Sign-Up.to what data type is in each column. For example, if your file contained email addresses, the first row should contain ‘email’ in the corresponding column. If you don’t included these headings in your file you’ll be prompted to tell Sign-Up.to what is in each column when you upload your data.



3. Use supported column headers

Sign-Up.to supports importing a wide range of data, including your own custom data fields. The standard data types you can import are:

Data	Heading	Format
First Name	first_name	Text
Surname	surname	Text
Title	title	Text
E-mail Address	email	Text
Mobile Number	mobile	International Number, e.g. 441234567890
Landline	phone	Number, e.g. 08452990119
E-mail Format	email_format	Either ‘text’ or ‘html’ (no quote marks)
Gender	gender	Either ‘male’ or ‘female’ (no quote marks)
Day of Birth	day_birth	Number (01-31)
Month of Birth	month_birth	Number (01-12)
Year of Birth	year_birth	Number (e.g. 1981)
Compound Date of Birth	dob_slash	Date in DD/MM/YYYY format (e.g. 11/06/1981)
House Number	house_number	Text
Street Name	street_name	Text
Town	town	Text
County	county	Text
Postcode	postcode	Valid Postcode (Text)
Country	country	2 Letter ISO Country Code
Company	company_name	Text

4. Save your data as a CSV file

Once your data has been formatted correctly, save it as a CSV file and you’re then ready to import your data into your Sign-Up.to account.


 

Tip

If you are using Excel to format your file and are including mobile phone numbers, be sure to select the column containing the numbers and change it’s data type to ‘Number’ with no decimal places before you save the file (right click to access the menu which contains the ‘format’ options). If you do not do this, Excel may convert your mobile numbers into floating-point notation which will make them unusable.
 

Related guides

• How to import your data into Sign-Up.to
• How to import data from Outlook 2003/2007
• Tips on how to grow your subscriber database

 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/format-data-correctly-for-importing-in-to-sign-up-to/feed/ 7 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/analyse/use-the-analysis-reports-section/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/analyse/use-the-analysis-reports-section/#comments Wed, 12 Oct 2011 16:24:42 +0000 Leanne Beale https://howto.sign-up.to/?p=122 Continued]]> At Sign-Up.to we offer nine comprehensive analysis reports which allow you to gain in depth information about your email campaign and subscriber activity.

First, click the ‘email analysis’ link under the Analyse tab in your account. Here you will find the available reports.



All of the data can be saved and downloaded as a CSV file. To view saved reports simple click the ‘saved reports’ link which sits in the blue bar on the Email analysis page.

Below is a breakdown of each report:

How many new subscribers do I have?

This report shows you how many new subscribers you’ve gained over a time period of your choice for as few (or as many!) lists in your account as you like.



How do my email campaigns compare?

This tool allows you to compare how successful your campaigns were in terms of opens, clicks and unsubscriptions. These comparisons can be made over a selected time period.



How does activity vary by day of the week?

This report brings up information across all your campaigns and can help you assess the best day of the week to send your campaigns.



How do people interact with my email?

This report looks at how many people open your emails, click the links and unsubscribe up to 48 hours after your email campaign is sent.



How does my email performance vary by domain?

This tool shows you email delivery for your top ten domain names over a selected time period, and for multiple campaigns. This may include Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail.



How does activity vary by time of day?

This report helps you assess the best time of day to send your campaigns.



Which are my best performing campaigns…?

These three tools can be used to identify your best performing campaigns in terms of opens, click-through rates or meeting goals.



All of these reports will help you gain a more insightful picture of your campaign and email activity.
 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/analyse/use-the-analysis-reports-section/feed/ 4 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/set-subscriber-profile/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/set-subscriber-profile/#comments Wed, 12 Oct 2011 10:00:45 +0000 Leanne Beale http://howto.sign-up.to/?p=1831 A subscriber profile allows you to import tailored information into your Sign-Up.to account as well as collect information from your data capture form.

First head to ‘subscriber profiles’ under the Collect tab in your account. Here you can add multiple subscriber profiles. To add a profile click the ‘add new subscriber profile field’ button at the top of the page. This will open the editing window.



1. Select a field type

Select a field type for the information you’re collecting. There are five different options (see below) and in this example we will use the drop down option, as this is a popular field type to use.



• The single line option allows for any data to be imported, though it’s important to remember that you can’t define a send by this option. Paragraph is similar to this, but allows for more information to be imported.
• The drop down and multiple select options are similar to each other as they allow you to preset the information you’re collecting. It’s important that imported data is the same as the preset options in order for the data to be recognised.
• The tick box option allows subscribers to make a choice based on an option/options you give them.
• When importing information for the multiple select option, you can separate answers with a comma.

2. Choose a label/question for the profile

Below the field type you can choose the label/question for the profiling, and this is the text that will appear on your data capture form.



3. Select the field size or options

This equates to how much information the subscriber can provide or how many options they have. In this example we’ll add three options. If you’re using the single line or paragraph field type you’ll have an option to have a pre-filled answer. Pre-filled answers or assistance text can also be added and edited when you create a data capture form using your custom fields.



4. Preview your field

If at any point you’re unsure as to how the field will look, you can use the preview pane at the bottom of the window.



5. Check/amend the import header

Below this the import header is preset for you. This is the column heading you’ll need in the CSV file (if you’re formatting pre-existing data for import). This can be amended if you’d prefer to use another header.

6. Select any additional options

There are then 4 additional options (for the drop down field).

• Compulsory: Does the subscriber have to answer/give information?
• Allow subscriber to amend choice later: This gives subscribers the option to amend their answer at a later date in the ‘manage your subscriptions’ page.
• Display in reports: By checking this option you’ll be able to view this profile field in analysis reports, associating answers with clicks and opens, for example.
• Hidden: You’ll use this if you don’t want it to be available on the data capture form but you want to store that information privately.



Once you’re happy with the field you’ve created click the ‘OK’ button. This will take you back to the subscriber profile page, where you will see the profile you have just created. You’ll also see all of your subscriber profiles on this page, and can edit and delete profiles.
 

Related guides

• Use your custom subscriber profile fields to create a data capture form
• Use your data to personalise email campaigns
• How to successfully use personalisation in campaigns

 

]]> http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/set-subscriber-profile/feed/ 13 http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/how-to-export-data/ http://www.sign-up.to/knowledge/using/collect/how-to-export-data/#comments Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:55:19 +0000 Leanne Beale https://howto.sign-up.to/?p=105 Exporting data allows you to view your Sign-Up.to subscriber data in a spreadsheet on your computer, permitting you to manually synchronise your data with external applications, or search and sort profile data. Exported data can easily be adjusted on your computer and then re-imported into a fresh Sign-Up.to list.

First head to Collect and click “Subscribers” on the list you wish to export. A small window will appear, so here click “Export subscribers”.

This will take you to a new page where first you need to name your export. Then select the subscriber details you wish to export. To select all details, click “Title” and hold the mouse down as it scrolls. Also, if applicable, select any additional profile data you would like to export.

On this page, you also have the option to choose whether you’d like to export current, suspended or all subscribers. It will automatically default to your current subscribers.

Next, click proceed and a page will then appear telling you the export is being assembled. If you now return to the Home page in the “Recent activity” tab you’ll see the progress of the export. It can be downloaded from the “Exports” tab once complete. You will also be notified by email when the export is complete.
 

Related guides

• How to import subscriber data
• Use a data capture form to gather more subscribers
• Some tips on ways to gain new subscribers

 

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