With Email Campaigns in Aplos, you can communicate with your donors more often and more effectively. Whether it's customizing the template for your online donation emails, setting a reminder to communicate with a donor, or sending an email campaign, Aplos makes it easy.

Individual Communication On The Feed

The Feed gives you a snapshot of who you need to communicate with, and it's easy to send these communications right from this page. To learn more about The Feed and how to utilize it, check out our article on Using The Feed

Creating A New Email Template

To get started creating an email template, navigate to Marketing -> emails -> email templates. Here you will find a list of templates you can use to send emails to your donors. These default templates available includes:

• Birthday Template: to send to someone on their birthday
• New Recurring Donor: to send to donors that set up a new recurring donation
• LYBNT Template: to send to Donors who have given last year but not this year
• Anniversary Template: to send to someone on their anniversary
• First Time Donor: to send to someone who recently donated for the first time
• Donation Failure Template: to send to someone whose donation failed to process

From the list of your templates, you can choose to create an email (1). Or you can create a new template by clicking the green plus sign at the top right corner (2).

Select Your Style

Choose your style by clicking the green Select button on the available designs: Canvas, Fresh, Lilac, Minimal, or Modern.

Build Your Email

You will then walk through the template builder to enter details. The template will have one of each component we offer included for you to click and customize. You can add, edit, or delete any of these options by hovering your mouse over the component and clicking on it.

1. Add your template name add an optional description.
   • For your use only, your donors will not see this when they receive the email.
     
2. Add a banner image by clicking on the image icon at the top of the email template 
   • In the content section, select "upload a file" to add an image from your device or "select from Library" to upload an image from your filebox in Aplos
   • add alternative text for if the image does not load and/or a link that will be attached to the image
   • set your alignment and cushion for the image
     
3. Add your header text by hovering over the title and clicking
   • a box will open at the bottom for your text component to make your edits
     
4. Add a main image
5. Write your email content within the body of the template.
6. Add a button to your template.
   • enter the text you want to show on the button
   • enter the URL link to connect to the button
   • set up your alignment and sizing for the button
   • choose your color scheme for the button
     
7. Add other fields to your template by clicking a new section layout.
   
   
   

   • Clicking the plus (+) button within the section will give you the option to add text, images, buttons, dividers, or spacing between each individual section.
     
     
     

8. Edit your footer:

   • The footer of your template will automatically include your organization's contact info. You can edit this in your Org Info if needed.

   • Add links to your social media or add additional footer text.

9. Once you have everything dialed in, you can click "Save & Exit" or "Preview."

Now you are ready to create your email campaign. 

Creating An Email Campaign

Once you have created and saved you email template, you are ready to create and send email campaigns to your donors directly from Aplos. You can do so by click the "create email" button to the right of your template you just created.

Alternatively, you can navigate to marketing -> emails -> email campaigns and select the green plus sign at the top right corner of this page

Email Campaign Settings

Your first step will be to complete the campaign settings. These are the details of the campaign, including the name, what it's for, and who it's going to. You will have the option to add a custom "from" email address but you will first need to authenticate your email domain. To learn how to do this, check out our resource on email authentication. Whatever customer from address you select, you can also set to be the default sender for all of your campaigns. 

Email Campaign Content

Next, you will add your content. You can either create a new design or use an existing template. If you decide to create a new design, follow the instructions above for creating a new template. Clicking on an existing template will open it so you can make any changes, if needed.
If you began creating your campaign from the templates screen, just click Save & Exit to move to the next step and add your recipients.

Email Campaign Recipients

When adding recipients, you can choose an individual contact or a contact group. Start typing the name of your contact in the "Name your recipients" field. Then click the name to select it. You can also import a list of recipients.

Campaign Recipient Limits

You will have a limit on the account for campaign recipients to protect email recipients from spammers. You can contact us to verify that you have permission to email your recipients and request an increase of your campaign limit.

Schedule Email Campaign

Now it's time to schedule your campaign. You can either send it immediately by clicking "Send it now," or you can set a date and time for sending by clicking "Schedule it."

You can also send out a test email before you send to your recipients to confirm everything looks good. 

Once sent, you will see your email campaign in your Sent list of your Email Campaigns page. From here, you can view details, such as how many recipients opened the campaign, how many clicked the button within the campaign, or how many bounced. You can also copy the campaign to send again.

If you click on your sent email you will be able to see a breakdown of all recipients and if the email: successfully sent, bounced, or the they marked as unsubscribed or spam.

Automatic Emails

Automatic emails are emails that are sent to donors who have created an online donation using your Aplos online donation form. These emails include your Online Donation Receipt (One Time) email, Online Donation Receipt (Recurring) email, and Donation Failure email. All text at the top of these emails is required and therefore cannot be edited. However, you can add text and images below. Click "Start a new section." Then enter in the desired text, images, button, line, or space.

Once you're done editing, click "Save & Exit." All donors from that point on will receive the updated donation email.

You can also update the name your automatic emails come from. If you use an email that is not already listed, you will need to go through the process of verifying the email address.

Lastly, you can view your automatic email history to see which emails were sent to donors. You can view the email sent by clicking on it or you can resend these emails as needed by click the resend button to the right of the email.

You're now on your way to better communication with your donors! If you have any questions, our Customer Care Team is here to help.