Email Campaigns can be found in Marketing & CRM menu under campaigns.

• In order to create a campaign you must first click the add tab and then fill in the required fields.
• Once the campaign is created you need to add the content. To do this go to the overview and select the campaign. You’ll notice that the information you originally added is present, but below this are 2 main areas Internal content (for users registered on portal) and external content (for users not registered on portal). In these 2 areas are a number of tabs (template based HTML etc.)
• Click the edit tab for template based html content, choose the templates for the overall campaign and the section you are adding (if multiple) and insert the copy for the email campaign into the WYSIWYG editor provided. Preview the campaign to make sure it’s formatted correctly and save.
• A text only version of the campaign should be added to the text based content area (links cannot be used here so you will need to insert the full URL) for users who use a service that does not show emails in HTML.
• Add any necessary attachments.
• Add users, by selecting the user group/category/external list you would like to send it to.
• Send a test email to yourself using the start and test tab and then start the campaign by setting up the schedule.
• The reports tab creates statistics about how successful the campaign was by providing information about how many people opened the email and how many people clicked on links etc.

Select the users by category from the user administration (Marketing & CRM > Users & Contacts > Overview, tab "Categories"). Check all users and use the mass operation "Add to campaign" below.

You have two possibilites to send a new camapaign to the same recipients from the last campaing:

1. Adapt the last campaign to the new one (e.g. when it is a newsletter) and send it to the recipients.
2. Use the functionalitySyncronize Recipients, to add the recipients of the last campaign (Source campaign) to the new campaign (Target campaign).

Your own unique update on network activity

One really useful community-building tool is the personal newsletter. This is a campaign which is timed to be sent on a daily or (probably better) weekly or monthly basis and includes specific network activity for each user.

Fields in this newsletter can include :

$network_count_new_messages	Displays how many new messages the user has
$network_news	Displays the 10 newest activities from the user's network. Intended only for use in HTML mail body
$network_count_new_contact_requests	Displays how many new contact requests the user has
$network_count_profile_views	Displays the amount of profile views
$network_count_direct_contacts	Displays the amount of direct contacts of the user
$membersVisitMe	Random list of 3 members which visited my profile last week

A technique used by some electronic mailing list software (including SITEFORUM) to enable automatic detection and removal of undeliverable e-mail addresses. It works by using a different return path (also called "envelope sender") for each recipient of a message.

There is a full description of VERP on Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_envelope_return_path

• keep recipient lists clean
• send email only to people that can be reached
• get a better ranking at major email providers such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo

The process is simple:  If an email cannot be delivered to a recipient it will bounce back to the SITEFORUM servers. Once bounced it will be placed on a bounce list. If this happens for 3 times the recipient will be automatically added to the blacklist.

Parameters
SITEFORUM has a list of configurable parameters that will be set by SITEFORUM administrators:
/bounce/verp/enabled                   [0|1]
/bounce/verp/delimiter1                 [+]
/bounce/verp/delimiter2                 [=]
/bounce/blacklist/enabled            [0|1]
/bounce/blacklist/release_days    Defines when emails that bounced before are removed from the bounce list. Default value is 30 days.
/bounce/blacklist/max_failed         Describes how often an email address may bounce until it gets placed on the blacklist. Default value is 3.
/bounce/blacklist/remove_from_campaigns   [0]

There is no change in the SITEFORUM frontend. Bounces are still visible in the SITEFORUM Bounce Manager . Every bounce – no matter if a user reply, auto reply or real bounce - will be put on a bounce list. If limits are met or exceeded then the recipients email address will be put on the blacklist automatically.

Important: Once a “blacklisted” user logs into the system he/she will be presented with a red dialog that explains to them that the system couldn’t reach using the email listed in their profile. The user can then update the profile and also remove himself from the blacklist.

If your bounce email boxes are not managed by SITEFORUM Cloud Computing service then you need  to check your mail server documentation. SITEFORUM’s email infrastructure can be activated this way and no "Catchall mailbox” must be created.

• Enable VERP => switch on/off
• Move bounced emails to blacklist => bounced mails, that meets the criteria will be added to the blacklist
• How many failed attempts => if there are more than these bounces, we'll move the recipient to the blacklist
• Release after days => This one is tricky. Sending a mail is noted. Getting a bounce mail too. If send count is higher than bounce count for more than x days the mail is release from the list. (We got no bounce in this amount of time).

A backlist contains email addresses from internal and external users, who are not supposed to get the campaign. Recipients, whose email address is on the blacklist, automatically don't get the campaign.

The advantage is that you don't have to select the recipients who shoudl not get the campaign individually.

The Bounce Box recognizes if the recipients of a campaign are still reachable or if they are not reachable anymore. Emails of a campaign, which cannot be delivered or also automated answers, e.g. Out of Office, are carried in the Bounce Box.

Internal recipients are users who do have a portal login, who are known by name and who are registered.

External recipients: are people not known by name and not registered in the portal. You just have their email address to which you send the campaign.

You can fill your campaign with HTML content in different ways:

1. Template based HTML content: Use Campaign Main Templates and Campaign Content Templates to separate the design of your campaign from the actual content (Texts, Images, Links, etc.). You can use the templates for any campaign.
2. HTML based HTML content: Program the campaign yourself completey in HTML. A creative and textual separation is not possible then.

A campaign, which contains content only for external recipients, can only be tested with an email address which is not in the data base (not a user in the portal) and therewith an external address.

Equally campaings, which contain content only for internal recipients, can only be tested with an email address which is part of the data base (user in the portal) and therewith an internal address.