Follow our step-by-step guide to create an audience file in order to send an email campaign.
To create an audience file, you will want to go to the Manage Campaigns badge on the Salesgenie homepage.
Clicking on it will expand out additional options: Manage Audiences, Email Campaigns, Dialer Calls, and Direct Email. The user should go the Manage Audience badge to create an audience file.
This takes the user to the Manage Audience page which for first time users will show an empty section. We have two types of audience files:
- Prospect contacts are those who haven’t opted into receive your email marketing campaign, but you can still contact them. (Acquisition email campaign.)
- Subscribed contacts are customers who you have done business with and have opted into receive your email marketing campaigns. (Retention email campaign.)
There are two tool tips to help define “Prospect” and “Subscribed” when the user hovers over the "i" icon. For users with files create, the page will list out all the user’s audience files that they have created. Once the user creates one audience file, they can start the flow of email campaign to create a campaign.
For creating the first audience files, we need to use the “New Audience File” button on the upper right hand of the page. The steps of the audience file creation flow are progressive with most steps needing the user to complete all of them in order to proceed. It is modeled off the customer upload flow for data services in Salesgenie.
The user must first name their audience file and select whether the file is business or consumer.
Audience File - Saved Search
Selecting a saved search option will prompt a table of existing saved searches created by the user to select. It might take a small amount of time for the table to appear as the service is running email counts on the saved searches to show in the table.
Selecting a saved search and completing the previous steps will allow the blue “Next” button to become available to click and show the user on the footer that is the single step to create an audience file.
NOTE: It is important to note, that some saved lists will not have options to create audience files. If the list is several years old, or has no emails found in its count to send too, the list will show as grayed-out and not selectable for the user.
Clicking “Next” takes the user to the Manage Audience File page where they can see the file being processed and created. A tool tip is added if the processing takes awhile for large files or lists instructing the user that we will send them an email once the file finishes processing.
The email will be sent to the email address on the user’s account.
Once the file is created, the user can proceed to send an email campaign.
Audience File - Upload a New List
If the user selects “Upload a new list” option, they will see name field and “Browse” button appear for them to look up files on their computer to select. The user also will be able to see our accepted file types, a maximum upload limit, and terms and conditions. We do provide a “Download a Sample File” option to for users to get feel for the best format of their file along with a link to the upload best practices.
Once the user selects the file they wish to upload and complete the previous steps, the “Next” button will become available. The second step on the upload process will prompt the user to select whether the file is “Prospect” or “Subscribed”. This is an important step as this determines which campaign type the client would like to send and aligns the backend processes to the campaign type. Improperly selecting the campaign type could result loss of email campaign access and privileges since it hurts the user’s business reputation along with Data Axle’s reputation.
If the user selects “Prospect” on Step 2, they will be allowed to move onto the next step of matching and mapping their file.
Matching to the file is like Salesgenie customer upload flow in that the user must map the proper columns of their file to our fields. The column headers of the user file will be shown to help match to the proper columns on our audience file service. The fields listed do two things:
- For prospect/acquisition data, we will use our matching service to make sure we are using the most accurate Data Axle data with the customers.
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The fields used here are the personalization fields for email campaign:
- Business: Company Name, First Name, Last Name, Email Address, Job Titles, Address 1, Address 2, City, State, ZIP Code, and Phone.
- Consumer: First Name, Last Name, Email Address, Address 1, Address 2, City, State, ZIP Code, and Phone.
- Note: The user can combine First and Last Name as option on those steps.
- Note: There are no required fields, but for best data matching, the user should map to all the fields. A minimum of 2 fields on business, and 6 fields on consumer must be mapped in order to proceed.
Matching the columns will allow the user to proceed with the “Next” button becoming available. The user will be directed back to the Manage Audience file page where the file is processing. We will send an email once the file is complete as confirmation. For large files, the matching might take some time to process.
If the user chooses “Subscribed” on Step 2, the following steps are slightly different than choosing prospect. The user will first have an additional step to agree to our “proper permissions” that they are using email addresses which they have an existing relationship with these clients. “Proper Permissions” link will take the user to the Salesgenie terms and conditions. We also capture the user’s acceptance of this step in case there are disputes with the client about sending misaligned campaign types via our email campaign service.
Once the user selects “I agree…”, the “Next” button will become available to map their file columns on Step 3.
The difference between two flows is mapping vs matching. On prospect, we match the data to our own for the best results in deliverability and accuracy. For subscribed, the client data is used after mapping in which we trust them that their information is accurate. We only map to the subscribed files since this is a retention campaign. Email address is also the only required field to map for subscribed campaigns.
The user still will be able to use the personalized fields with their own data: Personalization fields for email campaign:
- Business: Company Name, First Name, Last Name, Email Address, Job Titles, Address 1, Address 2, City, State, ZIP Code, and Phone.
- Consumer: First Name, Last Name, Email Address, Address 1, Address 2, City, State, ZIP Code, and Phone.
- Note: The user can combine First and Last Name as option on those steps.
- Note: The user must map email campaign minimum.
Once the user has mapped their fields, the “Next” button will become available routing the user back to the Manage Audience page to see their file processing.
Once the user has created at least one audience file, they can proceed onto the email campaign flow via @