Enabling Email Campaigns
Welcome back Odooers! Today, we're going to learn everything there is to know about email marketing campaigns. That's right, you excited? There's certainly a lot we have to cover, so let's go ahead and hop into our database to see how this all works, shall we?
We're going to go ahead and kick things off on our Email Marketing dashboard. From here, we're going to go to Configuration and head to our Settings because there's one very important feature that we'll need to activate before moving on. From here, we're going to go ahead and tick this checkbox right next to our Mailing Campaigns feature. Now before I go ahead and click save here, I want us to take a look at our header options here up above. Keep an eye on those as I select save right here to activate our Mailing Campaigns feature. And once we do, notice this brand new Campaigns option. Pretty cool, right?
So like we've mentioned before, it's important to know that the Campaigns header menu option and campaign capabilities in general won't even be accessible unless the Mailing Campaign feature has been activated. Okay, since we've got the necessary feature locked and ready to go, let's go ahead and click the Campaign header up above just to see what this is all about.
Navigating the Campaigns Dashboard
That's going to take us to our campaigns page. This is where you'll find all the created campaigns in the database, and they will also be shown in the default Kanban view with each campaign in its respective stage of progress or completion. This can also be viewed in the list view as well. But as you can see, each Kanban campaign card here supports its own collection of vital information for quick reference and analysis. Under the campaign name, we can go ahead and see any of the assigned tags here as well as the number of mailings or communications that are associated with it. You can also go ahead and see the user responsible, and we're also going to notice these small icons here which are going to represent the campaign's generated revenue, quotations, opportunities, and clicks.
So to create a new campaign, we can go ahead and click this new button here, or we can also click the plus sign to the right of any stage title. Doing so is going to go ahead and reveal a blank Kanban card in that respective stage. But let's take the old-school route here and just click the new button. From here we can add a campaign name. For this example, we can do something like Social Media Awareness. And we'll keep the responsible the same, but let's go ahead and add some tags here, like social media and marketing. Great. Now I could go ahead and click add here to instantly add it to the Kanban stage and just modify it later, but hey, where's the fun in that? Instead, let's go ahead and click this edit button here and make some alterations to this campaign right now.
Doing so is going to take us to the campaign form. Straight away, you'll notice some familiar faces on this form. Up top, you can see the smart buttons here representing those same analytical metrics we pointed out on the campaign Kanban card moments ago. Those will populate as the campaign works its magic with its recipients.
At the bottom of the page here, we can see all the fields that we just entered into the Kanban card, and between those, we'll see some elements of the four buttons you'll see here, being the Send Mailing, Send SMS, Add Post, and Send Push. Now, if you don't immediately see all the buttons here, no worries at all. They're each tied to another Odoo application to help us spread the good word of Stealthy Wood in a variety of different ways. So Send SMS here is going to be related to our SMS Marketing application, Add Post is going to be related to our Social Marketing application, and Send Push is going to be related to our Website application. So once you install all those respective applications, these buttons will appear on your campaign form, definitely assure you.
To the right here, we can also see a status bar, which will display just what stage this particular campaign is in at that very time. They represent the same stages found on the Kanban view of the campaigns page that we were just on. And just a quick FYI, those stages can be modified if we go to the Configuration menu here and click on the Campaign Stages. Now, as you can see with all the buttons at the ready right here, we have a lot of different options to choose from. However, since we're here to focus solely on email marketing campaigns today, let's spend our time by clicking the Send Mailing button.
Composing the Mailing and Targeting Recipients
All right, when we click the Send Mailing button, Odoo provides us with everything we need to compose a top-notch email for our campaign, complete with the fields to help us to reach our target audience, no matter how broad or how specific we want that to be. So let's go ahead and kick this off with a subject line like, 'It's time to follow us on social media,' and let's also go ahead and add an emoji to it by clicking the smiley face icon here on the right of the subject line. And let's go ahead and just use the standard smiley guy here. Perfect.
Next is our recipients field. This is where we can decide who our targeted audience will be. With Odoo, the range of possibilities is truly endless. You can get as detailed or as broad as you like. There's really nothing you can't do here. And since there are so many options available when it comes to recipients, I strongly suggest you read more about it in our documentation, which I'll link to in the description below. But for now, let's say I want to target people who have already expressed interest in our company and our publications. So let's go ahead and look at our options here, and in this case, I'm going to choose Mailing List. And on the right of the mailing list section here, I'll go with newsletter. It should be noted that I can also add as many mailing lists to this field as I'd like, but we're going to go ahead and stick to this one for now. And if I know there's a specific email address that I'd like to send to that isn't a part of this mailing list, I can quickly add them by clicking this avatar plus icon here. Again, the mailing list capabilities, just like the recipients filter that Odoo Email Marketing provides, offers a ton of customizable options, so be sure to check that documentation out as well, which I'll also link below.
Designing Your Email with the Editor
Okay, so below this, we have three main tabs, being the Mail Body, A/B Testing, and Settings tab. In the Mail Body tab here, we can choose from any of these awesome templates to build our own email, or we can choose to start from scratch. But let's go ahead and choose this welcome message template for this example. When a template is chosen, it appears in the Mail Body tab alongside with all of our building block options and design elements here on the right.
Again, the range of possibilities that can be achieved through the use of these blocks and tools are just astronomical. In the Blocks tab here, you can go ahead and drag and drop any of the elements into the body of your email. In the Customize tab, you can play around with the look and feel of each block. And here in the Design tab, you can specify and specialize any detail of your email in any way you want. Pretty sweet, right?
So if you want to adjust or modify anything of the template, you can click the 'Thank you' for example here and proceed to customize it through the Customize tab that appears, or we can directly edit it on the body itself. Or you can even just remove it through the trash can icon on the right. And if you want to undo something, you can just click this left rotating arrow on the top of the sidebar, and boom, like it never happened.
Now obviously, there are literally thousands of ways to customize any email with Odoo's wide range of useful drag-and-drop tools, and we could be here all day going through all those ways you can build a message of your dreams. But we have more campaign-related stuff to cover, so be sure to check that in our documentation that I'll also link in our description below.
A/B Testing and Advanced Settings
Alright, once you're happy with your email, Odoo gives you the chance to test it out in a couple different ways. We can go ahead and click this test button here and send a sample mailing to any number of specific email addresses in order to see what our message looks and functions like. Or if we click out of this here, we can go ahead and open the A/B testing tab. In this tab, we have the option to test out different versions of the same email just to see which one works better. For that, we'd have to tick this checkbox here to allow for A/B testing, then decide what percentage the recipients will receive this part of the test. Then, proceed in to designate criteria that Odoo will determine which version is the winner. And then we can decide when the final competing version of the mailing will be sent out.
Here we can even quickly create alternate versions of the mailing directly from this tab by clicking the, you guessed it, 'Create an alternate version', which presents us with a fresh version of this original message, and we can obviously modify it any way we like. And if we hop back to the A/B testing here, we'll see our percentage of recipients that will receive this sample, and then we can also go ahead and see our compare versions or create an alternate version. So there are plenty of options here.
When we jump to our settings tab, there are even more ways we can customize this email campaign. We can create preview text here, which is like a catchy sentence that encourages recipients to open the email. And we can also adjust our 'Send From' and 'Reply To' email aliases. Lastly, we can even go ahead and attach a file if we want. Those are just some of the few ways we can get our users to personalize email campaigns using Odoo. But again, to get a more in-depth look at all those settings, be sure to check out the documentation which again, I'll link down below.
Scheduling and Launching Your Campaign
Alrighty, so we're happy with the email and how it looks and the settings configured for it. We can either hit the send button here and send it to our designated recipients right away, or we can click schedule and send it out to a specific date and time later in the future. For this example, let's click schedule and select a random date, which will be a week from today. From there, we'll go ahead and apply and then schedule. When we do, you'll notice a couple of things. One is the blue banner here at the top informing us of when the mailing is scheduled to be sent. And two, the status here has moved from Draft to In Queue. And once it's being sent, it will change to Sending, and once that's done, the status will be Sent. Makes sense, right?
Now, if we use the breadcrumbs and hop back to the campaign page here, we'll see our original email alongside with its alternative scheduling email in the new Mailings tab, of course, alongside with some information related to them.
And there you have it, Odooers. Those are the ins and outs of email marketing campaigns with Odoo. Be sure to check out the linked documentation below for more information, but until then, see you soon!
