Basics

To get started with Email marketing you will need an account on xtremepush and a project. You can login at dashboard.xtremepush.com. Once logged in if you don't have one ready to use, add a NEW project. 

If you are creating a New project you will need to enter the following details and click save to initialise your project: 

• Title: Name used to identify project on the platform, something obvious to help you find it.  
• Description: A short description of what the project is for.
• Timezone: The timezone used for analytics in the project. Important this will dictate the starting point for analytics like daily users. You can set this to the local timezone of platform users if this makes sense. Default is UTC, which is a good compromise if users are likely to be spread across different timezones. 
• Icon: Helps to identify project on the platform, use app icon to help you find it.   
  
  

Xtremepush Email Channel

If Xtremepush Email is enabled in your account when you go to create a campaign the Email channel will be an option.

If Email is enabled then you can send Email in standalone campaigns or as part of wider multi-channel programs. You may for example use push notifications linking the user into the app as a primary channel on certain campaigns with Email as a fallback channel (see example below Email goes to users not subscribed for push).

Once Email is enabled you will initially want to do some quick tests. You will need a from email to send from and some test users to send to  - details on getting started in the following sections. 

Verify a from email for testing

In order to send emails you must authorise at least one from email such as no-reply@yourbrandname.com from which emails will originate from. Details in docs linked below:

• Verify a from email for Testing

Testing Email

In order to send an Email to yourself you will need an email in a user profile and an active email subscription. If you have company admin access you can edit your user profile or create a new one if none exist.

Navigate to App Data > User Profiles and you can select create user profile. Add your email address, set Email subscription to yes, and save the profile. 

 

To test Email create your campaign the way that you normally would. Select the Email channel and on the Email channel page draft a sample email using the editor

If you have multiple users and you want to target your own email, you can simply use your email address in a target segment using the email is condition from the identifiers section of the segmentation engine.

When ready launch the campaign and you will receive an Email.

Allow users to Unsubscribe, Subscribe or Manage their subscription, and reference their email

It is best practice to allow users to one click unsubscribe or manage their profile from your email header or footer. You can see an example of this in the the default footer in the simple Xtremepush email builder:

Try sending a test email with one of these footers if you click the update preferences link you will be brought to a page where you can change your email and subscription status:

This link as added by putting in the following special syntax that is dynamically replaced when emails are rendered: {{system.url.profile}}

If you click the unsubscribe link you will automatically be unsubscribed

This link as added by putting in the following special syntax that is dynamically replaced when emails are rendered: {{system.url.unsubscribe}}

It is also common to reference the email a user opted in on in the footer in case they are using an email client to aggregate multiple emails. This can be done using the syntax {{user.email}} in text. This will be replaced with the users email when the email is rendered:

Occasionally You may also wish to re-permission users as part of your list cleaning policy. In this case you can create a subscribe button or link in your email by using the following dynamic url syntax: {{system.url.subscribe}}. Clicking on a subscribe link in an email will opt a user back in for emails.

Add link to view online

It is best practice to give users a link to view their email online in case they want to view it in their browser outside their email client. As for unsubscribes this is done by using a tag with special syntax for your view online link the platform will place this with a dynamically created personalised link for each user when the email is rendered. For view online functionality add the link in your email by using the following dynamic url syntax: {{system.url.archive}}.

Importing More of Your Users

Once you have setup and tested the basics of email sending you will likely want to import existing users or begin collecting new users through xtremepush.

For details on how to add some more test users view the docs on:

• Set up test user profiles

If you are ready to build out your longer term strategy for importing users from your backend system of record visit the Data section of the docs and review it. The User profiles quick start guide would be a great place to get started a it has  all the info you will need on how to sync user profiles with the platform via API and other methods.

• User Profiles - Quick Start Guide