How Do I Manage Email Lists?

When using Virtuous Marketing as a primary means of communicating with your supporters, it's important to understand what Email Lists are and how you can manage them well. Email Lists can be used to manage different streams of communication to your Contacts. Having specific Email Lists for different types of communication needs will allow Contacts to Unsubscribe from certain selections of content without Globally Unsubscribing from ALL Marketing Emails from your organization. As an example, some supporters may prefer to receive your monthly Newsletter to stay informed but prefer to not receive appeal communications. This article will cover how you can manage existing Email Lists and the steps to create a new Email List. 

Table of Contents 

1. Review Email Lists 
2. Create a New Email List 
3. Add Individuals to an Email List 
4. Unsubscribe Options 
5. Sending an Email 

Review Email Lists 

To access Email Lists, first navigate to the Email module by selecting "Marketing" using the bullhorn icon from the left-hand menu. Then, select "Email" from the available options.

Once on the Email management screen, select the "Actions" drop-down menu in the top right corner. From the available options, select "Manage Lists".

Here, you will see a list of all your current Email Lists. 

To edit the details of any existing Email List, select the edit icon available to the right of each Email List. 

Create a New Email List 

To create a new Email List select "Create a List", available in the top right corner of the Manage Email Lists page. 

In the pop-out window, enter the appropriate details. Email Lists require a Name and a Description. Keep in mind, these two fields can both be seen by your recipients, so make sure your copy is formatted in a way that makes sense from the donor's perspective.

Users may choose to designate some Lists as "Default" lists, which means that they will always be displayed on the Subscription Preferences page for your email recipients.

To learn more about managing Subscription Preferences, check out this Support Article. 

Add Individuals to Email Lists 

Once you have created a list, you may add Individuals to your list. You can do this three different ways. 

• One at a time as people fill out incoming Forms
• Directly on a Contact record
• In bulk, via an Individual Query

On a Contact record, look for the "Email Lists" box in the lower left. There, select the plus icon to add any Individual from the record to an Email List.

Select the desired Individual and then select the correct Email List to add them to. It is possible to select more than one Individual at a time as well as more than one Email List at a time.

To specify, adding an Individual to a list means emails will be sent to their Primary Email Address only. Additional Email Addresses on an Individual record are not considered for sending Marketing Emails or bulk Email Receipts. 

Example: Bruce Banner, the Individual, is added to an Email List. His Primary Email Address is "bbanner@gmail.com" and his other email address on file is "bruceb@yahoo.com". This means that Marketing Emails will go to "bbanner@gmail.com", NOT "bruceb@yahoo.com". If you set bruceb@yahoo.com as "Primary", then emails will go to "bruceb@yahoo.com", NOT "bbanner@gmail.com".

To manage their Email List subscriptions and either remove them from the Email List, or Unsubscribe them from a particular Email List, select the edit icon available to the right of the specific Individual.  Unsubscribed Individuals must be kept on a list in order to track their Unsubscribe status.

On the next page, select the appropriate Individual and Action for the update needs. 

Unsubscribe Options 

Individuals may choose to Unsubscribe from an Email List once they receive a Marketing Email. When editing an Email, selecting the "Special Links" option from the text box toolbar will provide the different Subscription Management links to be used when building Marketing Emails. There are three options:

Unsubscribe actions can also be seen from the Sent Emails screen, when viewing Email Activity. 

To learn more about reviewing Marketing Email activity, check out this Support Article. 

When creating a new Marketing Email, users will be required to specify an Email List. This Email List will be used as the default selection of records to target for sending the email. As a reminder, this will be sent to the primary email address of each Individual on the Email List.

On the "Target" step when sending a Marketing Email, you will have three options:

The "Send to Email List" option will initially target all Individuals on your Email List. To further specify what Individuals you'd like to target, select "Show Advanced Options". This will open additional options to either including or excluding specific records based on a Contact or Individual Query.  

Note: When sending a Marketing Email via an Email List, your Email List must be created a minimum of 15 minutes prior to sending your email. It is recommended that you create your Email List before starting to build your Marketing Email. This will allow enough time for the Email List to be generated.