Campaigns are specialized email notifications that are sent automatically when key events are triggered, or manually by a Site User.

Campaigns are designed to encourage the re-engagement of existing Members by drawing them back to an existing project that has been updated with a new event or a news item, or a newly published project that provides a new opportunity for participation.

The campaigns created and sent from the platform can be viewed in the Emails area of the Dashboard. At the top of the Campaigns section, campaigns can be quickly filtered by their status = ‘In Progress’, ‘Draft’, ‘Sent’ and ‘Cancelled’ tabs.

The metadata displayed for each campaign includes:

  • Campaign Name - The title given to the campaign - can be set either manually or automatically. This field also includes when the campaign was last edited, sent, scheduled, or cancelled.
  • Status - The stage at which the campaign is in the creation/send process. There are four possible states:
    • Draft - Campaigns that have been manually created but not yet sent (shown in the ‘In Progress’ and ‘Draft’ tabs).
    • Scheduled - Campaigns that have been scheduled either manually or automatically and will be sent in the future (shown in the ‘In Progress’ tab).
    • Processing - Campaigns that are currently in the process of being sent out (shown in the ‘In Progress’ tab).
    • Sent - Campaigns that have been successfully sent.
    • Cancelled - Campaigns that have been cancelled by the user before they could be sent.
  • Type - Whether the campaign was created automatically (‘Automated’ or by a Site User (‘Manual’).
  • Tags - The projects, interests, locations or other lists the campaign relates to.
  • Recipients - The number of recipients the campaign will / has been sent to.
  • Opens - The total unique number of times the campaign was viewed by the recipient’s email clients.
  • Clicks - The total unique number of times recipients clicked a link in the campaign.
  • Bounces - The total unique number of times the campaign was not received by the intended recipients.

Once you choose to send a campaign, there is a time delay before the campaign is sent. This prevents campaigns from being accidentally sent if you have mistakenly published a project, news update or event.

By default, automated campaigns has a three (3) hours delay - depending on your configuration, while manual campaigns have a ten (10) mins delays. During this window, you can cancel a campaign if you have made a mistake (see instructions below), but cannot recall a campaign once it has been sent.

Automated Campaigns

Automated campaigns are sent when a user performs a specific action or optionally chooses to send them. There are currently three types of automated campaigns sent from the platform:

  • New Project - Sent when a new project is published to the site (for the first time) to Members who have expressed categories and locations of interest that match those of the new project.
  • News Update - Sent to all Followers of a project when a news item is published to the Newsfeed tool and a Site User has elected to send it.
  • Event Update - Sent to all Followers of a project when a news event is published to the Events tool and a Site User has elected to send it.

You can view a list of all automated email campaign templates to learn more.

Manual Campaigns

Manual campaigns allow users to send customised emails to various lists within Social Pinpoint.

Currently, users can adjust the subject line and body text, but cannot add imagery or more complex layouts. Manual campaigns can be saved in draft, sent out immediately or scheduled for future delivery.

When creating a manual campaign type, selecting the appropriate campaign type will help ensure the campaign will only be sent to Members who have given consent to receive that specific type of communication.

Users should choose the appropriate campaign type as follows:

  • Project - Send to a single Project list to provide specific updates on that project.
  • Topic / Location - Send to a single Interest or Location list to notify Members of new opportunities to participate. This should only relate to things directly relevant to the interest or location category.
  • Sitewide Newsletter - Send a general broadcast or newsletter to Members on the Newsletter subscriber list.
  • Other - Send communications of an unknown type to multiple lists. Care should be taken to ensure appropriate consent has been provided by any recipients on the selected list.


⚠️ Using the Sitewide Members Mailing List

  • This list should only be used for emergencies or specific circumstances requiring all registered users to be notified.
  • When creating a new campaign and selecting "Others > Members (sitewide)" as the source, a notification for consent will appear. The campaign will be blocked until consent to proceed is given.

Campaign Reports

Reports of sent campaigns can be viewed in Emails area of the Dashboard, and allow you to view:

  • the title, description and date of when the campaign was sent (or is scheduled)
  • a preview of the content that was sent out
  • the list(s) the campaign was sent to
  • the overall analytics for the campaign
  • the individual analytics per recipient

The four key analytics recorded for each campaign are:

  • Opened - Records when the campaign has been viewed by the recipient's email client. Note, this does not necessarily mean the recipient has seen the campaign, as some email clients automatically open emails.
  • Clicked - Records when the recipient clicks a link in the campaign (if available)
  • Bounced - Indicates that the recipient's email is no longer functioning properly (e.g. recipient mailbox is full, the email address cannot be found, etc).
  • Blocked - Indicates that the recipient’s email address has been added to a suppression list, usually after the result of multiple attempts to invalid email addresses or some other kind of reporting by the email service provider.

The campaign analytics only record whether a recipient has or has not performed a specific action - multiple open and click events are not recorded.

Key actions

Campaign reports provide you with detailed information about who the campaign was sent to, what the campaign looked like, aggregated engagement levels, and specific campaign metrics per recipient.

To view a campaign report:

  1. Navigate to the Emails area of the Dashboard and select ‘Campaigns’ from the left-hand panel to view available campaigns
  2. Find the target campaign and click the Campaign Name or select the ‘Actions’ dropdown and select the ‘View Report’ option
  3. Navigate the sections of the report via the three tabs at the top of the page (‘All’, ‘Campaign Preview’ and ‘Recipients’ to view various information about the campaign.

Custom manual campaigns can be sent to available lists if desired.

To manually send a custom email campaign:

  1. Navigate to the Emails area of the Dashboard and select ‘Campaigns’ from the left-hand panel to view available campaigns
  2. Click the ‘Create Campaign’ button at the top-right of the page
  3. Give your campaign a title and description, and select the type of campaign you will send. The Campaign Type will be used to determine which lists your campaign can be sent to based on its intended purpose. This will help ensure that the consent of your recipients is respected.
  4. Choose the list or recipients you want to send your campaign to
  5. Input text for the subject line and body of your campaign
  6. When you have finished drafting the content, you can either:
    1. save the campaign as draft by clicking the ‘Save Draft’ button; or
    2. preview the campaign and send a test email by clicking the ‘Preview and Test’ button

To send a test email of your campaign to yourself or others:

  1. Click the ‘Send Test’ button in the Campaign Preview window
  2. Add email addresses in the pop-up window (use a comma to separate multiple email addresses)
  3. Click the green ‘Send Test’ button at the bottom-left of the popup-window
  4. Confirm the send by clicking the green ‘Send Now’ button in the Send Campaign popup

Once your campaign has been created in draft or sent, it will be displayed in the Campaigns overview list in the Emails area of the Dashboard.

Existing campaigns can be copied or cloned to reuse the content and campaign settings. This might be useful if you are resending an automated campaign to someone who missed it, or you want to copy content from a manual campaign you have already created.

To clone a campaign:

  1. Navigate to the Emails area of the Dashboard and select ‘Campaigns’ from the left-hand panel to view available campaigns
  2. Find the target campaign to clone, select the ‘Actions’ dropdown at the far right of the table row and select the ‘Clone’ option
  3. Navigate the sections of the report via the three tabs at the top of the page (‘All’, ‘Campaign Preview’ and ‘Recipients’) to view various information about the campaign.

This will create a new campaign with the same content and subscriber lists as the cloned campaign which can be updated as appropriate.

To send or schedule a campaign:

  1. To send the campaign immediately, click the green ‘Send Now’ button at the bottom of the Campaign Preview window (a small delay may occur while the system processes the emails)
  2. To schedule a campaign to be sent in the future, click the ‘Schedule Campaign’ button, set the delivery date and time in the popup window, and click the green ‘Save’ button
  3. Confirm the send by clicking the green ‘Confirm’ button in the Campaign Schedule popup

Campaigns that are scheduled to be sent at a future date can be canceled by the user if they no longer wish to send it. This may be necessary if the user changes their mind and no longer wishes to send the campaign. Only campaigns that are in the ‘scheduled’ or ‘processing’ status can be cancelled.

To cancel a campaign:

  1. Navigate to the Emails area of the Dashboard and select ‘Campaigns’ from the left-hand panel to view available campaigns
  2. Under the ‘In Progress’ tab, search the campaign list to find campaigns that are either ‘Scheduled’ or ‘Processing’
  3. Find the target campaign to cancel, select the ‘Actions’ dropdown at the far right of the table row and select the ‘Cancel’ option

Once a campaign is cancelled, it will be given the ‘Cancelled’ status and can be viewed in the ‘Cancelled’ tab at the top of the page.

Once an email has been sent, you can not recall it.

Note 1: By cancelling a campaign that is in the ‘Processing’ status, the system may have already started to send emails to recipients, and therefore can only cancel emails to recipients who have not yet been sent the email.

Note 2: Manual campaigns can be cancelled with in 10 minutes of sending. The delay of up to 10 minutes starts after the scheduled send time of the campaign and before the processing commences.
So if I create a manual campaign at 2pm and choose to send it now, the processing might not start until 2:10pm.

Automated campaigns can be cancelled within 3 hours as they have a delay built in after the project/page is published. So if I publish a project at 2pm, the automated campaign will be scheduled to be sent at 5pm, processing might not start until 5:10pm.

Note 3: Cancelling or deleting a project doesn't automatically cancel a manual EDM linked to the project. Please check any EDMs you have set to go out are also cancelled if you cancel/delete a project.

Using images in your manual email campaigns allows you to customize the look and feel of your engagement communications.

To add an image to your campaign:

  1. Navigate to the Emails area of the Dashboard and select ‘Campaigns’
  2. From the campagins table select the name of the campaign (or for a new campaign select create campaign)
  3. From the campaign editor select the insert image icon
  4. In the File manager view select the Upload files option near the top right of the screen
  5. Pick the relevant file from your computer then select Open
  6. Once added you can edit your image from within the campaign body by left-clicking on the image. Drag the canvas to resize or select Edit to update the image properties
  7. Select Save Draft to save your campaign content

💡 User Tip

It's best to avoid overly large images, both in file size and pixel dimensions. We recommend a maximum file size of 1MB for images. We don't recommend uploading images that are significantly larger than the content area of the campaign editor.

💡 User Tip

It's important to remember that your community members will be viewing campaigns on a range of different devices and email applications.

It is always good practice to send yourself a test first. If you encounter issues viewing images embedded in an email always try viewing via a different email account or email application.

Many email applications and networks will block automatic image downloads so always check these settings first if troubleshooting images in email campaigns.