The Easiest Way to Set Up an Email Marketing Campaign

Every effective campaign starts with a lead magnet offer. This is typically a freebie, such as a guide, PDF, video, or webinar. The key is that it should be a small, easily digestible piece of information designed to help someone in your niche overcome an initial problem.

The lead magnet is offered through a funnel, which can also be created in System.io. The first step of this funnel is often called a squeeze page or capture page. Its primary purpose is to capture the visitor's details, most importantly their email address, but also their name.

After signing up on the squeeze page, the visitor is usually directed to a thank you page.

On this page, you can confirm their signup, potentially offer the lead magnet directly (like a PDF link) to save them waiting for the email, and even suggest additional options like joining a community or viewing another offer. However, for your first campaign, it's recommended to keep it as simple as possible.

Before setting up the email campaign itself, it's helpful to understand tags. Tags are used to track where leads come from and help trigger relevant campaigns. They are also crucial for segmenting contacts. Segmentation ensures that the right customer receives the right campaign, for example, preventing someone who has already bought a product from receiving emails designed for those who haven't. Tags can be set up in CRM/Tags.

Now, let's dive into creating the email campaign in System.io.

Creating Your Email Campaign

1.   Prepare Your Content: Before setting up the emails in System.io, you need the content for them. You can write this yourself based on your niche. Alternatively, you can use AI, like ChatGPT, to help create or polish your email content. The source provides an example of asking AI to generate a three-email campaign for a specific niche and lead magnet.

2.   Name Your Campaign: In System.io, go to the campaigns area and create a new campaign. Give it a clear name, perhaps including the number of emails or the topic, like "welcome three emails strength campaign". It's also a good practice to add a description, especially as you create more campaigns.

3.   Create Your Emails: Enter the campaign and start creating individual emails.

o    Each email needs a subject line.

o    For the email body, you have an editor. The classic editor is recommended as being easy to use, particularly when starting out, and potentially better for deliverability I believe.

o    You can personalise emails using variables. For instance, you can insert {{first_name}} to automatically include the recipient's first name. Other account-specific variables are also available.

o    You can add links to text or images.

o    Images can be added, potentially by dragging and dropping.

o    You can also add attachments, which is useful for sending PDFs or other documents.

4.   Save and Test: When working on an email, it's crucial to Save and Test rather than Save and Publish. Saving and testing allows you to send a test email to yourself to check for mistakes or formatting issues as well as testing that links work. The source notes that you often find mistakes, so testing is vital.

5.   Save and Publish: Once you are happy with the draft after testing, you can then Save and Publish.

Step-by-Step: Creating Your First Email Campaign

1. Navigate to the Campaigns Section

• Access the Dashboard: Log in to your Systeme.io account.

• Go to Emails > Campaigns: This is where you'll manage all your email campaigns.

2. Create a New Campaign

• Click on "Create": Initiate a new campaign.

• Fill in the Details: Provide a name, sender email, and a brief description.

• Save Your Campaign: Click "Save" to proceed.

3. Add More Emails to Your Campaign

• Click on "Create": Add your first email to the campaign.

• Choose an Editor: Opt for the classic or visual editor based on your preference.

• Compose Your Email: Craft compelling content tailored to your audience.

• Set Sending Parameters: Define delays, sending times, and days.

• Save and Test: Finalise your email setup.

Sequencing Your Emails

Once your emails are created and have been tested, you are ready to publish them. Now, you need to set the sequence in which they are sent.

• Initially, the status of newly created emails may be unmarked.

• You need to activate the first email. You can set a short delay for the first email, like one minute, though typically it would send immediately upon signup.

• For subsequent emails, you set them to send after a specific time delay following the previous email. For example, the second email might be set to send "one day after" email one, and the third email "one day after" email two.

• As you set these delays, the status of the emails will become activated, showing the sequence. You will see a green tick as below:

Connecting the Funnel to the Campaign

The final step is to trigger the email campaign automatically when someone signs up via your squeeze page.

Go back to your sales funnel and navigate to the squeeze page step.

1.   Add an automation rule.

2.   The trigger for the rule should be "Funnel step form subscribed". This means the rule activates when someone subscribes through the form on that specific squeeze page.

3.   The action for the rule is to "Subscribe to campaign".

4.   Select the email campaign you just created from the list. Note: Sometimes, a newly created campaign might not immediately appear in the list. Logging out of Systeme.io and logging back in is a suggested workaround for this bug.

5.   Save the rule.

With this automation rule in place, your email campaign will automatically be triggered whenever someone signs up for your lead magnet through that squeeze page. This creates a seamless, automated process that works for you in the background.

Setting up an email campaign might seem daunting at first, but by breaking it down into steps – creating the lead magnet and funnel, writing your emails (with or without AI help), sequencing them, and connecting them via automation rules – you can build a system that helps you sell and build trust automatically.

I hope you found this blog useful - if you have got stuck on any areas, try watching my step-by-step video (link at the beginning) or below here.

Before you go, if you have any questions, please comment below 😍

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