How Do I Set Up and Manage Campaigns

Learn how to create and manage customizable email campaigns for your event participants using Grip’s powerful tools.

A campaign is a customizable email that you can send to all of your event participants. The most common usage at Grip is for a ‘welcome email’, which is usually the first email that your participants receive, and contains their initial credentials and a link to log in to the event. However with our email designer, you can create emails for any purpose you like.

A fair use limit applies to our campaign emails - please refer to our terms of service for more detail.

In this article we’ll go through how you can set up and manage your campaigns, using tools like segmentation, scheduling and AutoSending, along with how to see email analytics and judge your campaigns’ effectiveness.

Table of Contents

• Statistics
• Campaign List
• Registration AutoSending
• Creating your first Campaign
• Unsubscribe Links
• Copying Events
• Deactivating Events
• FAQs

Statistics

When you navigate to the Engage > Emails section and select the Campaigns tab, the first thing you'll see is the email statistics for all existing campaigns. These statistics provide a snapshot of your campaigns' engagement levels, helping you gauge their effectiveness. Hover over the ‘i’ tooltips next to each number for detailed explanations.

• Detailed Logs: For more comprehensive information on sent emails, or to export a list of bounced or unsubscribed addresses, use the Logs tab.
• Exportable Data: All campaign statistics can be exported by clicking the ‘Export as CSV’ button.
• Real-Time Updates: Statistics are not updated in real-time; allow a few minutes and refresh the page to view the latest numbers.

The Campaign List

If you haven’t created a campaign yet, you’ll see a prompt to start creating one. Once campaigns are created, a table displays them along with key details such as status and engagement metrics. Hover over the table headers for explanations of each column.

Campaign States:

• Draft: The campaign has not been sent or scheduled.
• Scheduled: The campaign is set to be sent at a future time.
• Sent: The campaign has already been sent.

For each campaign, you’ll find an overflow menu (three vertical dots) at the end of the row, offering options such as:

• Edit/Resend: Modify settings or design, and resend the campaign to participants in the segment.
• Cancel Sending: Cancel a scheduled campaign before it is sent.
• Delete: Permanently delete the campaign and its associated data.

Registration AutoSending

Registration AutoSending is a feature that automatically sends an email to any newly-registered profile that enters a specific segment. This is particularly useful for ensuring that new participants receive welcome emails or other important communications without manual intervention.

• Example: If you create a campaign for participants in Group X and enable Registration AutoSending, only new registrants added to Group X will receive the email. Existing participants added manually to Group X will not.

• Session example: If you use it for the segment option ‘attendees of a session’. This would mean that any participant that adds a given session to their schedule will receive an email that you’ve created for this purpose, automatically.

• Note: AutoSending begins only after the initial email campaign is sent, making it safe to enable even for scheduled emails.

Creating your first Campaign

If you haven’t created a campaign yet, click the Create Campaign button below the statistics bar to open the email designer.

Steps to Create a Campaign:

1. Campaign Name: Enter a name that is unique and identifiable for future reference. This name will not be visible to recipients.

2. Choose Segment: Define your target audience by selecting filters. Filters allow you to specify conditions, such as data type, custom groups, or event status. Combine multiple filters to narrow down your segment.

   Filter Name	Description	Example Usage
   Data type	All participants within the given data types	An instructional email that you want to send to only your Exhibitors
   Custom groups	All participants within the given group	An email in a hybrid event, but just for Virtual members across any data type
   Status in event	Either Inactive (the person has never logged in to the event) or Active (has logged in at least once)	A welcome email that you want to send to participants who’ve not logged in yet
   Attendees of Session	Participants who have added a given session to their schedule	Important information about a session they are planning to attend
   Invitees of Private Session	Those on the invite list to a given Private Session	An engagement email encouraging invitees to add the private session to their schedules
   Attendees of Sessions on a Track	Any participant that has added at least one session from a given Track to their schedule	A marketing email regarding a specific topic of sessions
   Attendees of Sessions at a Stage	Any participant that has added at least one session from a given Stage to their schedule	Important practical information about sessions happening at a particular Stage

   Example:

   • Data Type - Equals - Attendees AND Status in event - Equals - Inactive

     Result: Only participants of the type ‘Attendees’ who have never logged in will be emailed.

3. Choose Template: Start with a pre-built template or create a custom design from scratch. Every template includes a mandatory unsubscribe link that should not be altered.
   You will only see this step when you first create a campaign. When editing an existing campaign, you will have already picked a template and so have a design which you can continue to edit.

   Template Name	Description
   Session_Invite	A design geared towards encouraging participants to add a session to their schedule. Use the ‘Special Links’ feature in the button to choose a session to send the recipients to.
   Welcome_Long	A welcome email containing credentials that the recipient can use to log in, along with some additional instruction and detail about what to expect.
   Welcome_Short	A simplified email containing credentials and less detail.

4. Edit Design: Use the drag-and-drop editor to customize your email. Add buttons, images, and merge tags to personalize content. Ensure that all event-specific links and merge tags are correctly applied.
   For a quick rundown on features, you can watch this video on YouTube.

5. Multi-Language Designs: If your event supports multiple languages, you can create different language variants of the email design.

6. Test and Send: Preview the email design on different devices, set an engaging subject line, and send a test email to verify everything is working as expected.

7. Save or Schedule: Save your campaign as a draft or schedule it to be sent at a specific time. You can also enable Registration AutoSending at this stage.

Your Templates

You can save your email designs as templates for future campaigns, making it easier to maintain consistency and save time across all events within your Grip application. These templates are accessible to dashboard users with the App Admin role or higher. If your Grip application supports multiple languages, your templates can be created in multiple languages as well.

Email colors are configured through the branding options of your event. This ensures that your email's call-to-actions (CTAs) are visible and consistent with your brand identity. While automated emails automatically inherit the event’s primary color, campaign emails require manual setup within the branding options.

You’ll have the opportunity to save your email design as a template at the end of the design process. If you’ve already saved templates from previous campaigns, they will be available at this step for reuse.

If you need to delete a template, hover over it during this step and click the trash can icon. Confirm the deletion to remove the template from the Grip application, which will erase it from all events. However, this will not affect any campaign emails already created from that template—only the template itself will be deleted.

Here are some important things to note for working with emails in Grip:

Event-Specific Links

When adding a button, menu, image or any other type of object that contains a link, you’ll see a drop-down called ‘Special Links’. This is a really simple way of directing your recipients to common places in your event.

We have pre-defined these dynamic links based on your event data, and there are two options:

Smart Marketing Link

This is the standard link that you should use wherever you invite your attendees to log in to the platform. It is a dynamic link which will take your attendees to the web login page or mobile app depending on the device that they use to open the email.
If opening on the web, it will also help the email recipient by pre-filling data like their email address and Registration ID.

If you want to direct email recipients to somewhere really specific, and don't want them to be taken to the mobile app, then you can type in your own URL instead of the Smart Marketing Link.
An example might be to send an email reminder to Company Representatives to encourage them to create their Teams, which they have to do on the website.
The easiest way to do this is to navigate to that page yourself and copy the link in your browser's address bar, which will ensure that if you're using a Custom Domain, you are directing your attendees to the correct site. Alternatively, you can get quite creative with deep links if you want to!

Sessions

These are automatically generated links which will direct your attendees to one of the sessions in your event, after they’ve logged in to the event. This is particularly useful for Session Invite or promotion emails.

Note: Session links are most effective on the web - if you have a mobile app and your recipients click on a Session link via their cellphones, they will simply be taken to the event mobile app itself.

Merge Tags

Merge tags are an essential part of email design, and we have predefined a list of Grip-specific fields for you to use. These are especially important when it comes to welcome emails, where the login credentials shown are unique and specific to the intended recipient.

Whenever you’re typing text in one of the blocks, you’ll see an option to add a merge tag in the formatting bar - or you can type a curly bracket { to instantly see a drop-down list of tags.

The available merge tags refer to fields within the recipient's profile in Grip and are built with two curly brackets }{ surrounding the field. Unfortunately we cannot list them as copyable text in this article because our help center tries to convert them into its own merge tags! We've converted them into pictures so that you can write them out yourself from the table below.

 

Field	Merge Tag
First Name
Last Name
Name
Company Name
Email Address
Registration ID
Event Name

 

For welcome emails, you should always include the Email Address and Registration ID merge tags, so that your attendees have what they need to log in. Refer to the pre-built welcome email templates if you need some guidance on this.

It’s good practice to use merge tags in your templates, so that you don’t need to change much between events - for example using the ‘Event Name’ merge tag instead of writing out the name of the event itself within the design.

When using merge tags, make sure you’re confident that your attendees all have this data in their Grip profiles, otherwise you may end up with empty spaces in the resulting emails!

Images

You can upload images or just copy and paste a direct image link.
If you’re linking to images, make sure to use publicly-available image links, and ensure that you use a link to the image itself. An easy way to tell if your link is correct is to make sure that it ends in the file format of the image itself, for example “.png” or “.jpg”.
Google Drive or Dropbox links will not work, as they do not lead directly to an image, they lead to a google drive page with the image within it.

To overlay items on top of an image, add it as the background to an existing column. Otherwise, use an image block if you’re looking to add an image between other components.

Previewing

You can use the built-in preview tool at the bottom-left to check how responsive your email design is for different screen sizes. This is an important step in order to ensure that your email design looks as intended on a range of desktop and mobile devices.

Multi-Language Designs

In apps where multiple languages have been enabled for your events, you’ll also be able to design email variants for these additional languages. The journey has been designed so that you can complete your English design first (as it is mandatory), before moving on to the additional languages, where your English design is your starting point.

Note that your attendees will receive emails (and notifications) in the language that is set on their profile under the ‘User Preferred Language’ field. This is set either as part of the data import, and can be modified by the attendee themselves when they’ve logged into the web platform.

If you have a multi-language app, you will be prompted about additional languages once you click ‘Continue’ on the design step. You are given the option to design other variants or just use the English version for all recipients, regardless of their language preference.

 

Email Subject Line

Now that you’ve completed your design, make sure you choose an engaging Subject Line that recipients will see in their inboxes. Best practice for subjects is to keep them within 50 characters, although you can technically add up to 130 characters.

We support the use of emojis, and you can also use merge tags to personalize your subject lines. You will need to write them in the tag format, so as a reminder, here is the list of merge tags.

Example: “Start networking now for !”

Testing Emails

You can use this option to fire off a test to some attendees of your choice. Use the search bar to look up profiles within the current event and send the email to the email addresses on their profiles.

Again, if you have a multi-language application, you can choose which language design variant to send to the profile - regardless of their specific preferred language, your choice here will override their preference.

Estimated Segment Size

Based on the conditions and filters you set on the second step, you will see a number in this section which is an estimation of the (current) number of profiles that should receive your email. As noted in the text below, this number can change if profiles are added to (or removed from) the event matching your segment.

If this doesn’t look like the right number of profiles, it will be best to save your email as a draft and check the data in your event, ensuring it matches the segment options you chose.

Saving your design as a template

Now that you have created designs (in as many languages as your Grip application supports) you can save them as a template to use in future email campaigns.

As mentioned before, these templates can be used (and removed) by any App Admin in this Grip application. Modifying this campaign’s design later will not change the template you’ve already saved.

As these designs are files, unfortunately we cannot allow spaces or some characters (like slashes /\ ) in the template name. The template name must also be unique within this application.

Save campaign

If you’d like to simply save this campaign as a draft and send it later, click this button. All of your settings and any designs you’ve made will be saved and can be edited later.

If you’ve previously made a campaign and scheduled it to send in the future, clicking the “Save campaign” button will not cancel the previously set schedule.

Schedule

Clicking this button will allow you to set a date and time at which your campaign will be sent. The timezone is shown and will always match the timezone of the event, in order to make remotely managing events easier.
You can cancel sending from the main Campaign page before the scheduled send time, by clicking the three dots at the end of the campaign email row in the table, and selection 'Cancel send'.

You can also choose to activate ‘Registration AutoSending’ at this stage - see details here.

Send Now

Clicking this button will bring up a confirmation dialogue, and then will schedule the campaign to go out in 5 minutes from the current time. This grace period allows you to ‘undo’ the action in case there’s a last-minute issue!

You can cancel sending from the main Campaign page before the scheduled send time, by clicking the three dots at the end of the campaign email row in the table, and selection 'Cancel send'.

You can also choose to activate ‘Registration AutoSending’ at this stage - see details here.

Unsubscribe Links

You'll notice that the pre-defined templates and even the empty design include a section at the bottom containing an unsubscribe link. This is of course a mandatory link for legal reasons, and should not be removed.

If you are confident editing HTML you can modify the text surrounding this link, and the word 'unsubscribe' itself, but you must not break the link. We have added validation when testing or sending an email to check for the presence of the correct link, in order to safeguard the email system, and you, legally.

If you see this message, you have broken or removed the unsubscribe link in (at least) one of your email design variants. You will need to add it once more to be able to send the email.

If you have completely deleted the unsubscribe section you can recreate it from scratch - simply add a new HTML block to your email, delete the placeholder text, and copy and paste the below code:

<div style="font-size:11px;color:#8d8d8d;line-height:140%;text-align:center;word-wrap:break-word"> <p style="line-height:140%">You're receiving this email because you registered for {{event_name}}.</p> <p style="line-height:140%"> </p> <p style="line-height:140%">To stop receiving emails, please contact the organizer to de-register for the event, or you can <a href="%tag_unsubscribe_url%">unsubscribe</a>.</p> </div>

Copying Events

When you copy an event, the campaigns for that event are also copied into your new event, with their designs and subject lines. However, there are two things to note about this process:

1. Campaigns created in our legacy email designer will not be copied to new events. This is effectively any campaign created before the 18th of December 2023.
2. Segmentation options are not copied, as they are not necessarily compatible with your new event. This means that you'll need to make sure to target the right attendees before you send your new campaign, because if you leave the segment step blank, all your attendees will be emailed!

Disabling Emails or Deactivating Events

Deactivating your event or disabling emails via the Settings page will both have the same effect on your Campaigns:

• Emails will stop sending.
• AutoSending will be disabled for all Campaigns.
• Any scheduled emails that haven't already been sent will have their scheduled send time cancelled and be returned to a draft state.
• You will not be able to create or update any existing Campaigns.

Both of these actions can be undone but your campaigns will need to be resent - they are not enabled automatically.

 

FAQs

Q: Can I edit campaigns created in the old email editor?

• A: No, campaigns created in the old email editor cannot be edited in the new editor. They will continue to be sent if already scheduled, but you cannot modify them.

Q: What happens if I disable emails for an event?

• A: Disabling emails will stop all campaign emails from sending, including those scheduled or set to AutoSend. Campaigns will return to a draft state and will not resume automatically when emails are re-enabled.

Q: Can I save my email designs as templates for future use?

• A: Yes, you can save your email designs as templates to reuse in future campaigns. Templates can be accessed by all App Admins within the Grip application.

Q: Will a participant receive an email if their profile is modified to fit a different segment with Registration AutoSending enabled?

• A: No, Registration AutoSending will only trigger an email if the participant's profile matches the segment criteria at the time of registration. To ensure all relevant participants receive the appropriate emails, it's best to create AutoSending campaigns that cover all possible profile segments.