Sending relevant and targeted emails requires more from the online marketer than just obtaining an email address and a name via the opt-in procedure. If you really want to get personal in your email communication, it's important to collect as much information as possible about your recipients. The more data you know about your newsletter subscribers, the better you can compose a relevant email based on the wishes of your subscribers.
Utilizing groups, you can distinguish between your contacts in the database. When you are going to send a mailing, you send it to a group.
Getting started with groups
To create a group, go to the Contacts menu. On the left-hand side, you'll see the Groups option. You will see an overview of several standard groups. These are also known as system groups. These groups cannot be deleted. For example, the groups: Subscribers, Unsubscribers, Hard Bounce and Soft Bounce.
By default, you keep your subscribers in the Subscribers group. Additionally, you can create your own groups to make selections within the contact database.
Create a new group
- Click Insert to create a group.
- A screen opens to specify the properties of a group.
Name: give your group a recognizable name.
Test group: Use a test group to send test emails and to check personalized content while editing an email. A test email can never be sent to a final or system group. Test sendouts will be excluded from the mail statistics.
Active: you can only send email to active groups. Make a group inactive to keep it as an archive.
Remarks: this field is useful to provide an explanation of the content of the group. - Click Ok to save the group.
Working with groups
First, click the group to select it and to use the buttons at the top.
Click View to view the properties of the group.
Click Edit to edit the properties of the group. You can't edit system groups.
Click Delete to delete the group. You will first be asked for confirmation. Only the group will be deleted. The contacts will remain in the database. You can't delete system groups.
Click Flush to remove all contacts from the group. You will first be asked for confirmation. The contacts will remain in the database.
Splitting groups
Click Split to randomly divide a group into multiple groups. The following pop-up will appear:
Use the plus icon to specify how many groups you want to split the original group into. These groups will be displayed above. Assign them a name and specify the number of contacts to include in each group. The last group, in this example, named "Subscribers-rest", will automatically be assigned the remaining number of contacts. Click Ok to create the new groups with their contacts. The original group will remain intact with its current contacts.
Spotler MailPro also has a dedicated feature for A/B testing available.
Filtering groups
Click the filter icon to make a selection of groups being displayed.
You can select the following filters here:
- Show or hide test groups
- Show or hide system groups
- Show or hide active groups
- Show or hide event groups
The active filters are being displayed as labels at the top of the groups list.
Search for groups
Click the magnifying glass icon to search for groups. Type the group name and optionally select which fields should or should not be included in the search. For large databases, it is recommended to search only the relevant fields to maintain speed. Not sure of the exact name? Search for part of the name by placing the search term between asterisks.
Show or hide columns
Click the gear icon to set which group attributes should be displayed.
Frequently asked questions
The contacts in the groups Unsubscribers, Spam complaints, Soft bounce (def), Hard bounce (def), Opt-in and Temporary unsubscribers will automatically be excluded from all sendouts. We call these groups suppression groups. For example, if you send an email to the Subscribers group, everyone who is in this group and also in the Unsubscribers group, will be automatically excluded from the sendout.
To keep a better overview of the contacts who can receive email, you can remove these contacts from the group. Select the group and click Clean. The contacts will be disconnected from the group. They will remain in their suppression group.
This probably has to do with the fact that there are already too many groups in the campaign, so that the creation of new groups is not possible. By deleting some unused groups, it will be possible to add new groups within the campaign.
Deleting the groups doesn't affect statistics or contacts. Contacts are not deleted, but only disconnected from the group in question.
In some situations, you may want to put together a temporary group to send them a one-time email, for example. Once the email has been sent, you can delete the group. This means that only the group no longer exists, but the contact information will continue to exist and statistics will not be altered.
An alternative is to create a temporary group, which is automatically deleted after 24 hours. If you add tmp_ for the group name, such as tmp_import01122024, it will be automatically removed. This way you keep an overview of the groups in your database.