How to Create an Email Campaign in Memberstack: A Step by Step Walkthrough

How to Create an Email Campaign in Memberstack: A Step by Step Walkthrough

Based off of Video by Magnaem for Memberstack

TL;DR

Memberstack's email campaigns feature lets you send broadcasts to your members based on specific conditions you set like plan type, custom fields, or account creation date. This walkthrough covers setting up a plan upgrade nudge for free plan users, from prerequisites through template design to scheduling. Email campaigns are completely separate from transactional emails (password resets, welcome emails) and give you the ability to send targeted messages like product announcements, onboarding sequences, and upgrade nudges.

What You Need Before You Start

Five prerequisites must be in place before you can send email campaigns:

1. A verified sender domain
2. An active plan with available email quotas
3. An account that is at least 7 days old
4. At least one member in your Memberstack dashboard
5. A valid sender address

Once all five are set up, you can access email campaigns from your Memberstack app by clicking on Emails, then navigating to the Campaigns tab.

Creating the Campaign

Click "Create Campaign" and fill in two fields: a campaign name (internal, for your reference) and a subject line (what your members will see in their inbox). In this walkthrough, the campaign name is "Free Plan Nudge" and the subject line is "You are on a free plan."

Setting Up Your Audience

First, configure your settings. This is where you define who receives the campaign.

Set your preview text and your "from" name. The reply-to email is optional.

Then set up your audience filter. Memberstack gives you several filtering options:

• Plan filters: target members on a specific plan (free, paid, or any plan you have configured)
• Member filters: target members with verified or unverified emails
• Date filters: target members who created an account between specific dates
• Custom field filters: target members based on any custom field in your Memberstack application

For a plan upgrade nudge, set the filter to target members on your free plan. Once the filter is applied, you can see exactly which members fall into that audience at the bottom of the settings panel.

Designing the Email Template

The email editor uses a drag-and-drop canvas. As you add elements to the canvas, editing options appear in the right side panel where you can configure font family, weight, size, and color.

The elements available include images, paragraphs, headings, and buttons. In this walkthrough, the template includes:

• A banner image at the top
• A personalized greeting using merge tags (the name custom field, so the email reads "Hey [member name]")
• Two paragraphs of body copy at 16 pixels
• A heading set to H2 with bold weight
• A left-aligned button with a black background and white text
• A closing paragraph in a different color for the company tag

One thing you do not need to add: the unsubscribe button. Memberstack adds that automatically to every email campaign.

Testing Before You Send

Before launching, send a test email to yourself. The test email shows you how the layout and formatting will look in an actual inbox. Note that merge tag fields (like the member's name) may not populate in test sends, but they will work correctly when the campaign goes out to real members.

To send the campaign, all prerequisite checklist items in the campaign settings need to show as completed. If any are incomplete, resolve them before launching.

Sending or Scheduling

When the campaign is ready, you have two options: click "Start Campaign" to send immediately, or schedule it for a later time. You can also preview how the email will look before committing to either option.

Where to Find Email Design Inspiration

For anyone looking to design better looking email campaigns, the resource recommended in this walkthrough is reallygoodemails.com. It is a free library of email templates across industries that you can use as design inspiration and replicate inside Memberstack's email editor to match your brand.