New product updates to improve your user experience and email marketing results

New product updates to improve your user experience and email marketing results

Hello users,

Thank you for choosing us and providing your continuous trust throughout your email marketing journey! Today, we're excited to launch organization-level segments, multi-portals, and updates to workflow. We hope these updates will help you perform smooth email marketing to engage and nurture your contacts and boost sales.

If you have questions at the end, would like to see these in practice, or require more details, feel free to reach us at support@zohocampaigns.com.

Here are the details of the new product updates:

Segments

Previously, it was possible to create segments within a list to send targeted email campaigns to contacts in that particular list. With this update, you will now be able to access all segments at an organizational level.

For example, if you want to maintain a database of contacts in your account from any particular region—say, Paris—you can create a segment for it with the name 'Paris.' The next time you add a contact from Paris to your account, they will automatically get added to the segment 'Paris'. No matter what list or topic the contact is under, if you've set a criteria for segment, the contact meeting that criteria will automatically be added to that particular segment.

FAQs

What's the difference between a list and a segment?
A list remains static—that is, it can accept only contacts that are manually added, synced, or added by any form of automation (including workflow, form submission, response action, etc.) Whereas, in segments, whenever the defined criteria set is met, the contacts will be added continuously.

What happens to the existing segments in my account?
All the existing segments under a list will automatically be migrated to the organization-level segments.

Can I choose a segment to send emails?
Yes, since segments are separate from lists after the update, you can directly choose a segment while adding recipients and send emails to that particular segment.

How is this update rolled out?
All users will be able to create organization-level segments from November 17, 2021.

Can segments be used in automation?
Segments can be used as triggers in workflows but not in autoresponders for this update. We will extend support for segments in autoresponders shortly.

Will existing workflows be impacted while segments are added?
No, existing workflows won't be impacted during this process.

Multi-portal support

Earlier it was possible for you to be a part of only one organization. Now you can access multiple organizations from the same account. If you are a member of multiple organizations, you can switch portals (organizations) and choose which organization to monitor or control with the help of the multi-portal support.

For example, if you're an email marketer for three different brands (say, Zylker FoodHub, Zylker Fashion, and Zylker Electronics) of the same company (Zylker), you can have individual portals set up for these three brands under one account using the multi-portal support, and you can switch between these portals as and when required. You can also select a default portal based on the usage.

FAQs

Can users in other portals be added to my portal?
Yes, if you're an admin for any of the portals, you can add multiple users from different portals to your portal by sending them an invite.

Can I modify my portal name?
Yes, you can modify your portal name, which will in turn reflect in the URL. Your current URL will be replaced by the URL with your portal name instead of your organization ID.

Can I own multiple portals?
No, you can only own a single portal, but you can be a part of multiple portals.

Can I use my same email address in order to send an email campaign using my account in a different portal?
No, you'll need to use separate email addresses for each portal if you intend to send an email campaign using your account in a different portal. This is to prevent abuse complaints that impact the delivery rate of the organization and to reduce your chance of being flagged as spam by email service providers.

What about my license?
Your license is per portal. I.e., each portal should be subscribed to a specific plan (either free or paid).

How is this update rolled out?
All existing and new users can access multi-portal support from November 17, 2021.

Workflow enhancement

Note: A workflow is a feature that's only available to subscriber-based plan users and bundle users (Zoho One, CRM Plus and Marketing Plus).

To make using workflows easier, we've removed a few components from them while making sure that the workflow functionalities are still intact. Also, based on the suggestions from and challenges faced by our users, we've enhanced the workflows to solve various brand needs more efficiently and easier.

Challenge

Inability to automatically send a contact through the same workflow multiple times.

Solution

With this update, any contact can automatically re-enter a workflow. All you will have to do is to specify the triggers through which contacts can enter the workflow again using the Re-entry criteria.

FAQs

Can all triggers be used for contact re-entry?
No. In order to prevent multiple executions of a workflow, the Email action trigger cannot be used for contact re-entry. This is because it is likely that a contact opens/clicks/replies to the same campaign multiple times.

Can contact re-entry be set up for existing workflows?
Re-enrollment will be enabled only for new workflows. Existing workflows will not have this option.

Challenge

Difficulty in determining the duration of the time delay between each component.

Solution

The time delay process has been updated along with a UI change, and the component in the canvas has been expanded to accommodate the configuration made.

Challenge

Complexity in understanding and accurately using the Response action in 'Send Email' actions.

Solution

Now you can select an email for which you want to check the response and create different processes that follow. The branches can be created to match the recipient's behavior, including sent, opened, unopened, clicked, not clicked, replied, not replied, specific link clicked, ignored, and bounced. If any of the recipients qualify for multiple branches, they will be sent through each of them.

Additionally, a topic has to be mapped for each email sent from the journey. If a recipient in the previous component is not subscribed to the topic of the email campaign in the workflow, they will automatically be moved to the "Ignored" branch of its response component.

Challenge

Inability to automatically move contacts to another path in email Response action based on their behavior pattern because of the common delay period that's initially set up.

Solution

Now you can trigger a response action to your contacts' reponses without setting up a delay period, thus allowing the contact to go through multiple paths based on their response actions. The response action that triggers your workflow includes sent, opened, replied, ignored, clicked on any link, and clicked on specific link.

Other changes

Exit Criteria is now called Workflow Goal
You can set a workflow goal using a criteria builder. Once a contact matches this goal, they will be removed from the workflow. We've only updated the name of this feature—how it functions remains the same.

Setting to remove contacts that don't match the triggers
If a contact needs to be retained or removed from a workflow in case they either qualify or do not qualify in future for the trigger criteria you've set, you can specify it so that it's automatically done.

Entered a segment trigger
When a contact is added to a segment, you can trigger a journey in the workflow and take necessary actions in order to nurture or engage with them.

Subscription management action
Now you can manage your contacts' subscription status by choosing between:
  • Adding topics to marketing contacts
  • Removing topics from marketing contacts
  • Unsubscribing the contact from all communication
  • Marking the contact as non-marketing
Updated the Date field trigger
Based on a specific calendar date or a date property, you can now trigger a journey. This is added in Workflows so that the Date field autoresponder can be removed.

Simplified workflow reports
The summary tab will now have only two charts—a line chart of contacts entered and goals achieved, and a bar chart of the count of contacts entered, exited, re-enrolled, and goals achieved.

Email activity condition
Now you can allow the entry of contacts into your workflow based on their email activity. Select any of your email campaigns and choose an email action to check contact interaction and create targeted actions to stay relevant in their inbox. Email actions includes sent, not sent, opened, not opened, replied, opened but not replied, ignored, clicked on any link, opened but not clicked on any link, and clicked on specific link.

New grouping of components
The Process section now includes Random split, Simple split, Multi-way split, Merge, Wait condition, and Check email activity

The End of workflow actions, and other actions from the Process section, are now combined into a single section called Actions. This new section includes:
  • Send an internal email
  • Add time delay
  • Assign tag
  • Remove tag
  • Update field
  • Add to list
  • Remove from list
  • Remove from journey
  • Move to another journey
  • Send email
  • Push data
  • Create task

FAQs

How is this update rolled out?
Users signing up after November 17, 2021 will have the updated workflows.

For existing workflows of current users: There will be no impact if it is running. Any new workflow you create after November 17, 2021 will have the updated components.

Beyond September 30, 2022, we will deprecate support for all existing workflows that use old components.

If you'd like to have a better understanding about the changes in workflows or you require examples on how to go about these changes for the newly added and removed components, find more information in detail here.

We promise that we're working on a lot of features and functionalities to help you in your email marketing journey with us. If you have any suggestions or queries, we'd be more than happy to hear them. It is your feedback that will help us improve our services for you and our fellow email marketers. So, please feel free to write your experience/feedback to us at support@zohocampaigns.com or comment them down! :)

Thank you,
Team Zoho Campaigns


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