Create and send an email campaign

A campaign is built on four building blocks that you set up once and then reuse for every send.

Accessing the module

Log in to your client area at portal.gigaweb.be, then click Marketing Campaign in the left-hand menu.

The module's home page shows four counters (campaigns, lists, leads, clicks) and the list of your campaigns with, for each one, its status, number of recipients, opens and clicks. The buttons at the top right lead to Lists, to Templates, and let you create a new Campaign.

Step 1 — Set up sending (SMTP)

No email can go out until the sending server has been entered and is active. This configuration is shared by all your campaigns: you only fill it in once. It's found under the SMTP tab, inside any campaign.

If you come back to this form later, leave the Password field blank to keep the one already saved.

Step 2 — Create a lead list

From the dashboard, click Lists. Give your list a name (and a description if useful), then Save. You can create as many lists as you like and manage them independently.

Then click the list's name to add your contacts to it. Two methods are available.

Adding a contact by hand

Fill in the Add a lead form: company, contact, email, phone, website, source and status. Only the email address is required, and it must be unique within the list. The pencil icon at the end of the row lets you edit an existing contact.

Importing a CSV file

To load several hundred contacts at once, use the Import a CSV box. The expected separator is the semicolon (;). Put a header row first: the following column names are recognised automatically, in both French and English.

If your file has no header row, the columns are read in this order: email ; company ; contact ; phone ; website ; source.

At the end of the import, a message shows the number of contacts created or updated and the number of rows skipped. Rows with an invalid email address are skipped, without blocking the rest of the file.

Step 3 — Write an HTML template

From the dashboard, click Templates. A template consists of a name, a default subject, the message body in HTML and, if you wish, a plain text version for email software that doesn't display HTML. If you leave the plain text blank, it's generated automatically from the HTML.

Personalising with variables

Insert these variables in the subject or in the HTML: they're replaced with the recipient's data when the email is sent.

Example message opening:

<p>Hello {{contact_name}},</p>
<p>We support companies like {{company}} in…</p>
<p><a href="https://gigaweb.be/en/hebergement">Discover our offers</a></p>
<p style="font-size:12px;color:#888;">
  No longer want to receive our emails?
  <a href="{{unsubscribe_link}}">Unsubscribe</a>
</p>

Always remember to include {{unsubscribe_link}}: it's a legal requirement for commercial email, and it greatly reduces the risk of being flagged as spam.

Step 4 — Create the campaign

From the dashboard, click Campaign, then fill in the form.

Step 5 — Generate the queue, then send

Once the campaign is saved, you land on its detail page. Two buttons control sending.

At the end of the operation, a message summarises the number of emails sent and the number of failures. Unsubscribed or invalid contacts are automatically excluded, and a contact already in the queue is never added to it twice.

Always run a test before the real send: create a test list containing only your own address, run the campaign on it, and check how it renders in your inbox.

Tracking results

The campaign page is organised into five tabs.

Opens rely on the display of an invisible image. Since many email clients block images by default, the actual number of opens is in practice higher than what's shown. Clicks, on the other hand, are measured reliably.

Understanding statuses

A campaign's status updates on its own as sending progresses.

On the recipient side, status moves from queued (pending) to sent (sent), then opened (opened) and clicked (clicked). It can also change to unsubscribed, bounced (address that rejects the message) or failed.

Unsubscribing and GDPR

Each recipient receives their own unique unsubscribe link. When they use it:

• their request is logged with its date and any reason given, visible in the Unsubscriptions tab;
• their status changes to unsubscribed in your lead list;
• they are automatically excluded from all your future campaigns, even if you re-import their address via CSV.

You remain responsible for the data you load into the module and for the legal basis of your sends. A few principles to follow: only contact people for whom you have consent or a demonstrable legitimate interest, always keep the unsubscribe link in your emails, clearly identify your company in the message, and handle any deletion request without delay. Our privacy policy details our role as a host in this processing.

Troubleshooting