Create a Campaign Messege

• Log in to your CrossEngage account.

• Go to Campaigns and click on Create new campaign in the top right corner.

• Choose whether you want to create an Audience or a Realtime campaign. Information about the distinction between these types of campaigns found here.

• Once you have created your campaign and filled in the "Campaign setup" and "Target group" sections, go to the Messages section and click Create new message.

• Select Email from the dropdown menu. The message setup screen will open.

• Under the “Send via integration” heading, select the Mandrill integration that you set up earlier.

• Fill in the Sender Information:

  • “Sender email address” - the address from which the email will be sent;

  • “Reply-to email address” - the address where replies will be sent to;

  • “Sender name” - the name of the message sender.

• Choose an existing template from Mandrill or create one in CrossEngage.

  • Handlebars may be useful when creating templates in CrossEngage.

  • If you want to use Mandrill templates, create them in your Mandrill account, more specifically in Outbound > Templates.

    • Make use of the Mandrill Template Management documentation to learn more.

Value Mapping

Value-mapping fills out variables (called Merge Tags in Mandrill) in your Mandrill template with personalized content adjusted for individual customers. For example, to include your customer’s first name in your Mandrill email, you would place the *|FNAME|* merge tag where you want your customer’s first name to appear in the content of the message. When your customer receives the campaign, they will see their own name where the merge tag was placed. Have a look at this article to learn about how to use merge tags in Mandrill's templates. At the bottom of the article, you will find which merge tags from MailChimp can be used in your Mandrill template.

• Include the merge tag of your choice in the content of your Mandrill Template. To ensure values are mapped correctly, keep in mind that Mandrill has the following variable structure: *|EXAMPLE|*. Write the variables in this structure, only substitute “EXAMPLE” with the Merge Tag you wish to use, which in our case is the first name "FNAME" variable.

• In the CrossEngage campaign set-up, select +Add new mapping to add the variables that you have used in this particular campaign’s MailChimp Template. You can use both user attributes and handlebars to fill out your variables. When mapping variables in CrossEngage you have to remove the asterisks and pipes (*|.....|*) and map only the variable itself, for example: “FNAME” (or since the field is non-case sensitive you can also write “fname”).