Blog

Publicity Campaigns

Your Cloud Appointments customer data can be used to publicise your services & products and increase revenue !

You’ll first need to decide how you’re going to contact your potential customers.

The main choices are;

1. Email
2. Facebook Ad
3. Instagram Ad
4. Texts

For a Texts publicity campaign we recommend a system called ezitxt otherwise we recommend MailChimp.

Both have a free sign-up option so it’s worth getting a free account and exploring their software.
Then when you start planning your publicity campaign you’ll know what’s possible.

Customer Data from Cloud Appointments

Whichever type of campaign and software you’ll be using you’ll need a list of customers to upload into the campaign manager software.

In Cloud Appointments use the main menu option Customers, sub-menu option Search;

Select the customers you want to target by their specifying the selection criteria.
Choose the CSV File option and click Create Output.
A csv file will be created in your Downloads directory.

Importing Data

Both the EziTxt and MailChimp allow you to import and upload a list of customers as subscribers / contacts.

For EziTxt

On the main dashboard click on the top Import option then click ‘Import a new file’.

To add additional Contact List fields for the csv upload;

• Go to the Settings, Contact List option
• Add the additional fields before uploading the csv file.

For MailChimp

Click on the Help Search icon (top right screen corner) on ‘Import Subscribers to a list’ and it’ll provide a detailed explanation.

Software Help Systems

Both the EziTxt and MailChimp software systems have built-in help.

EziTxt                   :   Click on the Helpdesk option in the left sidebar

MailChimp         :   Click on the Help button at the top right of the screen and search within the available articles.

There’s online help in both systems as to how to organise your publicity campaign and what types of campaign are available.

Spamming

Sending out ‘unsolicited commercial electronic messages’ in New Zealand and Australia is illegal.

Have a look at the following web pages so you have an idea of your responsibilities.

New Zealand;

• The anti-spam law
• Three steps to ensure you are not spamming
• Span FAQs

Australia;

• Key elements of the Spam Act
• Ensure you don’t spam

Both EziTxt and MailChimp software systems take into account these legal requirements.

Your main responsibility will be when a customer requests to opt out of further publicity then you must remove them from your future publicity mailing lists.
Otherwise you can be accused of illegal spamming.

Other Info

There are many campaign publicity manager packages available, we’ve only featured the two we know well.

If you find packages you prefer then please let us know.