When you open PlusSale, you’ll see few main tabs. First is the Campaign Table – your command center showing all scheduled campaigns in a calendar view. Next, Email Templates where you create promotional emails and select your email providers. Then Banner Templates for storefront banners, where you create new banner template and configure banner placement for the storefront. The Settings tab connects your email provider. And finally, Recipient Lists where you manage your customer email lists. You can also click on the ‘Assist button’ to let the app guide you step by step to create campaigns, email template, set up banner or to configure your email provider.
Click on the Settings tab. PlusSale works with three popular email providers: Mailchimp, SendGrid, and Mailgun. If you select SendGrid, you need to provide an API and a verified email address. You will find the API key in API keys section as shown in the screenshot. You need to add mail send access scope as it is shown in the image. Then you will go to Sender Authentication section and click on verify a single sender to verify and add an email address. You can add any email address including common mailbox provider like gmail. But it is recommended that you will add a professional email address as verified email address. Once you put these information, your email provider account will be connected.
Now to connect Mailchimp, click ‘Add Email Provider’ and select Mailchimp from the dropdown. You’ll need your Mailchimp API key and server prefix. To find these, log into your Mailchimp account, goto account Settings, then under ‘Extras’ click API Keys. Copy your API key and paste it here. The server prefix is in your Mailchimp URL – it looks like ‘us19’ or ‘us21’. Enter that here. Click Save. You’re now connected to Mailchimp.
“Now let’s create an email template. Go to the Email Templates tab and click ‘Create Email Template’. First, choose your email provider – we’ll select Mailchimp. Then choose your recipient list – select the ‘Main Customer List’ we just created. Now for the fun part – choosing your email design. PlusSale includes pre-built templates. Let’s select the ‘Product Showcase’ template. Notice the preview on the right side shows your email design. You can customize everything. Add your email subject line – let’s type ‘Big Sale This Weekend – Save 20%’. Now you can edit the email content. See these product placeholders? Click on one to select products from your store. The product picker opens – choose the products you want to feature. Let’s add three products. Notice how the email updates with your product images, titles, and prices automatically. You can also customize the text. Click anywhere to edit the message. Let’s change this to ‘Don’t miss our weekend sale on these amazing products’. When you’re happy with your email, give it a template name like ‘Weekend Sale Email’ and click Save.”
“Next, let’s set up your recipient list. Click the Recipient List tab. In this example, we will use Mailgun. For Mailgun, you manage your email lists directly inside PlusSale. Click ‘Create List’ and enter a title like ‘Holiday Sale Customers’. Select Mailgun as your provider and click Save. Now let’s add emails to this list. Click ‘Manage Emails’ on the list you just created. You have two options here: add emails manually one by one, or import a CSV file. Let’s import a CSV. Click ‘Add/Import Emails’, then select ‘Import via CSV’. Choose your CSV file – it should have an ’email’ column. Upload it and your emails are imported. You can also manually add individual emails using the ‘Add Email’ button. You can search, sort, edit, or delete emails from this list anytime. When you’re done, this list is ready to use in your Mailgun email campaigns.”
Now let’s create an email template using Mailgun. Go to the Email Templates tab and click ‘Create Email Template’. Start with your email subject line – type something like ‘Holiday Sale – Up to 30% Off Everything’. Next, choose your email design. Select a template – let’s pick the ‘Product Showcase’ template. You’ll see the HTML preview on the right. Toggle the preview on or off using the HTML Preview switch. Click on the product placeholders to select products from your store using the product picker. Let’s add a few featured products. The template updates automatically with your product images, titles, and prices. Customize the text content – click anywhere in the editor to make changes. Let’s update the message to ‘Shop our biggest holiday sale of the year’. Now select your SMTP provider – choose Mailgun from the dropdown. Then select your recipient list – pick the ‘Holiday Sale Customers’ list we just created. You’ll only see lists that belong to Mailgun here. When everything looks good, click Create to save your email template. This template is now ready to be used in a campaign.
Now let’s create campaign in campaign table tab. The calendar view shows all twelve months of the year. You can see when campaigns start and end at a glance. Let’s create a new campaign. Click any date to open the campaign modal. Give your campaign a name. You can create campaigns with or without linking to Shopify discounts. If you have a Shopify discount, you can optionally link it. For example, let’s say we have a ‘May Sale’ Shopify discount that is running from May 21 to June 15. So, to link your email campaign with Shopify Discount Click any date in that Shopify discount date range, check ‘Couple with Shopify discount’. Your start and end date automatically fixed as per your Shopify discount date range. For this example we will run a campaign without linking. You can run an email campaign, a banner campaign, or both together. Let’s do both. For the email campaign, select the Holiday Sale – up to 30% Off Everything’ template we created earlier. For the banner campaign, select a banner template you created earlier. Now set your campaign schedule – this is the key step. We’ll schedule it to start February 22 at 12:01 AM and end February 26 at 11:59 PM. You choose the exact dates and times. You can also choose email frequency, whether you want one time, weekly or monthly betwen this time frame. PlusSale automatically respects your store’s timezone. See this checkbox? ‘Repeat every year’. If you check this, PlusSale will automatically run this campaign at the same time next year, and every year after. Perfect for annual sales like Black Friday. Let’s check it. Click ‘Save Campaign’. Done! Your campaign is now scheduled.”