As a full-service web hosting company, EarthLink believes that the hosting of your website on our servers is just the tip of the iceberg of what we offer our customers.

One of the many tools that are included with all our web hosting and professional website design services is Announcer Pro for in-house email marketing.

Announcer Pro makes it simple for you to keep your customers, prospects, and partners up-to-date with your company and your product offerings. With Announcer Pro you can create graphic-rich emails, manage contact lists of email addresses, send email emails to these lists, as well as track and report the results.

To get started with Announcer Pro, sign in to your EarthLink Web Hosting Control Panel at control.earthlink.net. Click on the Email tab and then the icon for Announcer Pro.

HOW TO CREATE AN EMAIL WITH ANNOUNCER PRO

Step 1: Email Details

After you click the Create an Email tab or link in Announcer Pro, you’ll go to the Email Details page.

On this page, you can view or edit your company information, change your sender email address, name the email and give it a subject line, and choose options for social networking and analytics.

• Company Information: your company contact information will appear in the footer of all sent email. Click the Edit button to change this information. U.S. law requires an email sender’s physical address be included in any commercial email. You can, however, choose to hide your phone number in your emails; just check the box next to hide phone in footer.

• Time Zone: Select the time zone that’s accurate for your location.

• Sender Email Address: Your email will be sent from the Sender Email Address. To edit or change your sender email address click the Edit button. If you do not see the sender email address you want listed here, go to Email Settings at the top of the screen, then click Create an Email to return to this screen.

NOTE: Emails will not be sent from an unconfirmed email addresses. When you edit or change your sender email address, Announcer Pro will send a verification email to that address. When you get the verification email, click on the link to finish the email verification process.

• Email Information: Choose a name for your email and write a subject line. Keep in mind, the name is only so you can remember what the email is and will not appear to recipients, but the subject line is what recipients will see.

• Webpage Version: Check the box here if you want to include a link to a webpage version of the email. You can edit the default text for that if you want.

• Social Networking and Google Analytics: Click the boxes in this section if you’d like recipients to share your email on Facebook and Twitter. Icons for the social networks you select will appear at the bottom of your email. Click the Google checkbox to track your email campaign with your Google Analytics account.

When you’re done on the Email Details page, click the Next button to move on to Step 2.

Step 2: Choose Contacts

This step is where you’ll choose contacts to send your email to. If this is your first email, you will need to create a list or lists and add contacts to it.

Simply check the box next to the list or lists of contacts you wish to send your email to. Or create a new list by clicking the Create new list button and add your contacts from the How would you like to add your contacts drop-down menu. You can import contacts from a spreadsheet or most email programs, or you can add individual email addresses.

If you want to be able to segment your contact list and send custom emails to subgroups within your list based on demographic and other information (zip code, city/town, company name, etc.), click the I want to segment my contacts checkbox. You can create up to 5 rules for selecting demographics to segment by.

Step 3: Choose a Template

• Use the drop down menu to select a category of email templates (many are by industry categories, but there are also General, Blank, and Holiday template categories).
• Scroll through the thumbnail views of all the templates in your chosen category. Click on any one you want to see larger. At the top of the template, click Select different template if you don’t want to use it and Select this template if you do.
• Click the Next button once you have selected a template and you see a checkmark on its thumbnail image.

Step 4: Edit Template

In this step, you use editing tools to add your email content to the template you selected. (If you need help using the editor, click the help icon on the screen in the upper-left corner of the editor page.)

Before you finish editing, you can click the Send Test button to send a copy of your email to see what your email will look like to recipients.

When you finish editing your email, click Save and then Next.

NOTE: Any time before your email is sent, you can make changes by going to Manage Emails tab.

Step 5: Schedule Email

On this page, you can choose when to send your email. These are your options:

•  Send Now: Click this radio button to add your email now to the distribution queue and have it sent as soon as possible.
• Save Draft:  Click this radio button to save a draft of your email. (Go to the Manage Emails tab to edit or send later.)
• Schedule: Click this radio button to choose a delivery date and time for your email to be sent (be careful to select AM or PM if it matters to you and select your time zone from the drop-down menu).
• Save as an Autoresponder: Click this radio button to save the email and use as an autoresponder.

Click the Next button after you’ve made your selection.

You should see an Email Completed confirmation page (see screenshot below) with some options for what you’d like to do next.

You’ll receive an email confirming when your email is sent out to your contact list.

After that, you can monitor the results of the email by clicking on the View Results tab in Announcer Pro.