Ask Marissa: How to send an email broadcast to an Autoresponder list in 1ShoppingCart

You got questions? I got answers.*
*and when I don’t have the answers, I either figure ‘em out or point you in the direction of someone else who might.

A note about multiple lists (or segmented lists) and 1ShoppingCart

One of the best features of 1ShoppingCart (aff. link) is its capacity for lots of separate lists. It handles multiple lists and segmentation better than any other service out there. It doesn’t have the super-user-friendly appearance of MailChimp or the popularity for newsletter usage of AWeber, but if you’re someone who likes to have lots of segments of your list, I think 1ShoppingCart soundly dominates the other options–especially if you also sell products of any kind.

How do I send an email broadcast to an autoresponder list in 1ShoppingCart?

This how-to presupposes that (a) you have an account with 1ShoppingCart, and (b) you have at least one Autoresponder set up.

1. Once you’ve logged in to your 1ShoppingCart account, click on Email & Marketing –> Broadcasts.

2. Click the Send Broadcast button.

3. Click the “Autoresponder Campaign” tab.

4. A pop-up will appear (which is annoying, but you can’t turn it off). Click OK.

5. Check whichever autoresponder lists you want your email to go to. You can select multiple lists, and even if the same person is subscribed to multiple lists, they will only receive the message once (assuming they’re subscribed to both lists under the same email address).

6. Fill out the From Name, From Email and Subject.

7. If you want to schedule the broadcast for a future date/time, change the “Send Broadcast” radio button from Now to Later. After you choose Later, options for entering the date and time will appear. Note that the time is Eastern.

Note on scheduling: 1SC will queue the email to be sent at the selected time. This means that the actual time it gets sent might vary a little bit. So if you want to make sure that an email gets sent on Tuesday (for example), make sure you set the time at, say, 6AM (which is 3AM Pacific) on Tuesday–that way if it gets sent a little early, it still goes out on Tuesday. If you schedule it for midnight on Tuesday, and it goes out early, it’ll actually end up hitting mailboxes on Monday.

8. Under Email Content, compose your message. Plain text version goes in the Text tab, and HTML version goes in the HTML folder. You can do just Text, just HTML or both (called “MIME” format). If you’re doing an HTML message, I strongly recommend also doing a Text format, for those subscribers who don’t like to receive HTML messages, or whose email set-up doesn’t allow it. Text format also comes through on some mobile phones in a more readable manner than HTML. (When sending a Text format message, you’ll need to watch your line length. Scroll down to see my note about how to do that.)

9. Once you’ve got everything completed, click the “Send Email” button.

10. You’ll be taken to a page where you can review your email. Make sure to give it a good review to make sure it’s scheduled for the right date and time, and to double-check that the message appears the way you want. If anything needs fixin’ before sendin’, click the “Back” button to return to the editing screen. If it looks good, click the “Send Broadcast” button. (If you have the email scheduled for future delivery, clicking “Send Broadcast” will actually schedule it, not send it immediately.) A pop-up message will appear asking you if you’re sure you want to queue the message. Click OK.

And voila! You’ve just sent (or scheduled) a broadcast!

Getting your lines to be the right length for Plain Text messages

1ShoppingCart recommends that you keep your plain text email lines to 70 characters or fewer, but it does not provide automatic linebreaks to achieve that. So you’ll need to do it yourself. Here are a couple of options:

Choice 1: Manual. Copy and paste this line at the top of your message:
01234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234
(That’s 65 characters long)
Then go through the message and add line breaks so that no line goes beyond the end of that final “4.”

Choice 2: Use the E-Mail Formatting Tool. You can either upload a file or cut-and-paste the text into the box provided, tell the tool how many characters each line can be (I set it at 65 to give myself breathing room), and then submit–the Formatting Tool will add the line breaks for you, and give you the formatted copy that you can cut-and-paste into the Text box in 1ShoppingCart.