Encharge Overview
What is Encharge?
Welcome to Encharge! Encharge is a powerful marketing automation software that helps you convert more leads, turn users into customers, automate repetitive tasks, and grow your business. If you’re just starting out with Encharge and not sure where to begin, head out to our Quick Start series where you can get a step-by-step guide on how to set up Encharge, or check out our Getting Started Resources (//help.encharge.io/article/34-getting-started-reSome readersWho is Encharge for?
In this article, we're going to help you understand if Encharge is the right marketing automation tool for you and your needs. If you’re looking to graduate from untargeted email blasts and other ineffective email practices to advanced marketing automation, Encharge is the right platform for you. If you’re a marketer Encharge will help you realize your full marketing potential. Encharge is a great fit for you if you’re a: Founder or a marketer at a startup or a Software as a Service (SFew readersIntroduction to Marketing Automation
A brief introduction to what Marketing Automation is and what it is not. Marketing automation is so ubiquitous today that it’s almost impossible not to do any marketing automation if you run an online business. What is marketing automation? The use of marketing automation makes processes that would have otherwise been performed manually much more efficient and makes new processes possible. – SearchCRM In a nutshell, marketing automation helps you: What? Deliver personalized messagFew readersGetting Started FAQ
Most frequently asked questions when people start with Encharge Does Encharge send emails? Yes! Email marketing is a significant part of marketing automation, that's why we handle email sending in-house. You don't need to use an Email Service Provider (ESP) like Mailchimp or Mailerlite, Encharge is going to take care of your emails. We have a powerful email builder to create beautiful responsive emails right inside of Encharge. What is the email deliverability like? We understand tFew readersGetting Started Resources
A list of guides, videos, and articles to help you get started Watch the getting started videos Encharge Quick Overview (6 min.) Encharge Introduction Deep Dive (47 min) Read the Quick Start guide The Quick Start guide is a series of articles to help you get started with Encharge in the quickest possible way. Quick StartFew readersContact Support
Contact support and get help with Encharge We're here to help! We usually respond in less 12 hours. Send a support ticket Send any support requests to support@encharge.io Book a marketing automation strategy call If you'd like to get a one-on-one free consultation call, please book a slot here — https://encharge.io/call/Few readersHow to Translate your Unsubscribe page
When a person clicks to unsubscribe from a category or all emails, they will be taken to a confirmation page like the one below (see screenshot). This is instead of taking them to the Communication Preferences page like we were doing before this update. Important: Please read this update, as it will impact how your email looks and how you communicate with your subscribers. WeFew readers
Quick Start
Quick Start Checklist
Get started with Encharge quickly The goal of the Quick Start series is to help you set up Encharge quickly. For a more detailed dive-in of each feature, please check the appropriate feature by using the navigation at the top or browsing the homepage. Quick Start checklist From logging in Encharge to activating your first automation flow, we've compiled a list of your first action items. Step 1: Sign up or log into Encharge (https://help.encharge.io/en/article/sFew readersStep 1: Sign up or Log Into Encharge
Sign up in Encharge To get started with Encharge, head out to our Signup page. To get going you'll need to enter some details: Email — Must be a valid address. Password Your Name — Your full name Phone number Company Website Alternatively, you can create a new account with your Gmail or G Suite account. To do that: Click on "Register with Google" (https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/297bd46ce4aed200/5b621094-8765-40dc-9f10Few readersStep 2: Set Up your Mailing Address
Per the CAN-SPAM Act, all businesses are required to add their physical mailing address to all marketing emails they send. Note that transactional emails do not require a mailing address. To do that please follow the instructions below: 1. Enter your mailing address Go to your account settings — https://app.encharge.io/account/info and click on the current address (or "Not sFew readersStep 3: Learn How to Navigate Encharge
What to do when you're in the Encharge app for the first time? Once you complete your signup, you will be welcomed by our Quickstart Guide. The 5-step Quick Start Guide The Encharge Quick Start guide is your best friend if you're new to the platform. We highly encourage you to complete all of the steps in order to learn how Encharge works. (https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/f6c2c6c9ba32Few readersStep 4: Import People
The first important step before you can start using Encharge is to import your existing audience. On the People page follow the steps below: 1. Click on the Add button and then Import Spreadsheet 2. Upload a CSV or Excel file with the people you'd like to import. Make sure there is a header rowFew readersStep 5: Connect Your Apps
Encharge allows you to bring in data from and create powerful marketing automations with the apps you use today. We currently support native integrations with 50+ different tools. See a full list of our integrations. You can access the Apps page from the top navigation. Note that not all apps will show up on tFew readersStep 6: Create Your First Flow
Flows is the word we use in Encharge to describe the path that a Person goes through when they enter Encharge. You can use flows to create powerful marketing automation campaigns, send automated emails, and automate repetitive tasks. To create your first Flow go to the Flows page and click the Add button on the bottom left: (https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/c415d4dFew readersStep 7: Create Your First Email
In the previous step, we explored how to create your first marketing automation flow. A big part of marketing automation is sending highly-converting and engaging emails. In Encharge, there are two ways to send emails: In Flows through the Send Email step. That's what we did in the previous article (//help.encharge.io/article/41-stFew readersStep 8: Set Up Site Tracking
Setting up Encharge site tracking on your website allows you to track visitors to your web pages. It is required to: See the web pages that both anonymous and known people visit on your website. Match activity from anonymous website visitors to their real profile once they get identified. Track forms on your website and send form submission data to Encharge. Create people segments and trigger Flows based on the web pages that a person visits (using the Page Visited trigger). Measure eFew readersConnecting Your App to Encharge
If you have a software product or a mobile app, you can bring in user data from your app to Encharge. That way new users and user activity will get in Encharge automatically. Getting your users and their activity from your app to Encharge is a great way to give superpowers to your onboarding and retention efforts. There are three ways to get user data in Encharge: Segment.com integration Ingest API Javascript tracking Connecting your app to Encharge requires input from your developmentFew readers
Form and Website Tracking
Set Up Site Tracking
Site tracking enables you to track webpage visits made in real-time and forms submitted on your websites. How site tracking works In order for Site Tracking to work, you need to install the Encharge site tracking code on your website. This tracking code allows page visit data to be sent to your Encharge account. Encharge uses browser cookies to track visits to every page on your website that has the Encharge site tracking code installed. For that reason, we recommend that you install the siFew readersSet up Form Tracking
Form tracking in Encharge enables you to track HTML forms on your website. Form tracking only works with standard HTML forms and requires Site Tracking installed on your website. There are three main benefits of tracking forms in Encharge: You can trigger a Flow with tracked forms using the Tracked Form Submitted trigger step. When an anonymous person (//help.encharge.ioFew readersPeople with email address are still showing as anonymous
Let's consider the following scenario: You import a list of people with email addresses and they are successfully created in Encharge. However, when these people visit web pages on your website, they show up as anonymous people and generate anonymous page visits or other anonymous activity. Why is that? This happens because Encharge has not matched the anonymous profiles (and the anonymous page visits) to the profiles of the people. Because Encharge uses cookies to track and match anonymous pFew readersNative Forms
Native forms allow you to build forms using Encharge and embed them on your website (or use a public shareable link) to collect email contacts and information about people. Accessing forms To access forms in your account, go to https://app.encharge.io/forms or click Forms in the top navigation bar. The list of forms will be displayed on the All Forms page, while under Folders, you will see the folders you created. (https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helSome readersMarkdown Guide
Markdown is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text. Currently, Encharge supports markdown in our native forms - specifically in the field labels and the text section. This page contains some of the most common markdown elements as a quick reference. If you want to learn more about markdown and use other elements, you can check the official reference cheat sheet forFew readers
Account and Billing
Verify Your Email Address and Domain Name
Encharge requires that you verify your email address or email in order to send emails. You can send emails from multiple email addresses as long as you verify each one of them. In this article: Verify your email address Verify additional email addresses Add email addresses from the Email Builders Re-send the verification email Delete email address Verify your emaiFeaturedEncharge Pricing Explained
You can find the Encharge plans and prices on our Pricing page. Encharge has a monthly subscription price based on the number of Subscribers in your account. What is a Subscriber? Subscribers are all people in your account that have an email address or a userId, and have not unsubscribed from your emails. Also, all anonymous people that have entered at least one Flow. What is an userId? The userId is used to match users from your product (web or mobileFew readersAccount Verification
Update Jul 2021: We no longer verify accounts manually. We have an automated algorithm that automatically approves email sending. The only time we have to approve an account is if they have bad metrics - spam reports, bounces, upload a large number of invalid suspicious emails, etc. For that reason, we still highly encourage you to follow the practices in this post. All new Encharge accounts are manually verified by our team to ensure they are not sending spam, phishing, or cold emails. ThiFew readersHow to Set Your Mailing Address
Per the CAN-SPAM Act, all businesses are required to add their physical mailing address to all marketing emails they send. Note that transactional emails do not require a mailing address. To do that please follow the instructions below: 1. Enter your mailing address Go to your account settings — https://app.encharge.io/account/info and click on the curreFew readersEncharge and Affiliate Marketing Emails
Affiliate marketing emails are prohibited under our Terms of Service, but affiliate links are usually fine to use if the affiliate offer is not the primary focus of the email. We understand that the difference here is vague, so we're happy to provide further explanation. In this article, you'll learn why we prohibit affiliate marketing in Encharge and how that's different from including affiliate links in your emails. Definitions First, let's claFew readersAccount Suspension and Tips on How to Avoid It
In order to protect our customers, email sending reputation, and deliverability your email sending could be temporarily paused or permanently suspended. Some of the reasons for that include: A high spam report rate. Importing or emailing unsolicited contacts. Sending cold emails. High bounce rate. High unsubscribe rate. Consistently lFew readersTeam Members and Permissions
Encharge is the only marketing automation platform on the market that allows you to invite unlimited team members at no additional costs on all of its plans. To invite and manage team members, go to the Team Members page at https://app.encharge.io/settings/team. You will see a list of all of the currently invited team members: Account owneSome readers
Events
What are events?
Event is the technical term for any actions your users perform on your website and inside your product. Not to be confused with calendar events. Hare are some example events: User Signed Up Trial Started Task Created Project Updated Team Member Invited Product Viewed Application Installed To keep your data clean, we suggest you stick to this naming convention for your events: Object Action. User events are critical for the execution of behavior-based emails in Encharge, aFew readersHow to send user events to Encharge?
Events are user actions that happen inside your app. Every SaaS product works in a different way, so every app has different events. In order to use events in Encharge, your developers need to connect your app to Encharge via an API and code each custom event. However, don’t worry about this, as events are easy to code, and they don’t require a ton of development work. Here’s an email you can send to your developers to inform them of what is reFew readersHow do events work in Encharge?
Once Encharge starts receiving events from your product, you will be able to see them on the activity feed on the Dashboard, as well as the activity feed of the user profiles and on the Event management page. Testing an event To test events, you can send a test event to Encharge. All API, JavaScript, and Segment events look in the same way in the activityFew readersChoose what events to track
It's important to discuss with your developers what events you want to track. In this post, we share how to approach this process. What are the key actions every user needs to perform in order to derive value from your app? We recommend that you start with three to five core events. Avoid trying to map every single action in your app. If you have a complex app with multiple features, run an analysis of your existing paying customers. What are the top 3 most performed actions among by your custFew readersEvent Management
Encharge has a unique, powerful feature called Event Management or simply the Events page. Event Management allows you to see all of the events that have been received or created in your Encharge account, as well as the option to create and organize new events. In development terms, this is the “schema” of your events. You can manually create events and define their properties so your developers understand whatFew readersUsing event data in emails
As we explained in our overview of events, each event could have one or more properties with values. Properties are additional details about an event. For example, the "Trial expired" event might contain the following properties: Trial start - when the trial has started. A date field. For example, "26 Nov 2023" Trial end - when the trial will end. A date field. For example, "10 Dec 2023" MRR - monthly recurring revenue from the user. A numFew readers
FAQ
Do I need an ESP or Amazon SES/Sendgrid account to use Encharge?
No. All email sending is handled by Encharge. We have a partnership with the leading email infrastructure providers – Sendgrid and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Because email sending is a huge part of marketing automation, we handle everything around emails inside the platform. This means we provide managed deliverability for our IPs. You do not need a separate Email Service Provider (Mailchimp, SendInBlue, etc.) or an Amazon SES/Sendgrid/Mailgun account to send emails.Few readersMy email sending has been paused, what to do now?
Apart from the initial account verification process, Encharge monitors email sending on an ongoing basis. To prevent abuse, we may pause or suspend certain accounts. The most common reasons your email sending has been paused are: High bounce rate. High spam rate. Low engagement (opens, clicks). Low-quality email content. Lack of unsubscribe links in marketing emails. If your email sending gets paused you will receive an email frFew readersIs Encharge email deliverability good?
We understand that email deliverability is one of your highest priorities. To make sure your emails land in the inbox of your users and subscribers, we have partnered with both Sendgrid and Amazon SES — the world's largest cloud-based email delivery platforms. On top of using Sendgrid and Amazon SES, we take the following steps to ensure the best possible deliverability rates: There's a strict Account Verification process. We manually moFew readersDo you count archived people toward my billing plan?
No, archived people will not show in your account and they don't count toward the total number of people on your billing plan. What about unsubscribed people – do they count towards the billing? No. Only subscribers with email addresses or userId count toward your plan.Few readersHow to add contacts to an email list in Encharge?
If you're coming from an email marketing tool like Mailchimp or Aweber, you're probably familiar with the concept of lists — a static list of subscribers you have in your system. You can add or delete people from a list manually. In Encharge there are no lists. Instead, people are grouped by Segments. Segments in Encharge are groups of people that share the same attributes or events. For example, people who live in the United States. People enter and leave segments dynamically based on chaFew readersI see a bunch of anonymous people. Where are my users?
If you're seeing anonymous people in your account, it most likely means that you have installed the Encharge website tracking script on your website or you're using Segment to track page visits. Our site tracking feature tracks all activity on your website, including that of anonymous users. Each user (including anonymousFew readersHow do I put people in parallel paths in the Flow builder?
If you're coming from a marketing automation tool like ActiveCampaign, Drip, Mailerlite, Gist, Customer.io, or Vero you might be used to creating flows with a one-directional flow builder. To add a new step in these flow builders you click a button in the flow and select the action or the filter. To separate a flow, these tools usually ask you to add an additional step called a "parallel step" or something similar. Encharge works differently from that. Our Flow builder works with a flexible dFew readersCan I send cold emails with Encharge?
Short answer: No. Cold emails are prohibited under our Terms of Service. Sending emails to unsolicited contacts is considered cold emailing, also known as cold outreach. Sending cold emails could result in a permanent suspension of your account. Encharge requires that all people in your account have willingly given you their email addresses, with the knowledge that they would receive emails from you. Usually, this happens when people sign up through a subscription form or become usersFew readersCan I re-activate old contacts with Encharge?
Warming up (or re-engaging) a contact list is the process of sending one or more emails with the intention to clean up old and inactive contacts on that list. The process involves sending emails to grasp if the contacts still remember you and to create engagement with them like opens, clicks, and replies. We do not allow warm-ups of old contact lists with Encharge. Large dormant email lists tend to contain many outdated email addresses. Sending emails to an outdated email list often leads to aFew readersMy emails are going in the Promotions tab, how to prevent this?
The "Promotions" tab is a Gmail-specific feature. As Google states: "Gmail automatically groups and highlights emails in the Promotions tab that people are most likely to engage with." Further clarifying: "These are not ads and happen automatically based on a number of factors." Google launched its Gmail tabs feature in 2013. Today there are solid statistics available about the behavior and adoption of users that debunk some of the myths and misconceptions about the Promotions tab: EmFew readersI can't see some of the apps/integrations on my Apps page?
Not all integrations/apps will show up on the apps page – https://app.encharge.io/apps. If you're looking for the form tools, you need to use the Form Submitted trigger. Other apps like Zapier, Pabbly, and Integrately don't have any interface in Encharge. For example, you need to create a Zap in Zapier in order to get people in Encharge. Learn more here.Few readersMy emails are not sending. What can I do?
If your Broadcast emails or Flow emails are not sending, follow the guide below to troubleshoot the most common issues. If this is your very first email it might take a little longer for the email to be sent. We have an approval process that can take up to 24 hours. This is to ensure that everything is fine with your email. If you used a free email address like Gmail and Yahoo the system has paused your email sending. As of April 2021, we do not allow sending from free email addresses.Few readersA person has an email address but they are still generating anonymous page visits
Let's consider the following scenario: You import a list of people with email addresses and they are successfully created in Encharge. However, when these people visit web pages on your website, they show up as anonymous people and generate anonymous page visits or other anonymous activity. Why is that? This happens because Encharge has not matched the anonymous profiles (and the anonymous page visits) to the profiles of the people. Because Encharge uses cookies to track and match anonymous pFew readersThe emails are received but they are not tracked as Opened?
You send and receive emails successfully but they are not tracked as Opened when you open them. The two most common issues for this are: Blocked images The email client that you use to open the email has a setting that blocks images. Encharge (and any other ESP tool) inserts a pixel that allows the platform to track opens. If the image is blocked, Encharge is not able to track opens. Note that if a person clicks on a link in an email client with blocked images, we'd still be able to traFew readersHow to hide anonymous people in my account?
Go to the People's page and click on the filter icon at the right. Then select "Hide anonymous people". You might need to refresh the browser window for changes to take effect. This feature hides anonymous people from all segments and from the "Activity Stream" in the Dashboard. Note that anonymous people can still enter Flows and are counted in step metrics ("Were here" / "Are here"). (https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/9b10ff9b6f8be000/f21d113e-af37-4160-b3df-204d4e4mvqtFew readers