Queuing Offers for Solo Sends¶
As well as sending out Newsletters on Freebies Network websites we also send out Solo Sends to subscribers. Solo emails are campaigns sent out that campaign just one offer to users. This offer still takes them to the site but is just about 1 offer instead of a Newsletter which contains multiple offers.
Example Solo Send¶
Below is an example of a previous solo send that has been sent to subscribers to give you an idea of what this looks like for subscribers:
How We Plan & Queue Solo Sends¶
We have an internal tool called Solo Email Planner which we use to queue campaigns to be sent out via solo sends to the Freebies network of sites.
Solo Email Planner lets you easily queue offers to go out across different country sites and also flags if we don't have custom email data configured for solo sends.
Queuing offers to go out via Solo Sends is easy but you should ensure a few things before you queue the offer:
- The offer has the relevant category set
- The subject line has no odd symbols (think raw code) in it that could cause issues
- Custom Data is set (optional but recommended)
- Wide Image is set (optional but recommended)
- The offer is worth sending out via solo send (most offer, this is subjective but use your best judgement)
You can see a list of Offers waiting to review on the Offers tab when you first login to Solo Email Planner:
This is an example of offers that may be waiting to queue. From the above screenshot you can see there are a total of 24 offers waiting to queue and 58 in the queue. The 58 offers in the Queue are ready to go out via Solo Sends when the system decides to pick them up. Offers are automatically picked up from the Queue and sent out via Solo Sends.
Queuing an Offer¶
How you choose to work through the Offers list is up to you, you may choose to filter by country for example and work through offers from a specific country. There are a ton of filters at the top so you can quickly find the offers you want to look for.
One common way is to filter by offers that have wide images set to yes and custom data set to yes, as these are effectively "ready" to be queued and you may only need to do a quick check to:
- Check the offer is good enough to go out via email (most are)
- Check the offer category is correct (this is important as the automation system uses this decide what to send out)
- That the subject line does not have any odd characters in it (e.g. raw code like &nsbp; or & for example)
Once you set those filters and click the search icon you can see a list of offers that have the wide image set on the offer and that have custom email data set like Subject Line/Headline and custom content like Intro and Outro Text for the email.
Then you can see in the list that for example with Ipsos that custom data and wide images are set for this offer, you can then click the green > icon to queue the offer:
For the remaining offers you will want to look at setting custom data and wide images for them.
Inline Edit Any Data¶
Any data that you need to correct or want to change, you can simply inline edit it by clicking on the value of it. Any data you might need to edit can be edited by just clicking on it. For example if you want to correct a category on an offer you can simply just click on the category to change it.
Setting Custom Data¶
Setting good quality custom data is important to ensure the email content for the offer is good. When custom email content is not set you will see a pencil icon next to a cross:
You can click on the pencil icon and this will take you directly to the offer in WordPress so you can complete the custom data for the offer. Once WordPress opens you should look for the field section called "Solo Email Settings" (if you can't see this click "Screen Options" in the top right hand corner you may need to enable it).
From here you can fill in information that will be used for the solo send. At first you will see a Subject Line box but once you start to fill this in more fields will appear that you can fill in. You can also utilise AI to generate a subject line or fill from content. Filling from content uses the actual post content and then you can tweak it, whereas Generate Subject Line for example uses AI so the information may not be accurate and you will need to fact check it.
From personal experience I recommend using "Fill from Content" and then tweaking it or just writing all the content manually. AI remains as it may get better over time.
Subject Line
The above example shows how the Subject Line has been auto filled, you can see from the above example that some code has made it into the subject line so this needs changing. It is also important that the subject line is engaging and interesting, sometimes the post title will be perfect here but often it will want changing to ensure its engaging and interesting to get the user to open the email. Keep subject lines to around 50 characters in maximum length to avoid them getting trimmed, don't worry about this too much but keep it in mind.
Intro Text
This is the text shown above the image in the solo send example. Here you should concisely say ideally in 1 sentence what the USP is, what the reason is the user should engage with the offer.
Below Text
This is the text shown below the image in the solo send example. You should keep this brief maybe say a little more about the offer and mention how to get started or to claim the offer press the button below.
Custom CTA
For the Custom CTA this is the button that appears on the solo send. Here you might want to put for example Claim Freebie or Enter Now or maybe even be specific to the offer more, e.g. Get Free Cash or Earn €20 Now. They should also be short and concise but unlike on the website you can give this button specific text for Solo Sends.
If you are a little unsure on what to write for the above fields you can look at other offers in WordPress to see what custom data has been set for those to give you an idea and inspiration or what to set for the fields.
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Once you have set the custom data in WordPress make sure to press "Update" to save the changes in WordPress. Then go back to Solo Email Planner and press on the cross to update this to a tick/yes so Solo Email Planner reflects the fact custom data has now been set.
If you are setting custom email data in WordPress you **must** fill in all the fields, you should not only fill in some of them you should either fill in all of them or none of them.
Setting Wide Images¶
Some offers may not have a wide image set so you should look to set a 600x300 image for these offers. Just like custom data you will see a cross icon if a wide image is not set with a pencil icon next to it, clicking the pencil icon takes you directly to that offer in WordPress to configure the wide image.
You can set the wide image on WOW Freebies sites by looking for the "SEO Settings" section in WordPress then clicking on the "Social" tab and selecting an image for "Social Image URL".
There is no need to set wide images on Free Stuff World as all offers use wide images by default.
Save time by using existing templates in Canva, many offers like FunClub, OfferX, eGentic have existing wide images and you can just add a new page / duplicate an existing page and tweak some of it for that specific prize/offer. If you don't have access to these in Canva please ask for this to be shared with you.
Once you have set the image in WordPress make sure to press "Update" to save the changes in WordPress. Then go back to Solo Email Planner and press on the cross to update this to a tick/yes so Solo Email Planner reflects the fact an image has now been set.
A wide image for an offer is set in WordPress not in Solo Email Planner. You must set it in WordPress and then mark it as set manually in Solo Email Planner.
Bulk Queue¶
You can bulk queue offers by ticking them on the left hand side, when you start to tick them bulk controls will appear:
This is really useful if you've used filters effectively e.g. to filter offers by custom data and wide images for example being enabled.
Make a regular task to review the Offers list in Solo Email Planner, moving offers from the Offers tab to the Queue tab so that Offers is empty. Ensure that in the Queue tab all countries have offers scheduled so there are regular Solo Sends sending out.
Viewing Solo Schedule History¶
You may from time to time want to know what has been sent out via Solo Emails you can do this by looking on the "History" tab. This shows you offers that have been sent off to MailerLite for scheduling.
This does not guarantee they were sent out (they may have failed but it confirms that an offer was sent off to MailerLite for scheduling).
Adding an Offer Manually¶
You may sometimes want to manually add an offer to Solo Email Planner, for example if the Queue is empty for a specific country and there are no offers to add in the Offers list, or you may have been asked to give an offer more exposure by another member of the team.
You can manually add an offer to the Offers list by clicking on "Add New Offer"
Fill in the form with the offer information to add it to the Offers list. Make sure to pick a relevant category and ensure the country + post ID combination is set correctly. These fields are really important as it ensures the correct offer goes out in the correct market and the category is important as this helps ensure solo send variety automatically.
Blocking Offers From Returning to Solo Email Planner¶
You may have find there are some offers that regularly get imported into the Offers list that you will never run, this can be for several reasons for example like the offer does not allow email, we've been told to no longer run this offer via email or the offer is low quality and we just don't want to run it via Solo Sends.
You can utilise the "Now Allowed List" list to block an offer. Simply go over to the Not Allowed List tab and enter the Country Code, Post ID of the offer and Note (e.g. a reason why you want to block it) then click "Add to List".
Entries in this list prevent the specific Geo + Post ID combination from being added to offers or queued for scheduling. Other combinations (e.g., different Geo with same Post ID) are not affected.
Auto Queuing¶
Solo Email Planner supports Auto Queuing. If enabled Auto Queuing can automatically queue certain offers if they have been in the queue for a considerable length of time. Generally this will be configured to only auto queue them if custom data and wide images are set for them. So you may see offers disappear after a while from the Offers tab and move to the Queue tab.
This is currently enabled. Auto queueing all only queue offers that have custom data and wide images set.