Newsletter: campaigns & automatic emails

With the marketing module you send newsletters directly from Univents to your contacts — no external tool, no duplicate list maintenance. The module is currently in an introduction phase with selected customers.

The video shows how to set up automatic emails for returning customers and birthdays, send campaigns to tag segments and create status emails after the event.

Play video1:53

You’ll find the individual steps written out below as well.

Who may be contacted?

For legal reasons, newsletters may only go to contacts with a proper basis. Univents checks this automatically on every send:

• Existing customer (reachable): The contact has booked with you or received an invoice. Such contacts may be informed about your own similar offers — every email contains an unsubscribe notice for this.
• Subscribed: The contact confirmed your invitation via confirmation email (double opt-in).
• Unsubscribed: The contact unsubscribed and will never be contacted again — not even as an existing customer.
• No basis: Neither an existing customer nor subscribed. You can invite these contacts to confirm.

Inviting contacts to the newsletter

1. Open Marketing in the sidebar.
2. Click Invite contacts to the newsletter.
3. Select the contacts and send the invitations.

Every invited contact receives a confirmation email with a link. The link opens a page where the person still presses the button Anmeldung bestätigen (confirm subscription) — only then are they reachable. The link is valid for 14 days; without confirmation nothing happens.

So that nobody gets mail twice, no second invitation goes out to:

• contacts whose invitation is still running (not yet confirmed and not expired),
• addresses that are already subscribed or unsubscribed — even if the same address is also stored on another contact,
• duplicate addresses: if the same email address belongs to several contacts, it receives only one invitation.

Addresses with special characters, for example an umlaut such as “ö”, are skipped because they cannot be delivered reliably. Correct the address on the contact, then you can invite them. After sending you see how many invitations went out and how many were skipped; invited contacts disappear from the selection list.

Sending a campaign

1. In Marketing, click New campaign.
2. Recipients: By default campaigns go to all reachable contacts; optionally filter by tags. The counter shows live how many contacts are reachable — and how many are skipped (no basis, no email address, or merged as duplicates).
3. Content: Internal name, subject and message. Placeholders for first name and company name personalize every email.
4. Test email: Send the campaign to yourself first.
5. Send: Sending starts within a few minutes and runs in the background.

Afterwards, the campaign detail view shows for every recipient whether the email was sent, skipped or bounced.

Automatic emails

Under Marketing → Automatic emails you can activate two automations:

• No booking for a while: Customers whose last event was more than 12 months ago automatically receive a friendly reminder — once per pause, never more often.
• Birthday email: Contacts with a stored birth date automatically receive congratulations on their birthday — once per year.

Both use the same reachability rules as campaigns.

Your own sender domain

By default newsletters go out via the Univents sender address. With your own domain the emails look like they come straight from you:

1. Open Marketing and enter your domain under Own sender domain — ideally a subdomain such as news.your-domain.com.
2. Add the displayed DNS records at your hosting provider (wherever your domain is managed).
3. Click Verify. DNS changes can take a few hours.

Once the domain is verified, all newsletters automatically go out from your address.

Opens and clicks

Each campaign's detail view shows deliveries, opens and clicks — as totals and per recipient. Note: opens are a lower bound because many mail clients block the tracking pixel. Clicks are more reliable.

Saving segments

In the recipients step you filter by tags and activity (e.g. “nothing booked in over 12 months”). Save a filter combination you use often as a segment — for the next campaign you pick it again with one click.

Templates and copying campaigns

In the content step, ready-made text templates get you started (seasonal offer, announcement, thank-you). Copy an existing campaign from the overview via Duplicate — the copy starts as a new draft.

Newsletter status in the contact list

In the contact list every customer contact shows a newsletter status: Subscribed (via confirmation email), Existing customer (reachable due to a booking or invoice), Unsubscribed, or Unknown (no legal basis — invite the contact to the newsletter).

Booking the module

Marketing & Newsletter is an add-on module (€49 per month or €490 per year; included in Enterprise). You book it right on the marketing page — with an existing subscription the amount is prorated from the day of booking and the module is unlocked immediately.

Included quota

The module includes 10,000 emails per calendar month; beyond that, every 1,000 emails (or part thereof) costs €5 and is billed automatically via your subscription. You can see current usage at the bottom of the marketing page. Without an active subscription, sending stops at the limit.

Unsubscribes

Every marketing email automatically contains an unsubscribe link (including one-click unsubscribe directly in the mail client). An unsubscribe takes effect immediately and permanently — the contact is excluded from campaigns and automatic emails. Undeliverable addresses and spam complaints are excluded automatically as well, protecting your sender reputation.