Channels

Channels in Broadcast, also known as a “list” in other email marketing software, is where you organize your subscribers. From within a channel, you can send three different types of emails:

  1. Broadcasts (manual email campaigns)
  2. Sequences (DRIP style automation email sequences)
  3. Transactional emails via the API (eg. password resets)

Creating a Channel

By default, your installation requires you to have at least one channel. You can have multiple channels to organize different parts of your business (eg. enterprise customers vs small-medium B2B customers), or different projects altogether.

To create a new channel, click on Switch Channel in the upper left corner of the screen.

From there, you will see a link that says create a new one to create a new channel.

Switching Channels

To switch between channels, click on Switch Channel in the upper left corner of the screen and select the channel you want.

You can always check which channel you are in by looking at the channel name on the upper left corner of the screen in the sidebar (on the desktop). It will say Current Channel.

Deleting a Channel

To preserve your data, you cannot delete a channel. However, you can deactivate a channel by going to Channel Settings and clicking on Deactivate channel.

Understanding how channels work

All settings, subscribers, broadcasts, sequences, and transactional emails are channel-specific. This means that if you have a channel called “Enterprise”, all of the settings, subscribers, broadcasts, sequences, and transactional emails will only apply to the “Enterprise” channel.

This allows you to have a separate setup for each of your channels, which is useful if you have different opt-in forms, or want to send different content to different groups of people.

Email servers

Each channel requires at least one email server. You can have multiple email servers within the same channel, and Broadcast will automatically “load balance” between them when sending out broadcasts, transactional emails, and sequences (DRIP/autoresponders).

Adding an email server

To add an email server, navigate to Channel Settings -> Email Servers. From there, click on the Add email server button. This will take you to a page where you can configure the new server.

Configuring an email server

When adding or editing an email server, you will be presented with several configuration options:

  • Label: A friendly name for you to identify the server easily. For example, “Server at AWS us-east-1”.
  • Vendor: Select your email service provider (ESP) from the list, like AWS SES, Sendgrid, Postmark, etc. Broadcast will use the correct settings for the email service you choose.
  • SMTP Details: You’ll need to provide the SMTP address, port, username, and password for your email server. You can get these details from your ESP. Note that some hosting providers block outgoing traffic on ports 25, 467, or even 587. If your test connection fails, please double check if the port is open.
  • SMTP Authentication: Select the authentication method used by your SMTP server.

Custom Headers

You can add custom headers to all emails sent through this server. This is useful for adding things like custom tracking headers.

Email Types

You can control which types of emails are sent using this server. This is a powerful feature that helps you maintain your deliverability and IP/domain reputation. For example, you can use one server with a high reputation for important transactional emails, and another server for bulk broadcasts.

You can choose from:

  • Broadcasts (manual campaigns)
  • Transactional emails
  • Automated sequences (Drip style emails)

You must select at least one email type for the server to be used.

Custom Unsubscribe Settings

Broadcast allows you to customize the unsubscribe behavior for each server. - Include unsubscribe header: Adds a List-Unsubscribe email header, which is a best practice for deliverability. - Include unsubscribe link: Adds an unsubscribe link to the bottom of your emails. - Customize unsubscribe link: Override the channel’s default unsubscribe link with a custom one for this server.

Note that certain ESPs will automatically include an unsubscribe header and link, and these settings may not take effect. Also, if your broadcast channel does not have an email footer, these settings will not take effect.

Availability

You can temporarily disable an email server by unchecking the Enable server to send emails option. This is useful if you need to perform maintenance on a server or if you’re experiencing deliverability issues with it and want to stop sending emails through it without deleting its configuration.