Recruitment campaigns are email blasts to non-members of the community, including an invitation to the community and a registration link (the screener). Entire recruitment email campaigns can be tracked in the Fuel Cycle platform, giving you access to the full recruitment cycle data in one place and allowing you to track the success of each of your campaigns.

Recruitment campaigns are similar to campaigns sent to members, except you must upload a list of email addresses and attach a recruitment URL to the campaign. Recruitment campaigns are also sent to non-members.

Recruitment Campaign Daily Sending Limit: 50,000 whitelisted email addresses. If you would like to send more, please contact Support. Please note we can allow up to a maximum daily sending limit of 200,000.

While you would like every recruitment email to reach its destination, sometimes corporate policies will keep your message from getting through to its intended target. If your target is getting an error message like Error 501: Not Implemented, this ultimately means that the recipient doesn't have something on their email servers that will allow for delivery of the message. As long as all recruitment links are formatted properly, it's nothing a sender can control..

Step 1: Create a Recruitment URL

The first step in creating your recruitment campaign is to set up a Recruitment URL.

After you finish creating the URL, you do not need to export the link - the campaign editor will automatically insert the correct URL when you compose the message. However, we recommend exporting the list to test that it is working properly.

Step 2: Upload Email List

Next, you need to upload a list of email addresses to send the recruitment email.

Go to the Email Lists tab inside the Communication Center (Communication Center > Email Lists). Click the "New Email List" button to start.

The email list needs to be a CSV file saved in UTF-8 format.

You can click the "email_validation_format.csv" link on the page to download a sample version of the file. In the first column, enter the email addresses. Make sure the top row of the column says "Email Address," and then all rows below it are email addresses.

You should check that each email in your list is correctly formatted. Email addresses, such as john.smith@example.com, are comprised of a local-part, the @ symbol, and an internet domain. The mail system in the domain example.com treats John.Smith as equivalent to john.smith; some mail systems even treat them as equivalent to johnsmith.

Mail systems often limit the users' choice of name to a subset of the technically permitted characters. For example, Gmail allows for periods and plus signs in the local-part.

Add Campaign Fields as Data Columns

If you have additional information to include in your recruitment campaign, such as a person's name or an External ID, add columns to your data file. Make sure the first row of the column has a description in all caps with no spaces. For example, you can put FIRST_NAME on the first row of the column and then add names corresponding to each email on the rows below. Add any number of custom parameters by adding a new column for each parameter.

Add an ID column to upload your customer ID for the campaign. With this column title, Fuel Cycle will know to add this field to the recruitment URL automatically.

Once your CSV file is created, give your email list a title. This title is for moderation purposes only. Then click to upload the file and click the "Create" button to upload your email list.

The platform processes the email list into allowlists and blocklists:

The allowlist includes all valid emails that have not unsubscribed from community emails.
The blocklist includes invalid emails or emails that have previously been unsubscribed.

When you send the recruitment email, only the addresses on the allowlist will receive it.

Depending on the size of the email list, it might take a few moments for it to be processed into the allowlists/blocklists. Once the list has been processed, you can see how many emails have been allowlisted and blocklisted. You can also click the download icon next to each list to download a list of those emails.

Step 3: Create Recruitment Campaign Email

Now, you can create your recruitment campaign email.

Go to the Recruitments tab inside the Communication Center (Communication Center > Recruitments) and click the + button.

Email Parameters

Add basic details for your campaign in the Parameters tab.

Name [Required]—This is only for internal reasons to help you distinguish the different campaigns. Use up to 100 characters for your name.
Subject [Required]—This is the actual subject line of the email. Unicode emojis are supported; paste them into your Subject. While you may use a maximum of 150 characters for your Subject, it's preferable to have the shortest subject line that conveys exactly what you need.
Preheader [Required]—This preview text is displayed to recipients in their inboxes. Unicode emojis are supported; paste them into your preheader. You may enter up to 150 characters, but it's preferable to use 90 characters.
Default Footer—Use Fuel Cycle's default system footer, which displays postal address and unsubscribe options. Only deactivate this if utilizing custom footer text.
Fuel Cycle Email Composer—Use Fuel Cycle's drag-and-drop email composer, or deactivate it to use the legacy editor. We recommend using the new Fuel Cycle Email Composer.

Click Save Draft to save your progress and continue working. Click Save & Continue to move to the next step. Click Cancel to abort any changes.

Email Content

After you specify your email campaign parameters, select a template or upload a saved template (if you have one).

Fuel Cycle offers a set of standard templates that are great starting points for creating a campaign. As you can see from the screenshot above, these represent basic layouts designed to produce effective campaigns.

Blank: Choose this option to start with a blank email. You can build the campaign layout from scratch with this option.
Basic Templates: Choose a layout you prefer for your campaign and then click the "Continue" button to load the template. This will pre-populate the next step with the basic building blocks that you can customize with images and text.
Load Saved Template: Once you have worked with the new email composer, Save a Template to your computer. If you have a saved template you want to use, click the Load Saved Template button at the bottom of the page, and you'll be taken to the next step with the saved template loaded.

Once you have selected your template, you will be in the email composer, where you can customize the elements in the email.

Click a link below to view more details about how to perform each of the following functions:

Add Recruitment URL link to Fuel Cycle Email Composer

To add a link to the recruitment URL, simply paste ${RECRUITMENT_URL} as the URL link for a button or text link.

If you don't add this variable, the system will warn that you must add it.

Add Custom Variables

If you added any custom parameters to your Email List, you can insert the parameters into your email, but using the following format: ${PARAMETER_NAME}.

NOTE: Replace PARAMETER_NAME with the name you gave the parameter in the email list CSV.

For example, if you added a NAME column, you could add:

Dear ${NAME}

The above will replace the parameter with the name entered in your CSV file when the CSV is sent to the user.

Please note: These variables must exactly match the variables used in the CSV file; otherwise, they will not pull correctly.

Follow this link to learn more about adding custom variables to email campaigns.

Schedule & Delivery

Once you have finished composing your email, go to the Schedule & Delivery tab.

Select a Recruitment URL to use in the email. Type the recruitment URL name in the field, and matching recruitment URLs will display as you type. Select the one you want to use.

Now, select the Email List you want to use. Start typing the title of the email list, and matching lists will display as you type. Select the one you want to use. Once selected, you'll see the total number of Max Signups allowed in the recruitment URL (if one is specified), total signups (current number of signups already used in that recruitment URL), and the total number of allowlisted emails available in the list you selected.

Finally, select if you want to save it as a Draft or Schedule the email to send. Once scheduled, your recruitment email will be sent to recipients at your chosen date and time.