Getting started with Knowde: Using the Knowde Marketing Platform

Table of Contents

What is the Knowde Marketing Platform?

How to Upload Contacts & Lists

How to Create an Email Campaign

What is the Knowde Marketing Platform?

Knowde’s Marketing Platform is a powerful ecosystem that allows you to reach prospective customers inside and outside of Knowde, and creates opportunities to engage and nurture them throughout the sales cycle. It’s a way to help drive traffic to your storefront and nurture leads.

When you sign up to sell on Knowde, we will build a custom Marketing Platform for your company. From this platform, you can create and send email marketing campaigns to your contacts. Reach out to Customer Success to learn more about how to opt-in to the Knowde Marketing Platform here, or send an email to customer_success@knowde.com.

The Marketing Platform is a suite of tools that makes it simple to quickly and easily cultivate leads into orders by helping track all lead touchpoints, which can be created with targeted communications.

It not only increases the efficiency of sales efforts, but also significantly expands your reach while providing tools to track every communication touchpoint. It also offers a new, digital way to engage with existing customers and streamline processes without having to juggle staying on top of updating spreadsheets, sending ad-hoc emails, making cold calls, etc. 

There are three key capabilities that the Marketing Platform offers:

1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
2. Customized Email Templates
3. Email Campaigns

How to Upload Contacts and Lists

A contact is a unique email address. You can create a contact with only an email, and first/last name.

There are a few ways to upload contacts into your Knowde Marketing Platform:

1. Import contacts from a CSV file
2. Manually add contacts one by one
3. Provide Knowde's Customer Success team your contacts list

Importing Contacts from a CSV file

You can easily import contacts into your account using the import tool. Use the left-hand navigation to find the Contacts tab and select it. In the upper right-hand corner, you will see a button titled "Import".

Simply upload a correctly formatted CSV file here and the import tool will run through all your data during the import process. Please note that each contact must have a unique email address or the import tool will skip that contact during upload.

We recommend breaking up large contact lists into a few separate imports. Because the import tool scans each cell in the CSV file, if you have extra blank spaces or incorrectly formatted contacts, the import process can be slowed.

Remember to follow best practices when uploading your Contacts:

• Remove any contacts without a unique email address
• Only include columns and rows with relevant information
• Make your CSV file as small as possible
• Follow the formatting guide below

Formatting your CSV file correctly

Depending on how certain fields are formatted, you may receive an error or an unexpected result during the import process. This is especially common for contacts who have multiple values for a single field in your file, such as a  checkbox or list box. To avoid this, follow the best practices below.

Date Field

All date field values must use the following format: 
YYYY-MM-DD. Note that this format uses dashes only and does not contain any spaces or slashes. If this format is not followed, field values will default to a date in 1899.  


Multiple Tags for a Contact

Tags must be separated by a comma. For example, Tag1,Tag2,Tag3.


Checkbox and List box fields


Make sure that these field types use the double-pipe || delimiter between options. For example, if you were to import a list of contacts who have multiple values for a field in a single cell, you would format the cell like this: Value 1||Value 2||Value 3


Email Address Field

Make sure all email addresses in your file are spelled correctly and are properly formatted.


Special/Accented Characters

Make sure your CSV file uses UTF-8 character encoding.

Adding Contacts Manually

You can manually create contacts in your account and add them to a list. 
We don't recommend this for large lists as it is a time-consuming process, but do recognize the need to add one-off contacts.

1. Inside your marketing platform, use the left-hand navigation to navigate to the Contacts tab.
2. Click "Add a Contact" in the upper right-hand corner.

1. Complete the fields in this pop-up module and click "Add" in the bottom right-hand corner.
2. On the Contact Actions screen, click "Add to Lists" and add the contact to each list you would like to. Feel free to take any other action on this screen as well. 

1. When you're done, click "Apply" in the bottom right-hand corner. This contact is now successfully uploaded!

How to Create an Email Campaign

There are two types of emails that can be sent through your account: Campaigns and one-to-one emails. Email Campaigns are messages sent to a list of opted-in contacts from the Campaigns Overview page. Examples include:

• Sending out product updates
• Newsletters
• One-time promotions

Email Campaigns

1. Click the "Campaigns" tab in the left-hand navigation menu.
2. Click the "Create a campaign" button.
3. The "Campaign Type" screen will open.

1. Here, select a name for your campaign. Note that this name will not be shown to your contacts.
2. Select the campaign type you would like to use and click the next button.
3. You will see a "Lists" screen which allows you to select which list you would like to send this campaign to. Select one, or multiple, and click the next button.
4. Select a Template or click "Build from Scratch".
5. With your Template built or selected, add in the Sender Details that will appear in your customers' inboxes. Click Continue when all fields are filled out.

1. Customize and finalize your template, then click Next.
2. Review the Summary page and make any necessary changes, then click Send. 

Learn more about customizing or building Templates here.