# Email broadcasting with an Email Service Provider (ESP)

You can upload and broadcast, or upload only, an audience to one of the many Email Service Providers (ESPs) Apteco already integrates with. Within Orbit, you can create a target audience and then export directly to an ESP.

See [Apteco Integrations](<https://help.apteco.com/en/admin/integration/index.md>).

For those with Apteco PeopleStage already licensed, an Orbit user can upload and broadcast to their chosen ESP and automatically record communication history for their Orbit campaign. They can also see the campaign automatically drawn in their PeopleStage instance in an area called Apteco Orbit.

Those without a Campaigning bundle can still benefit from the integration, with the ability to upload only to a chosen ESP. This is useful for occasions where an email needs to be sent without personalisation, or without the need to track the success of the campaign in Apteco. Communication history isn't recorded for those without a Campaigning bundle.

**Useful to have before you start:**

- The message name in the ESP to use
- The email channel name to use in the **Delivery** drop-down
- The channel must already exist in PeopleStage
- You need the **Publisher role** to see the channels in the **Delivery** drop-down in Orbit
- The **Export Audience To Campaign** feature must be **enabled** in [Application settings](<https://help.apteco.com/en/orbit/reference/admin/application-settings/index.md>) under Features
- Have any upload-only channels prepared; it's useful to name the channel to identify it as upload-only - see the note below

> [!NOTE]
>
> Upload and broadcast isn't scheduled. It runs on a NOW schedule.

> [!TIP]
>
> We are adding the ability to configure the ESP's email channel from within Orbit in a later release.

> [!NOTE]
>
> To use upload-only, you must configure an email channel by selecting the **Upload but don't broadcast** checkbox on the **Output Settings** tab of the channel editor. Orbit will recognise it as an upload-only channel.

## Audience

You can create an email broadcast in Orbit in three ways:

- Create a new audience
- Use an existing audience
- Create an audience from a dashboard

Step 1 - Create an Audience

- From the **Audiences** page select **New Audience**
- Start adding Data Variables under the **Includes** section

### Find data variables

To add a data variable, select **\+ Add Filter** under **Includes**, then search for or browse to the variable in the [data picker](<https://help.apteco.com/en/orbit/data/index.md>). You can also choose a saved audience, a URN file, or a FastStats selection. See [Audiences and files](<https://help.apteco.com/en/orbit/data/audiences-and-files/index.md>).

### Exclusions

Exclusion criteria are added to the Excludes section of your audience. Follow the same process to search for criteria and apply AND or OR logic.

The counts for both the Includes and Excludes are displayed against each grouping. The overall audience count is displayed at the top of the screen next to the resolve table level.

### Adding AND/OR logic

To continue building your audience criteria:

- Hover your mouse over the variable you added to access and select AND or OR logic to combine the next variable

In this example, AND logic is applied to combine Gender with Banded Region of the "North".

- Select **AND**
- Use the data picker to find the **Banded Region** variable and select the *North* category

As you define your audience, the count continually updates to reflect the number of records currently meeting your criteria.

> [!NOTE]
>
> **Important:** Where you hover determines where the AND/OR logic is applied.

In this example, hovering on the Banded Region variable name and selecting OR applies OR logic between Banded Region and the next variable, for example Region – "South East (Outside M25)":

However, hovering on the edge of the outer border (as shown) allows you to apply the **AND** or **OR** logic to the Gender variable as a grouping:

- Use the data picker to find the **Email Address** variable
- Select the dropdown and choose **Has ranges and wildcards of** and enter `*@*.*`

This allows you to select only people who have a valid email address.

Step 2 - Prepare the Export section

- Select an **Export Template** to use with the Upload

> [!NOTE]
>
> The Template should already be prepared by an administrator to use with your ESP

See [Export Templates](<https://help.apteco.com/en/orbit/audiences/export-templates/index.md>)

- Select the ESP to use in the **Delivery** drop-down menu

> [!NOTE]
>
> If you choose to use an email channel that has been configured for Upload Only, you will not see the Message Template

- To Upload and Broadcast **search for a message** in the **Message Template** cell.
- Click **Export**

The Confirm Export message box loads

- Click **Export** to Upload and Broadcast the List to the ESP

Step 3 - Orbit Creates a Campaign

- You can click on the **Campaign** link to monitor the progress

### Campaign monitoring steps

When a campaign is processed, it moves through several steps, shown in Orbit:

**Running steps**

The first step to run is the Audience step - Apteco creates an audience to use in the campaign.

Next is the Delivery step - this indicates that the list has been delivered to the email service provider.

**Completed steps**

Audience and Delivery steps are listed with details about the campaign:

- **Time started** - the time the step started
- **Time finished** - the time the step finished
- **Communications** - the count of items in the list, which will be people for an email
- **Error messages** - any error messages are displayed here
- **Status**

Additional message at the top of the Campaign Monitoring page:

PeopleStage status: Manual Approval isn't currently displayed in this tab.

If the campaign only shows an Audience step, it may be a campaign started in PeopleStage with a **Manual Approval** step.
