Quick Start

A guide to access Shared Mail campaign information & results in our direct mail platform, Poplar

Poplar is our direct mail platform, and it is now your home for Shared Mail campaign information and results. Instead of waiting for a matchback report to land in your inbox, you can log in any time to see how your Shared Mail campaigns are performing, all in one place.

This guide shows you how to get into your account, where to find your campaigns and results, and how to read your Shared Mail reports. If you have used Poplar before for solo or standard direct mail, a short section near the end explains what reads differently for Shared Mail.

In this article we'll walk you through everything you need to see your Shared Mail results in Poplar. There are just three steps:

1. Set up and access your Poplar account: get logged in and invite team members.

2. Get your order data into Poplar: connect Shopify or upload a file, so we can match your mail to your sales.

3. View your reporting: find and read your campaign results.

We'll cover each step below, no technical experience needed. If you ever get stuck, your Account Manager is available for support.

Account Setup

Sign in to Poplar at app.heypoplar.com. If you do not yet have an account, you can create one at app.heypoplar.com/users/sign_up. If you are not sure whether your account is set up, your Account Manager will confirm and get you access.

You can reach your account settings any time using the account icon in the bottom left of the screen. If you work across more than one brand or account, use Switch Organization to move between them. This is especially useful for agencies and teams managing multiple accounts.

Campaigns and Results

The Campaigns page is your starting point. At the top you will see your total mailed volume, total spend, and a date filter to view performance by timeframe. You can sort campaigns by in-home date, most recent updates, or budget, and export a CSV for your own records.

Open any campaign to see its tabs. For Shared Mail, the two you will use most are Overview and Results:

• Overview: a summary of the campaign, including mailed counts, spend, and delivery status, with an adjustable date filter.

• Results: your attribution reporting, broken down by each creative mailed. This is where you read campaign performance, covered in detail in the next article.

The Creative, One Time Sends, and Suppressions tabs are only visible for self-managed & solo campaigns, so for Shared Mail campaigns you will only see Overview and Results tabs.

Sharing Order Data

Poplar measures results by matching your mail recipients to the orders that follow. For that to work, your transactional (order) data needs to be shared with the platform. There are three ways to do this, and the right one depends on how your store is set up:

1. Poplar's Shopify App: the easiest option if you are on Shopify. Shares order data automatically and on an ongoing basis.

2. Manual conversion file upload: upload a CSV of your order data directly in the platform.

3. Orders API integration: share order data programmatically through the API. Best handled by a developer on your team.

The two most common options are covered step by step below so you have everything in one place. If you are not sure which applies to you, ask your Account Manager.

Option 1: Connecting Shopify

If your store runs on Shopify, the Poplar Shopify App is the simplest way to share order data. Install the Poplar Shopify App from the Shopify App Store to start sharing order data automatically. It also passes new buyer information, which powers first-time order reporting in your results.

To confirm the connection is working, go to Audiences in Poplar and click into Customers (Orders API). As orders come in, you should see customer shipping and billing addresses begin to populate, and the Transactions page will start to fill in as well.

Backfilling past orders: If you connect Shopify after your campaign has already reached homes, the app only shares orders going forward. To capture earlier orders, export them from Shopify and upload them as a conversion file (Option 2). When exporting, filter to delivery method ship to customer; payment status authorized, paid, or partially paid; and a date range from your first campaign launch through today.

Option 2: Uploading a CSV

If you are not on Shopify, or you need to backfill past orders, you can upload a CSV of your order data. We recommend waiting 30 to 90 days after a campaign's in-home date before relying on the numbers, so the full picture has time to come through.

At a minimum, your file needs these columns:

Column	What it is
order_id	A unique identifier for each order. Required.
order_date	The purchase date in YYYY-MM-DD (ISO 8601) format. Required.
order_amount	Total order value in decimal form, for example 49.00. Required to calculate revenue, CPO, ROAS, and related metrics.
Address fields	A full shipping address and billing address are both ideal. At a minimum, one complete address (name, address 1 and 2, city, state, postal code) is required so the order can be matched. Sending both improves match rates.
email	Optional. Used to match campaigns that mailed using Address Enrichment. Not stored; it is hashed and then discarded.
metadata	Optional. Extra order detail, such as a New Buyer tag for first-time order reporting.

Once your columns are named and formatted correctly, go to the Transactions page in Poplar, click Upload Transactional Data, choose your CSV, and map the headers when prompted. You can upload more than once without creating duplicates; the platform dedupes by order_id and updates any changed orders. The maximum file size is 20MB, so split large files and upload them separately.

Exporting from Shopify for a backfill: Export a Plain CSV from Shopify, then rename the columns to match Poplar's fields, for example Name becomes order_id, Created at becomes order_date, and Total becomes order_amount. Shopify lists each item in an order on its own row but only puts the order total on one row, so blank rows in the total column are expected and will not skew your results.

Important: If order data is not shared using one of these methods, Poplar cannot calculate attribution metrics. Your Account Manager can help confirm which method is set up for your account.