Manage Event Part V: Event Notifications
- This tutorial will cover how to create and send event notifications.
- Event notifications are emails you can send to your event registrants or attendees. Use event notifications for sending reminders of event sign up or additional details/information about your event (such as parking information).
- Unlike Event Invites, Notifications can ONLY be sent to EITHER event registrants or event attendees. Notifications cannot be sent to anyone who is not registered or attending your event. To communicate with people not registered or attending the event (for example, people you want to invite to the event), use the Event Invite function.
- Event Notifications must be manually scheduled/sent. In contrast, Event Registration Confirmations will be sent automatically to everyone who registers for an event.
- Event notifications provide a full range of metrics including successful sends, opens, and clicks. NOTE: All emails received by people using the Apple mail privacy feature will be opened at least once by a robot. The Open section can't differentiate if it was open by a robot or by a real user. We suggest referring on the Click rather than Open for reliable metrics as clicks always comes from real users, not robot.
- To use event notifications start by viewing your event and select Notifications from the left hand menu.
- In the resulting screen you will see all currently drafted, scheduled, sent, and failed notifications for this event.
- You can edit/return to any in-progress draft notification listed on the Drafted tab by clicking the drop down to the right and selecting Edit.
- To create a new notification, you can copy any previous notification by selecting Copy from the drop down to the right OR you can start fresh/from scratch by clicking on the Create Notification button in the lower right corner of the screen.
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- Creating and sending a notification is a three step process.
- On the first tab, Notification, start by indicating the Sender Name, Sender Email address, and the Subject Line of the email to be sent to event attendees/registrants.
- If you wish for a copy of the contact’s event ticket to be attached to the notification, mark the Attach Ticket check-box.
- If this is a repeating event (multiple individual dates), select the date/event schedule for which you wish to send your event Notification from the Event Schedule drop down.
- Next, select a template to use for your notification by clicking on Choose Template.
- In the select template screen, either select one of your previously configured templates by hovering over it and selecting Select (see our tutorial on creating templates Part I and Part IIb - Event Templates for more information on configuring event notification templates) or create a new template by clicking the Create New button at the top of the screen.
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- If selecting an existing template, once you click Select, a green banner will appear across the top of the template to indicate it's been selected. Then click the Done button in the lower right hand corner.
- If you opt to create a new template, after clicking the Create New button, select one of your previously configured templates or a system template to use as a draft/base template. Hover over the template and select Copy. A copy of the template will be made, you'll be taken into the Edit Template screen to configure the newly created copy/template. You can add placeholders while creating or editing your template. In the placeholders drop down menu, there are several event specific fields that can be added to event invite, event notification and event registration confirmation templates, include event name, event description, event date/time, venue, view map, and event map. Add/Edit Templates Part IIb - Event Invite, Notification, and Registration Confirmation Templates. Make your changes, click Save in the lower right, and then click Done when you have finished making all changes.
- Once you select a template, you will be returned to the Create Notification screen. A thumbnail of your chosen template will show in the template area. Please Note: if you make any changes to the template, it may take several minutes for the thumbnail to update. Be assured that your changes have been saved.
- If you wish to make changes to the template you have selected, hover over the template and select Edit. You can preview the template by hovering over it and selecting Preview.
- If you want to select a different template, click the Change Template button.
- If you desire to send yourself a test copy of the notification, click the Send Test Email check-box, and then enter the desired recipient email in the field that appears and click on Send.
- When you have finished setting the details and template for your notification click on the Save & Next button to proceed to the next tab or Save to save and exit (you can exit and return to your in-progress draft at any time).
- On the next screen (the Recipient tab), use the Select Recipients drop-down to indicate if you want to sent the notification to Attendees (those who are listed as attendees/filled out the event registration form) or event Registrants (those who bought the tickets). If you did not configure an event registration form, you will not have any attendee information and you must select recipients. You have the option to send the notification to all registrants or attendees or just to selected attendees or registrants (if you want to send the notification to both attendees and registrants, you will need to send two different notifications/batches - one for attendees and one for registrants). Please Note: you can only send Notifications to contacts who have an email address on their record and whose communication preference for email set to Yes.
- If you have chose to send to Select Attendees or Select Registrants, a blue Select button will appear. Click this to select the registrants/attendees you wish to send to.
- A pop up box will appear in which you can search for recipients/attendees. Fill out the filter criteria at the top of the page (you can search by registration type, who registered the contact, and/or event schedule date) and then click Search (leave the filters blank to pull up all registrants/attendees).
- A list of registrants/attendees who match your search criteria will populate the lower half of the window. Mark the check-box next to the contact(s) you wish to send the notification to, and click on Add to List. The selected recipients will show on the recipients tab.
- You can remove any selected attendees by clicking the Delete button to the right of their name. This will not delete the contacts from your system; it will just remove them from the event notification.
- If you select All Attendees or All Registrants, no names will show on the screen.
- f someone on staff should receive a copy of the event notification (for confirmation that the event notification was sent), enter the email address in the Internal Notification Email box.
- When you have finished selecting recipients, click on the Save button to save and exit (you can return later to your in-progress draft) or the Save & Next button to advance to the next tab.
- On tab #3: Schedule, indicate when the notification will be sent to the selected recipients by indicating either Send Now (event notification will send immediately), Send On (schedule the event notification to send at a particular date/time), or Time before event start (schedule the event notification to send a date/time relative to the event start time).
- Please Note: if this is a repeating event and you have opted to send the notification to All Event Scheduled, then you will only have the option to send on a relative date/time (Time Before Event Start). Select how far in advance of each date you want to send the event and then the system will save this information and automatically send an event notification to each event schedule's attendees or registrants within the specified time frame. For example, let's say we have an open house scheduled for the 1st of every month. If we indicate we want the event notification send 2 days before the event start, then those who have signed up to attend on February 1st will get the event notification sent to them 2 days before (on January 30th). Those signed up to attend on March 1st will get an event notification sent to them 2 days before/on February 27th. Those signed up to attend on April 1st will get an event notification sent to them 2 days before/on March 30th. Etc. This is a handy way to automate the event notification process.
- When you are done, click on Save and the notification will be sent or scheduled to be sent as appropriate.
- If the event notification is scheduled to be sent at a future date/time, you will find it on the Scheduled tab. You can Edit or Delete the schedule notification by clicking the drop down to the right of the notification.
- Once the event invite starts processing/sending, it will be moved to the Processing tab. Once the notification starts sending, it cannot be stopped or deleted (not even by Fundly Support).
- After one or more notifications are sent, you will be able to see ROLL-UP metrics for all notifications sent on the event notification index page including # sent, # bounced, and # opened total across all notifications sent.
- Clicking any of the metric items will bring up a list of contacts who are in that category.
- Clicking on an individual notification in the sent list will bring up a list of metrics just for that one notification.
- Clicking on any of the metric items will bring up a drill down list of recipients in that category.
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