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August 6, 2007 |
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Table of Contents
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July's Cooler Tips Newsletter |
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Click
here to go to the most recent Cooler Tips. |
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RSVP Lesson 1 |
The "Yep, I'll Be There" Method
If all that you need is a list of people who will be attending your event, let's do this the easy way.
Build your edition as an invitation. Then near the end of the invitation place either a text link or a graphic button that basically says, "RSVP - Yes, I'll Be There". |
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Lesson 1: Yep, I'll Be There Continued... |
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RSVP Lesson 2 |
The "Meat, Fish, or Vegetarian" Method
Sometimes just knowing that someone is attending is not enough information. There are times you might have several sessions available from which to choose or, at a dinner, you might really have meat, fish, and vegetarian
options. |
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Lesson 2: Meat, Fish, or Vegetarian Continued... |
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This edition of CoolerTips was written by Stephen Shore, founder of
STADIS.net - A Permission-Based Email Marketing Service. |
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Invitation RSVP Lesson 3: The "I need more information" Method |
Sometimes you need LOTS of information back from the people attending your event in order to properly serve them. Here is a place that CoolerEmail can really shine in obtaining and recording this information for you.
Sometimes you need LOTS of information back from the people attending your event in order to properly serve them. You may have to break it down by age, gender, educational level, orchestra vs. balcony seating, time of day, location, and
several other things. Plus, you may need information like their phone number or street address which may not currently be in your database. Here is a place that CoolerEmail can really shine in obtaining and recording this information for
you. In fact, when you collect the information this way, you can have several functions happen as soon as the recipient clicks on the "submit" button:
• The person will be added to a specific attendee list with all of the information entered.
• A web page will be opened thanking them for responding.
• You can send them a thank you email reiterating all the details of the event or giving them details that were not in the original email.
• A notice can be sent to you as each person signs up. (For a small mailing this may be desirable but for a large mailing you probably will want to forgo this.)
And the way this is done is with the "Single Opt-in / Unconfirmed Opt-in" Web Sign-up Form.
CAUTION: CoolerEmail is adamant about our clients only using double opt-in sign-up forms. However, in this case, you are going to embed this form in an email you are sending to recipients who have already
opted-in to receive emails from you. Therefore, there is no reason to use double opt-in for this situation. These people have already opted-in.
Now, the same way that you would put a sign-up form on a web page, you are going to do in an email. Go to the sign-up form wizard and design your form in exactly the same way. If the information you want to collect is already defined, such
as phone number or age, use one of the predefined fields. If you need to collect information that is not predefined, use one of the User Defined Fields. Just make sure that you do two things before you start working on your sign-up form.
First, go to the User Field Definition area in the Master CRM and define all of the fields you want to use before you start to build your sign-up form. (Master CRM ->
Utilities ->
User Fields). Second, create a new, empty List that will contain the people who sign up for your event.
The area to find the sign-up form Wizard is at Help ->
Website Signup Form ->
Start Wizard.
Then just follow these steps:
1) Choose the fields that you want to include and which are mandatory and which are voluntary.
2) Set ALL of the lists to "Not in Form" except for the list that you intend to use to tabulate attendees. This one list should be set as "Automatic".
3) Make sure your email address and point of contact is correct.
4) Chose the colors for your sign-up box. If you are facile with HTML, you can later change the look.
5) In the Wizard Step 4, fill out these options as you desire. The more detailed you are here, the more professional your results will look. Using an immediate Triggered Event can send a confirming email
to the attendee and can even be personalized using all that information you just acquired from him. (We'll talk more about customizing Triggered emails, i.e. auto-responders, next month).
6) After you have generated the form's HTML, you are not done. There are a couple of extra things you must do to make sure that all works well. The following ‹input› tags will need to be included in the
generated code:
‹input type="hidden" name="resetDoubleOptin" value="yes"›
This will allow the second "sign-up" in the same record.
‹input type="hidden" name="allow_update" value="yes"›
This will allow the updates to be made from the email and not just the profile update pages.
‹input type="hidden" name="notificationSubject" value="RSVP to your invitation"›
Let's you know that this is an RSVP and not a new subscriber.
‹input type="hidden" name="thankyou_message" value="Thank your for RSVPing to our event."› or ‹input type="hidden" name="thankyou_message"
value="http://www.yourwebsite.com/RSVPthanks.html"›
Allows you to thank them for RSVPing instead of thanking them for "Subscribing".
7) There is one more thing to do with this HTML code before you are finished. Sadly, the form functionality that makes this all work does not work in all email client programs. Some of your recipients
will just not be able to use this in their email. However, if you include the following HTML line just below the form, when they click on it a web page will open that will work without a problem.
‹a href="URL/r.pl?SessionKey_Placeholder_mrecEnc_Placeholder"›If the above form does not work correctly, click here to open it up in a webpage.‹a›
(In the example above, make sure to replace "URL" with "http://ccc.cooleremail.com")
Drop the HTML code generated by the Sign-up Wizard along with the HTML code in step 6 and followed by the code in step 7 into your edition and you are all set.
Personally, I have used this for pot luck dinners (what dish are you bringing and how many people in your family) and proms (are you attending and what is the name of your date). It works as well as anything on the net works and can save
huge amounts of time and effort.
Neither snow nor rain nor heat...and appointed rounds...
Both you and CoolerEmail want your email message to reach the intended recipients. There is a whole raft of things that we do to make sure that happens. However, sometimes you might be your own worst enemy. There are things you might be
doing that might cause your emails to never make it to their destinations, even with our best efforts. |
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