Marianne Fry Lectures
Now that bookings are open, you need to send an email to all on our email list.
Open this page in a separate window, so you can follow these instructions. [Do that now]
Preparing the email
- Logon to MailChimp and navigate to the Templates section.
- Click on First announcement of lecture template and edit it as appropriate for this year’s lecture.
- In addition to the obvious, you need to edit the link to this year’s lecture details. Go to the lecture details and booking form and copy its URL onto your clipboard.
- Within the email pro forma edit pane, select the link with the text the full details on our website, select the link icon in the tool bar (4th from left), paste the correct link into the web address field and select Insert.
- You can preview the pro forma if you wish. Finally, Save & Close and then Save and close.
- You now need to do an actual test of the mailing. Navigate to the Campaigns section and Create campaign. Name it Test of 2017 lecture first announcement and select a campaign type of Regular. Create the campaign. [NB You need to create a new campaign rather than replicate last year’s. This is because a replicated campaign uses the same email and does not load the latest pro forma which you have just updated.]
- As recipient, you only need this test to go to yourself. Select the MFL mailing list and then a Saved or pre-built segment and choose yourself or whoever. You might need to create a new segment if the desired recipient does not have a segment.
- Choose Next bottom right.
- Give the Email the desired subject line which you can copy from the pro forma, e.g. 2016 Marianne Fry Lecture – Fear, Love and Learning by Dr Belinda Harris The From name is Marianne Fry Lectures Administration and the From email address is mailings@mariannefrylectures.uk
- We are going to personalise the email so it addresses the recipient by their first name. Tick the box Personalise the “To” field and specify a merge tag of *|FIRST_NAME|* You can do this by copying the bold text into the field (it both starts and ends with *).
- Choose Next bottom right.
- Choose the First announcement of lecture template from the Saved templates menu. Then choose Next bottom right.
- Review the checks and then choose Send bottom right.
- Check you are only sending to the correct number of recipients and then Send now.
- Wait for the email to arrive and then check it for correctness. Check that the logo image is displaying correctly, that the email addresses you by name and that the lecture details link takes you to the lecture details on the web site.
- If necessary repeat the above until the email is correct.
Sending out the email announcement to the full email list
Within MailChimp:
- It is a good idea to manually add the speaker to the MFL email list (if not already on the list), so they get the email.
- Navigate to the list of campaigns and on the campaign for the successful test, use the drop-down menu extreme right to replicate it.
- This time select the whole list. Then choose Next bottom right.
- On the Campaign info screen, edit the Campaign name to be 2017 lecture first announcement
- Because you have replicated the test campaign the other fields should already be correct and when you select Next you should see the request template already selected.
- When you get to the You’re all set to send! page, check that the recipient count is correct for the full list.
- Select Send bottom right and confirm Send now.
- Wait for your copy of the email to arrive and confirm all is well.
- Now clean up by going to the list of campaigns, selecting the test campaigns and deleting them.
(Instructions test driven by Tony 10 April 2017)
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