Email Designer

You may have received from us an email about preventing duplicates from going out, just like above.

Why did I receive this?

An email about preventing duplicates from going out automatically gets triggered when the system prevents an email from going to the same person multiple times.

How do I resolve this?

 Check your query. Is it pulling data on or after yesterday, or is it set to pull data from a specific date in the past?

Reasons why this happen: 

1. Altru was down and not sending information
2. An error occurred while retrieving the email

To resolve this issue: 

1. We will need to locate emails that have not automatically gone out. 
2. Check which email template is triggering this notification. You can do it by clicking on the Email Template link directly in the email. It will redirect you to the correct template.
3. You need to check your preview tab. If you see any emails with a yellow icon, click on that email. 
4. Check Altru if there is a note type attached to the constituent record the email address is attached.
5. If not – you can manually resent the email in SGS by clicking the email and then clicking the Send Test Email button.

7. A dialog will appear with the recipient’s email address and a checkbox to attach the note type in Altru.

8. In most cases, manually sending these emails will remove the issue.

I have tried that and am still receiving an alert. What should I do?

Please email us at support@socialgoodsoftware.com so we can further look into this. 

Give your emails a professional look using these email settings. You can customize your marketing and transactional emails so they will be easy to read and relevant to your customers while you make your brand known.

Grouping Key in Social Good Software

The Grouping Key is not optional. It is a function that is needed when removing duplicates from your data. It uses the first item in your duplicate data to send the email and ignore the duplicate rows if you did not configure the grouping key. 

The grouping key is used to group items together and be able to use the specific columns from your duplicate rows. By grouping the emails by the System record ID, we prevent the Email Designer from sending more than one email for the same sales order. Typically, we group the emails by the System record ID or the email address.

If we did not group the emails by the System record ID, multiple of them would go out to the same constituent outlined by the red box below:

Grouped fields in Social Good Software

Grouped fields are data points that you want to display in your email. For example, your query may include the Transaction dates, Lookup ID, Constituent/First Name, Email Address, Sales Order Item/Quantity, etc. 

You may not want to display all those fields in your email. With the Grouping fields, you can select what your constituent will see in the email related to their purchase. 

Refer below to see the grouped fields in an email where a program name, start date, start time, net amount, and quantity are selected and added to a grid:

Email Settings with the use of Grid

The Grid allows you to add a table to the email. In the above example, the email is for a program event. The organization wanted to display the program description, quantity, cost, and the total amount of the sales order. It is possible by selecting the fields in Grouped fields setting (refer below):

If there are no grouped fields, you cannot create a Grid. There is an alert when you are inside the Grid settings “No grouped fields found”.

Do I have to use grouped fields and grids?

The short answer is no. Grouped fields are an optional feature. 

When might I want to use these features?

The best time to use the Grouped fields and Grid is when there is a possibility that the email will pull in multiple purchases such as tickets and memberships. It will be easier for your constituents to see the breakdown of what they purchased with the most relevant information. 

Requirements:

• You have an email created in Social Good Software.
• You have written a query for your email that include these two (2) required fields:
  • Members\Constituents\First name
  • Members\Constituents\Constituents Record.

Note: There are two first names in the output fields because the first one is for the body of the email and the other one is for the linked digital membership card.

• You already assigned a membership level to a membership card.

Adding digital membership cards to your email

1: Go to the Email Designer. Click on the email template you prepared and proceed to Settings. 

2: In Settings, you need to set up the Required and Customizations sections properly. Make sure each item has a green check next to them cause it indicates that you have already configured it correctly.

3: To create the digital membership card link, first, click on the little gear in the Grouped Fields section and enable the following:

• Members\Constituent\First name
• Members\Constituent\System record ID

4: Proceed to the Grid section for the merge field of the first name and the link to the digital membership card. Select the Grid and click on the Load default for the merge field and the link to show up. Save once done.

5: Save the changes you made in the Settings and proceed to the Designer tab.

6: On the lower left side of the window, click on the Grouped field dropdown. Drag the %grid% into the body of the email and Save.

7: Go to the Preview tab to check the changes made to the email. You can also try the membership card link if it works.

Summary

Grid allows us to create a link to digital membership cards for each member on membership and add it to the email. The email is going to the primary member, so we want to display all the members who are part of that membership. In that way, all members can download their digital membership card.

Contact us through our support channel if you have any questions.

Do you have members who auto-renew more than once? Or a monthly membership program that requires an email to go out to members monthly? Keep on reading to learn how to use the relative to date frequency option in your email settings to send the same email on a specific date you want it to be. 

If you want to use the relative to date option for an email, you will need a specific date like the date of the membership renewal, the date of purchase, or anything with a date. We recommend that you use the auto-renew query prepared by Social Good Software.

Note that there are many kinds of emails with different purposes based on the needs of an organization, so Social Good Software supports three types of emails. 

Email Frequency settings 

You can find the Email Frequency settings on the email settings page under the option Frequency. The frequency automatically defaults to sent out immediately.

1. Frequency – Immediately 

• This option will send the email immediately after you create it. 
• The immediate option requires a note type in the query to know that you sent out an email.

Learn about how to create a note type for a sales order query

2. Frequency – Specific time 

• You can set the time when you want your emails to go out. 
• Note type is also needed to know that you sent an email at a specified time.

Learn about how to create a note type for a membership query

3. Frequency – Relative to date 

• You need to add to the query specifically on the output fields the purchase date, transaction date, expiration date, or another Relative Field. 
• This option does not require a note type in the query but needs a date like the renewal date, date of purchase, and so on to send out an email relative to the date.
• A note type is still required in the email settings to create a note in Altru that the email already went out.

Do you need to email the same person multiple times?

Read How to bypass a single email limit per email type.

Summary

Sending emails can be at the very moment, at a specific time, or relative to date. Depending on which frequency option you select, you will either need a note type in the query or a date in the output field.

If you have additional questions, please reach us through support@socialgoodsoftware.com. We are always happy to help!

If you are done with your emails and are now ready to send out all your outbound messages, the email automation of Email Designer is very helpful. All you have to do is to enable the automation function for it to send messages on your behalf. Make sure you follow the steps below for the best result.

Email automation process:

1: Log in to your Social Good Software account.

2: Click on the Email Designer on the left side of the navigation.

3: Find the email template where you want to enable the email automation function. In this example, we will be using Tickets Sold Today.

4: Click on the “Settings” option on the upper right side of the window.

5: In the settings section, you will see the option “Start sending emails?”. Enable this function and click on the “Save Settings” button.

6: You can go to Preview to see all the emails you are currently sending and the Activity tab for the emails already sent out.

Summary

Before you turn on the email automation function, make sure that you troubleshoot it first. Double check your email and edit it if necessary. Once the automation function is enabled, the Social Good Software will monitor the query you built and send out emails every 5 minutes on your behalf.

Please reach us through our support channel if you have concerns or questions. We are always happy to help!