Launch email query
Email Designer
Implementation Guide – eTickets
A complete implementation guide that helps set up your eTickets.
All procedures in this document are compatible with the SGS app version V1.3.3.
In summary, this document covers the following:
- Assigning Roles and Permissions in Altru
- Creation of queries in Altru
- Configuring the Social Good Software application (app.socialgoodsoftware.com)
- Testing and enabling sending emails
For other concerns and related articles, please visit help.socialgoodsoftware.com or email us at implementation@socialgoodsoftware.com.
Please reach us at support@socialgoodsoftware.com for your questions, clarifications, and other concerns. We are always happy to help!
Membership Card IDs walkthrough
Social Good Software helps you create Digital Membership Card IDs for your organization that your members can download in PDF form and save to their Apple Wallet and Google Pay. To help you set up your Membership Card ID, we will first identify the feature of your membership card and then discuss some variables to understand when to use them.
Membership Card ID Settings
1: View all options available to set up your Digital Membership Card IDs by logging in to your Social Good Software account. Proceed to Development, then Membership Cards.
2: Click Add Membership Card to create a new card or select the existing Digital Membership Card that you want to set up.
3: You can now view all the options to set up your membership cards. This guide will focus on Membership ID, Constituent Membership ID, and Custom field.
Custom Field
- It is only available on iOS and android.
- The value you enter by typing it in (Great for member benefits).
- Only works on the back of the digital cards (Not the web version)
Constituent Membership ID
- It is the Look-up ID for the constituent in Altru.
- We need to reference this as the membership so the label says “Membership ID” even though it’s the lookup ID.
Membership ID
- It is the value attached to the membership.
We hope this guide helps you distinguish between the two Membership IDs in your Digital Membership Card and be able to determine when you can use the Custom Field. If you have questions, please reach us through our support channel or email support@socialgoodsoftware.com. We are always happy to help!
Why am I receiving an email about preventing duplicates from going out?
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:
- Altru was down and not sending information
- An error occurred while retrieving the email
To resolve this issue:
- We will need to locate emails that have not automatically gone out.
- 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.
- You need to check your preview tab. If you see any emails with a yellow icon, click on that email.
- Check Altru if there is a note type attached to the constituent record the email address is attached.
- If not – you can manually resent the email in SGS by clicking the email and then clicking the Send Test Email button.
- A dialog will appear with the recipient’s email address and a checkbox to attach the note type in Altru.
- 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.
How to add content to the Email Designer from Word Document
Email Designer is an easy-to-use tool that helps customize your emails by using its different functions when adding content. It will help you create an email that can align with your organization’s brand and style, which help distinguish your organization from the others. To take full advantage of this application, we prepared an easy-to-follow guide for you:
Reminder: Don’t forget to click the Save button as you continue to work with your email to save your progress.
Guide in Adding Content to the Email Designer
1: Upload images
- Before adding an image to your email, see that it is within the standard size the designer supported.
- Once you have your image ready, grab the image icon from the right side of the Email Designer and place it on the header or anywhere you want it to be in your email.
- Double-click the default image and select the image you want to add.
- Click upload image twice to add pictures from your computer’s local drive.
- Double-click the image once uploaded to add it to your email.
2: Create images for the email design with size restrictions.
- If you prepared an image with a size bigger than the one required by the email designer, screenshot your favorite part of the image to adjust its size and add it to your email, rather than adding the whole picture that will eventually get cropped.
3: Copy and paste content
- You cannot copy and paste formatted texts from word documents to Email Designer, so use the following command to paste without formatting:
- MAC: Command + Shift + V
- Windows : Control + Shift + V
4: Reformat Plain Text
You can reformat plain texts by selecting the word/s that you want to edit, then use the following functions:
- For more functions to edit texts, proceed to the upper right side of the designer and click Style Manager.
- Style Manager > Dimension
- Under Dimension, you can adjust the distance of each element in your email.
- Style Manager > Typography
- Typography helps you change and adjust the font you use in your email. It also has the option to change your font color, style, alignment, and spacing.
- Style Manager > Decorations
- It is to change the background of the texts.
5: Add a button
- On the upper right side of the designer, open Blocks and click and drag the Button icon to the place you want it to be in your email.
- Go to Typography under Style Manager to edit the font style and color of the button and Decorations to change the background and border color.
6: Add bullet points and links.
- Double-click the text box to make some functions for text formatting appear. You can insert or remove bullets by clicking the bullet function.
- To insert a link, you have to highlight the text/s and click the link icon or do the command ctrl+L. A dialog box will pop out where you can add the link under the URL.
7: Test the email sending
- Proceed to the Preview tab to check the actual email you just created. You can also send a test email to your email address to see if all are set and ready.
- To send a test email, go to the Preview tab, then scroll down to the bottom to click the Send Test button.
- A dialog box will pop out where you can add your email address for the test email.
- Check your email address for the final output so you can make necessary adjustments to your email.
Your email is now ready to send out. Please reach our support channel if you have questions or clarifications about this topic. We are always happy to help!
Email Settings Explained: Grouping Key, Grouping Fields & Grid
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.
How to add digital membership cards to your email
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.
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.
How to handle the delivery of emails, bounced emails, and complaints
Introduction
There are times that when sending out emails with the Email Designer, some of them might get delivered, bounce, or have a complaint filed. It can happen for a few reasons, but the most common is not getting the correct email addresses at the time of purchase with Altru. We recommend that you set up the email validation service with your Altru account and follow this guide on how to handle the delivery of emails, bounced emails, and complaints to manage any email concerns you have accordingly.
Bounce messages
Sending emails through Email Designer is not always perfect. At times it will bounce because of various reasons like invalid email addresses due to typos, the account is no longer active, or an incomplete email address. You can handle bounced emails by following the steps below.
1: Go to your Social Good Software account and proceed to Email Designer.
2: Click on the email template you want to set up and proceed to Settings.
3: Whenever an email bounces, it will go back to the From Email Address with a notification containing details of why the email bounced and other information you might need. You need to monitor the origin of your emails to capture bounce messages and correct them.
4: Click the Resend Email link. It will redirect you to the email you are trying to send to your customers. You can also see the status of your email and information related to it.
5: You can resend the message and correct the recipient’s email address by clicking the Send Email button. A dialog box will pop out where you can type in the correct email address and click Send Email. With this, you will be able to send the email to the appropriate person and correct any mistakes before the message goes out.
6: You can check your recent email sent by going to the Activity tab.
Complaints
There is a chance that your email sent is flagged as spam. It might happen because the recipient did not give their consent to receive this kind of notification, the information is not relevant to the person, or you sent the email to the wrong email address. We recommend doing an email validation before your customers submit their orders. That way, you can avoid delivering the email to the incorrect email address.
Go to the Activity tab to check if the email you sent was delivered. The From Address in your email template will always receive the complaint notification where you can check the complaint details.
Resending email
There are circumstances when customers ask for help because they can’t find their tickets or did not receive a reminder. Learning how to resend an email using the Email Designer will be helpful in this situation.
1: Go to the Activity tab of the Email Designer.
2: Click on the calendar and select the date you sent the email.
3: Do command+F for MAC or Ctrl+F for Windows. Type in the email address you are looking for, and click on Resend Email.
4: another way to resend an email is to go to your query in Altru and remove the note type on the sales order so that it will kick off a new email. Note that if the email address is wrong, it will still be delivered to the incorrect email address.
Note: Only original emails that you sent out are the ones attached to Altru
Summary
We emphasized that you check the origin of your email or the From Email Address. That way, you will know if there are undelivered emails, bounced emails, or complaints and handle them appropriately. Please reach us through our support channel if you have questions or clarifications.
How the relative to date email setting works
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!
Auto disable emails when queries change in Altru
- Prevents you from making mistakes with queries which could end up emailing the same person multiple times
- Auto turn off the email for you so you have time to review the changes on the query
- Notify you of the change and to which email the change was made
- View the history of the changes in the SQL using an excel or CSV file
Summary
We recommend temporarily disabling the email before making changes to the query to not receive alerts and so they won’t get turned off automatically. Once disabled, you can modify and review it before re-enabling it again.