FAQ: Invite Emails & Communications

 

How do I change the content of the Invite and Confirmation Emails?

In Emails click on the 'Invite' and 'Confirmation' buttons. This will open the email editor where you can change the text of the emails, add images etc.

 

Seatrobot inserts your organization's generic email header image automatically above every email (and sign-up web page). To change the email header, click the  'Email Header' image to upload an email header image of your choice. Images greater than 600px wide are re-sized with correct aspect ratio down to 600px. Images smaller than 600px wide are left as-is and centered above your email / web page.

Tip #1: remember to send yourself a test email any time you edit one of these emails. Click the 'Send test email' button bottom left of the email editor.

Tip #2: remember to 'Save' any changes you make to your emails before closing the edit box. Any unsaved changes will be lost.

Tip #3: remember to edit the subject lines of your emails to make them recognizably different from the default subject lines.


How do I add images to Invite emails?

Seatrobot automatically inserts your organization's default email header image into all your event emails. To change the email header image for your specific event, in Emails click on the Email Header image and upload an email header image of your choice.

 

 

Images greater than 600px wide are re-sized with correct aspect ratio down to 600px. Images smaller than 600px wide are left as-is and centered above your email / web page.

You can add any image into the body of any email. Open the email you want to edit in Emails. Place your cursor into the appropriate position in your email and click on the 'picture' icon on the edit bar.

 

Remember that some email programs may strip the images from your emails after you send them, so try not to display important event information like dates and times using images.

Tip: remember to send yourself a test email any time you edit one of these emails. Click the 'Send test email' button bottom left of the email editor.


Can I copy and paste text / content from another program into Seatrobot Emails?

For best results, create all email content inside the email editors in Seatrobot. This way you have maximum control over formatting, images and the insertion of event macros.

Remember that the emails you send will look slightly different to every recipient depending on their email client. For example, some email programs (like Gmail) strip out most text formatting from emails and replace it with their own defaults regardless of how you formatted your email fonts in Seatrobot.

Content pasted into the Seatrobot email editor from other programs may carry with it some 'hidden' formatting and styling in its code. This can affect how your email looks when it is received. This is especially true of Microsoft Word. If you think you are having trouble removing stubborn formatting from pasted text in your email, you can try to remove the 'hidden' formatting by using the 'remove font style' button in the editor. Select ALL the content of your email, then click this button.

To give yourself more control over the styling of your emails in Seatrobot when having to paste text into a Seatrobot email, strip out all formatting of the text before you paste it in.

Sometimes you can do this in the program your original text comes from, by selecting the text and choosing a 'remove formatting' option.

In Microsoft Word, selecting all the text you want to copy and then clicking Ctrl+Spacebar removes the formatting. Do this, then copy the text and paste into Seatrobot.

Sometimes you may want to paste your text into a plain text program first to remove formatting. Here is a good article on how and why you might need to do this when copying and pasting text into online programs like Seatrobot.

 

How to Remove the Formatting in Word Documents

 

If you paste content into an email, always send yourself a test email before using the email in an Invite.

Warning: You cannot copy and paste the Seatrobot merge fields (macros) - they paste only as graphics, and do not insert the info into your recipient's email if you do!!!!


I edited one of the default emails and now the event info and guest names are not showing up when I send an Invite. What’s the problem?

While editing your email you have probably deleted the Seatrobot macros. Macros are like merge fields - they represent content from outside the email, (like a recipient's name) and insert it, email by email, as the emails go out. In the Seatrobot email editor, they appear like little colored bubbles with the info they represent written inside.

While editing an invite email, you can re-insert any of the macros by positioning your cursor where you want a piece of information to appear, then choosing the appropriate macro from one of the dropdowns on the right of the edit bar. They are grouped by type: Seating Package Fields, Buttons & Links, Event Fields, 3rd Party Fields, and Guest Fields.

Tip! There are macros to represent all the different bits of event info you added during event setup, like Venue Name, Start Time, etc. It's a good habit to use macros to place this info into your emails rather than re-typing the actual details long form. This way, if you change any of your event info later, all your emails will automatically update with the new correct information.

Note: You cannot copy and paste macros from the body of one of your emails into another email in another event. You also cannot copy text and macro images from a test email you have received back into an email you are editing; for best results, add the macros each time you create an email - or use the macros that are already in place in the default email templates.


How do I send a general announcement email to my guests?

Sometimes you might want to send an email to your guests outside of the invite process. Say for example you change the start-time of your event and you want to inform all your guests.

Go to Emails. Create a new Custom Email clicking the +Custom Email button and selecting from the options that appear.

You can choose to send your email to groups of guests like 'All Confirmed', 'All Unconfirmed' etc. and by guest tag. You can also choose to send to individuals or to Contact Lists.


How do I re-send an Invite to contacts I’ve already invited?

You can re-send emails (invites or confirmations) to guests in three ways:

Re-send emails to guests by their registration status.

Go to Status. On the right sidebar you will see totals for all your different guest-types (Direct / Tickets / Open RSVP / 3rd Party).

Clicking the email envelope icon next to any group total will open up the last email they received (invite or confirmation). You can edit the email if you wish, and then re-send it right there. This email will go out to all contacts in that group.

#Tip: re-sending this way sends the currently saved versions of the Default Invite and Confirmation emails. If you wish, you can edit both those in Event Setup > Event Info first, then come to the Event Status page and go through the steps above.

 

Re-send emails to guests in a specific Invite:

You can also re-send an invite or confirmation email to groups of contacts in a specific reservation. On the right hand main page section of the Status page you will see all Active Invites grouped by Seating / Ticket Package. Click on the type of Package your guest was sent to reveal all Invites of that type.

Clicking the seating package reveals all the invites sent with that package.

For each Invite, you will see a badge containing the numbers of guests in each status: Outstanding (pink), Confirmed (green), Declined & Bounced (red), and Waitlisted blue)

 

Clicking any Pink, Green or Blue badge with a positive number in it will open the email editor for the last email sent to that group. You can edit the email and re-send it to all guests in the group from there.

 

Re-send emails to individual guests:

In Guest List click on the first name of any guest opens up the Edit Guest Details modal. From there you can click the ‘Save & re-Send Email’ button and that guest will be sent a copy of the last email they received (Confirmed guests are sent their confirmation email, Outstanding and Declined guests are sent their original invite, and Waitlisted guests are sent their waitlist confirmation email.


A guest confirmed they would attend my event. Can I just send them a Confirmation instead of an Invite?

Yes. Go to Emails and create an Invite as normal. Select the Contacts button to add your guest to the Invite. After adding the contact, click on the 'manage email options' link. This will display a list of all the contacts in the invite, along with checkbox options for 'Ignore' and 'Auto Confirm', as in the image below:

The Ignore checkbox prevents the contact from receiving emails. The Auto Confirm checkbox adds the contact as confirmed to the guest list and sends a confirmation email, unless the Ignore box is checked.

Using these checkboxes, you can specify whether a guest receives an invite and confirmation email, just a confirmation email, is ignored completely, or receives no emails but is added as confirmed to the guest list.

In the examples above,

  1. Perry will be added to the guest list without an invite (Auto Confirm checked) but will receive a confirmation email ( Ignore unchecked)

  2. Karla will not receive the invite and will not be added to the guest list (Ignore checked, Auto Confirm unchecked)

  3. Kopnid was flagged in the Contacts database as 'Do Not Mail', so his Ignore checkbox was checked automatically and he cannot receive emails. By checking his Auto Confirm box he will be added as confirmed to the guest list.

  4. Paul will also be added as confirmed to the guest list and will also not receive either an invite or a confirmation email (Ignore and Auto Confirm checked).


One of my guests received more than one Invite to an event. Doesn’t Seatrobot check for duplicates?

Yes! Seatrobot checks for duplicates by unique email address.

When you create an invite SeatRobot checks all the email addresses in that invite, plus all other invites already saved and / or launched. If it sees an email duplicated it will remove that contact from the latest invite.

Similarly if a guest has already purchased a ticket to your event via the Tickets page or registered via the Open RSVP page, you will not be able to invite a contact with that same email address to that event.

So why did your guest receive two invites to the same event? The most likely explanation is that this contact appears more than once in your database with different email addresses. If this happens Seatrobot will count both entries as separate contacts.

Note: if your Seatrobot system is linked to another CMS, like Salesforce, for contact management, it's possible that a single contact may end up with two different unique ID's in that system. This can occasionally result in a duplicate invite.


One of my guests appears twice in the Guest List for my event. I didn’t invite him twice. What happened?

This can happen in theory if your guest purchased a ticket to your event after they had already accepted a free invite you sent them personally by email. To protect your revenue, Seatrobot allows registration through ticketing even for guests who have registered already for free. However, if your guest registered first via ticketing, you would not be able to include him in a subsequent free email Direct Invite from Seatrobot.

How do I keep track of the emails that have been sent and the results?

Every time you create and send an invite from the Emails page, a record of that invite is stored in the Email History table. It displays the type of invite, the invite name, the person who created the invite, the number of contacts included in the invite and the time it was launched, and the number of 'accepts' or 'declines' (where appropriate).