When you need to communicate to your donors or members regarding payment or a payment agreement, go to the menu Communications, where you have the option to create your texts.
You can create and edit texts or Communications that OnlineFundraising sends out on your behalf based on specific triggers/events (subscription/single payment/updated agreement), thank you email, receipt email, confirmation email. We refer to them as "notifications" and "confirmation" and are sent out in connection with a change that is to take place or has just taken place.
The Overview
Under Communication, you will find an overview of all of your communication and you can create a new one or search among the existing. On the left (under the headline, Communications), you will find your different groups of communications and on the left a colour-codet template overview. When a new template is created (which is not supposed to inherit from another communication) it is given a colour-code, representing the status- Green is active, Yellow- work in progress. If the circle is empty, the template inherits from a Parent Communication. Mouse-over the empty circle and the little arrow will show which Communication it enherits from. Clicking one of the dots will take you directly to that specifik communication where you can edit or activate it.
If you mouseover a Communication the Name on that and any parents will be shown in bold. It is possible to edit the Communication Name directly in the overview by clicking the pen, when mousing over the line.
Domains in use
When you clik on the button - "Domains in use" you can see which domains you are using in your Communications and see if they are validated. If you click on a domain in the list, the Communications using this Domain will be highlighted.
Warning notifications
Red warning notification in front of the Communication name indicates that the Domain is not validated. See this article for a guide to validation your email domain.
Yellow warning notification in front of Communication name indicates that communication is still using the old editor.
A Communication and its entities
Clicking on a specific Communication you will see a list of different triggers/events. which are attached to every Communication inclusive creation date. To the far right it is possible to see which channels are activated for that specific Communication, On-screen thank you on your website, e-mail, SMS.
If you need to change parent Communication, you can do if on the Communication by using the green button - "Change parent".
On the Button "Delete Communication" you can permanently delete a communivation. If the Communication was used on any Subscriptions, the default Communication will be default.
How to create tempaltes and how to use them
We recommend that you create a standard template with the most frequent texts. In this way, you will have a template of how your confirmations and notifications should look in the form of Signup, Ongoing, Changes, and Retention.
You create your standard template under Default on the left side by clicking new. That means you do not have to rewrite your texts every time you create a new Communication .
In the example above, the "moon" is e.g. inherited from the "Earth" which in turn is inherited from the "Sun". In this way, the "Sun" is the standard template which everything else can inherit from.
If you have different types of memberships with the same setup, but with each target group, you can create an overall template for "Membership" and then create different types of memberships, which are inherited from "Membership" and then customize your texts as needed.
Activating and deactivating texts
When you activate a Communication text, the icon will change color to green. This function helps you with giving an overview of which events and associated texts are active and inactive.
- Editing On Screen message (WYSIWYG editor)
- The visule editor (text, sender email, name, subject & pre-header)
- SMS editor
The Copy/Paste function enables you to copy everything from one Communication to another.
Editing Emails
If you want to edit your email, you have the option to edit your email in a visual editor (for example Similar to Mailchimp), or you can build your email from HTML.
The Areas Signup, Ongoing, Changes, and Retention
- Signup: The primary texts are those that take place in Signup. It can be a non-transactional form (such as a signature collection), a donation, a fixed payment, or a membership that has been created, where you want to send a confirmation of it.
- Ongoing: the texts related to recurring payments. This is if you want to send an email or text message every time a new payment arrives.
- Changes: when you need to confirm that there has been a change in Onboarding. It may be that a change has been made in a payment agreement - e.g. if someone calls to change the frequency of a payment agreement.
- Retention covers notifications sent out to a regular donor when a payment method fails or when a payment card has an ongoing expiration.
Merge Tags
As a part of your text, you can insert different codes that personalize your text. For example, you can write "Dear {{firstName}}, thank you for your support" to refer to the first name of the donor. We have defined some different standards that, among other things, help your CRM system to read the correct variables. You also have the option to use your variables.