Pre- and Post-Show Emails

You must be using the dotdigital integration to use this feature – if you're not using the integration but would like to start, have a read of this article.

Spektrix can automatically send emails to your customers before and after they attend a show. You can use as many different email templates as you like, meaning that you can send out important info for each of your shows and then collect post show thoughts and feelings from your customers after they've all gone home.

In this article, we'll cover:

• Setting up merge fields in dotdigital
• Creating email templates in dotdigital
• Setting send rules in Spektrix

Set up merge fields in dotdigital

Spektrix sends the Event name and Instance date to dotdigital when sending a Pre-/Post-Show Email.  You can use these dates in the email to personalise it or drive dynamic content.

• Log into your Dotdigital account
• Click Contacts > Contact Data Fields
• Select the My data fields tab
• Click the New data field button
• Set the following configuration options for event name
  • Name - EVENTNAME
  • Data type - Text
  • Default value: [leave blank]
  • Access - This data label is private
• Choose your preferred folder to save to if required
• Click Save
• Repeat this process for the following field names:
  • EVENTDATESHORT (Text type, other options as above)
  • EVENTDATELONG (Text type, other options as above)
  • EVENTDAYOFWEEK (Text type, other options as above)
  • EVENTTIME (Text type, other options as above)

To use these fields in an email type @EVENTNAME@ or @EVENTTIME@ wherever you wish to display those fields. This works in the body of the email or in the subject lines too.  Examples of how these will display in emails are as follows:

For UK/IE clients:

You can use these fields to drive dynamic content – meaning that one template will show different information depending on the values of the merge fields.  See our article on Dynamic Content for more information.

NOTE: these specific merge fields will only work correctly in emails sent using the Pre- and Post-show Email tool, and cannot be used to add this information to other integrated emails.

Setting up your email templates

• Log into your dotdigital account and create a new campaign
• Set the "subject" and "from" details as normal (or use merge fields)
• In the email builder create the email you wish to send to people
• Save the campaign
• Go to My Campaigns, select the campaign and choose Copy to Library to save the campaign as a template
• Repeat these steps to create as many emails templates as you wish

Setting up your send rules

Now that you have your templates - you need to tell Spektrix when to send the emails and who should get them.

• In Insights & Mailings, navigate to Mailings > Pre and post show emails
• On the Settings tab, click Edit
• In Email Addresses for confirmation, set the email address that sent notifications should go to. This address will receive confirmation that the emails have sent. You can have multiple addresses separated by commas.
• In Global Customer Criteria you can set a filter to ensure that only people matching the rules specified here will receive emails. Drag the appropriate metrics into the dotted criteria area to apply the rules

On the Pre- and Post-show tabs you can set a series of 'fall through' rules that dictate which Instances trigger an email and when.

• Click Edit
• Click Add Rule
• Give the rule a name to identify it in the list
• Fill in the time you wish to send the emails and the number of days before or after the Instance that you wish to send them
• Click Next and in the Event Criteria section, specify which events fall into this rule

• Click Next and you can specify which customers the email will send to, remembering  that only one email will be sent per Instance, so excluding certain customers means they will never get an email for that Instance
• Click OK when finished and you can now specify more rules or move your rules up or down the list
• Click Save when done
• You can preview which Instances fall into your rules by clicking the Preview button – use this to check that Instances are appearing in the correct rule
• You will see a blue information icon next to any Instances that may need attention – hover over it to see more information

You could also use Attributes to send different templates for different events – for instance you may wish to create different templates that up-sell different shows and areas of your theatre. You could then control which events use which templates by using Attributes in the event criteria section of the Pre-Show Email rules. 

NOTE: Pre-show Emails are queued in dotdigital at 11pm the night before they're scheduled to send. Any orders made after that time won't generate a Pre-show Email, as they send as a batch all at once.

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If you have any further questions about Pre- and Post-Show Emails, please don't hesitate to get in touch with the Spektrix Support team to discuss further.