We know a lot of time can be spent pulling customer data from Spektrix or sending integrated emails on a regular basis. That's where Customer List Schedules come in! Customer List Schedules can be used to automate the running of Customer Lists for many different purposes. Some examples would be:
- Allowing an external partner (such as a producer or promoter) to download a list of people attending their event on an on-demand basis
- Regularly delivering a list of new members to your development team
- Sending a daily thank you email to everyone who donated yesterday
In this article, we'll cover:
- How Customer List Schedules work
- Setting up a Customer List Schedule
- Setting up access to download Customer Lists
- The Partner Companies Interface
- Further reading
How Customer List Schedules work
There are two ways Customer List Schedules can be run: either as a schedule or on demand. Which one you choose will depend on what purpose your Schedule is going to serve.
Run as schedule
Choosing Run as schedule allows you to:
- Regularly deliver a Customer List (via a download link) to members of your team, or external partners such as a promoters and producers
- Regularly send a Customer List to dotdigital to send automated emails
Run on demand
Choosing Run on demand allows you to:
- Give external partners permission to run a Customer List on demand using the Partner Companies Interface
NOTE: if you're delivering a Customer List to an external partner by email or have made it available to run on demand, you'll need to make sure the recipient can access it by creating a Spektrix user account which gives them access to download their Customer Lists. See the section below on setting up access to download Customer Lists for more info.
You can set a Schedule to use one or both of these methods, and to send the Customer List to a range of different users.
There also two actions that can be performed by a Customer List Schedule: either delivering a Customer List, or sending an Integrated Email.
A single Customer List Schedule can contain just one Customer List or a number of Customer Lists – the schedule itself deals with how and when the Customer Lists are delivered or used send an integrated email. You then choose which Customer Lists to include and, if they're being delivered, who receives them.
This means you could, for example, create a single Customer List Schedule that's configured to run at 10am every day and which delivers three different Customer Lists to three different members of your team. Alternatively, you could create three individual Customer List Schedules, each configured to run at 10am every day, and each of which delivers one Customer List to one member of your team.
Setting up a Customer List Schedule
Customer List Schedules can be set up in Insights & Mailings > Customer List Schedules > Customer List Schedules. You'll see any existing Customer List Schedules listed here and can search for a specific Schedule by name, action (whether it's delivering a Customer List or sending an integrated email), or the Customer List it contains. To create a new Schedule, click the Add button:
There are two pages for you to complete when creating a new Customer List Schedule – Basic Details and then, depending on the action you've chosen, either Customer Lists or Integrated Emails.
Basic Details
- Name: give your Schedule a clear and descriptive name, e.g. Daily Attendees
- Description: though this field is optional, we'd recommend completing it to make it clear to other members of your team what the purpose of this Schedule is, e.g. Customers attending workshops today
- Action: choose either Deliver Customer List or Send Integrated Email from the dropdown
As explained above, the next two options determine how your Customer List Schedule is going to operate. Once you have chosen one or both of these options, you need to either fill in the rest of the Basic Details, or move onto the next page.
- Run on demand: if you only tick this option then you don’t need to fill in anything else on the Basic Details page; hit Next to continue
- Run as schedule: if you tick this option then you need to fill in the remaining fields on the Basic Details page, even if you have also ticked Run on demand
- Run from: choose when you want the Schedule to become active. This defaults to the current day, but you can change it if you want the Schedule to start running on a particular date
- Run until: fill this in if you only want your Schedule to run for a specific period of time. Leave it blank if you want the Schedule to run indefinitely
- Occurs: choose the frequency at which the Schedule runs
- Recurs every: this changes depending on what you choose in the Occurs field
- Daily: choose whether you want to send a Customer List every day (pick 1 day) or every few days (pick the number of days from the list)
- Monthly (specific day): choose which day of the month you want to send a Customer List, and whether you want to send it every month or every few months
- Weekly: choose the day or days of the week that you want to send a Customer List, and whether you want to send it every week or every few weeks
- Monthly: use this if you want to send Customer Lists on the same day of the month, e.g. on the first Monday of the month
- Daily frequency: pick the time that you want emails to send
- Runs before 08:00: pick this to ensure the Customer List is in recipients’ inboxes before 8am
- Runs every: use this to send Customer Lists at regular intervals, such as every hour. You can also set start and end times for this frequency
- Runs once at: pick a specific hour at which you want a Customer List to be sent
Once you have filled everything in, click Next to move through to either the Customer Lists or Integrated Emails page, where you can choose the specific Customer List(s) you want to include.
Customer Lists
If you've chosen Deliver Customer List from the Action dropdown list, you'll see the Customer Lists page:
Here you can choose which Customer Lists to include in the Schedule, regardless of whether you have set it to run as a schedule or on demand. You can add as many Customer Lists to a Schedule as you need, and set each Customer List to send or be available on demand to different people.
Click Add Customer List to start the process of adding Customer Lists to your Schedule; you'll then be able to choose a Customer List and who you would like it to be emailed to/who you want to have access to run it on demand:
- Name: give the Customer List a name. You don’t have to use the actual name of the Customer List in Spektrix, so feel free to rename it if necessary
- Email to: enter the email addresses of every person you want to have access to this Customer List. If you want to include more than one email address, you can separate them with a comma
NOTE: you'll need to add email addresses regardless of whether you’re running it on a schedule or on demand.
- Custom subject: the default subject line for emails is "Your report from {ClientName}"; if you want it to be anything different, fill that in here
NOTE: the default subject line is the same across both Customer List Schedules and Report Schedules. If you want to change this, please speak to the Support team.
- Customer List: pick the appropriate Customer List from the dropdown menu. This will contain all Customer Lists that are currently available on your system
- Deliver as: this will default to Link; Customer Lists can contain sensitive information so can’t be sent as attachments
- File format: choose which format you want the Customer List to be delivered as, either as a CSV, an unformatted Excel file, or a Mail Merge document
Once you have filled everything in, click Next to move through to the Output page to select the specific columns that you want the Customer List to show. You can also drag Output Columns into the Sort By area to sort the outputted information as desired.
In this example, we've selected Output Columns that will give us the Customer ID of all the customers in this List, along with their first and last name, and email address. By also adding the Last Name Output Column to the Sort By area, the CSV/unformatted Excel file generated will sort the customers alphabetically by the Last Name column:
NOTE: you can set default Output Columns for Customer Lists and Standard Mailings by going to Insights & Mailings > Mailings > Mailings Settings and scrolling down to the Output Template section.
Once you're happy with this, hit Ok to save. If you want to add any further Customer Lists to the schedule, just repeat the process beginning with the Add Customer List button:
If you need to go back and edit any of the Customer Lists in the Schedule, you can just click the blue pencil icon next to the Customer List's name, or click the red cross icon to delete a Customer List from the Schedule.
Integrated Emails
If you've chosen Send Integrated Email from the Action dropdown list, you'll see the Integrated Emails page here:
This page lets you set which Customer List you want to use for your integrated email, and which dotdigital template you want to send to the people on that List:
- Name: give the Customer List a name. You don’t have to use the actual name of the Customer List in Spektrix, so feel free to rename it if necessary
- Mailing Category: choose which category of Mailing you are using, based on the options set up on your system. See this article for more information on Mailing Categories
- Customer List: pick the appropriate Customer List from the dropdown menu. This will contain all Customer Lists that are currently available on your system
- Email template: pick a dotdigital template from the dropdown menu. This will contain all of the campaigns which are currently in the Unsent folder within your dotdigital account
Once you're happy with this, hit Ok to save. If you want to add any further Customer Lists to the schedule, just repeat the process beginning with the Add Integrated Email button:
If you need to go back and edit any of the Customer Lists in the Schedule, you can just click the blue pencil icon next to the Customer List's name, or click the red cross icon to delete a Customer List from the Schedule.
Setting up access to download Customer Lists
Whether a Customer List is received via a download link in an email or through the Partner Companies Interface on demand, the recipient needs to be able to log in to Spektrix. Existing users set up with access to Spektrix will just need a specific user role added to their User Account, while anyone outside of your organisation can be set up with a login that only grants them access to their Customer Lists (as well as any reports set up to be accessed on demand using Report Schedules).
Existing Spektrix users
To make sure an existing Spektrix user can download Customer Lists from either a link or the Partner Companies Interface, you'll need to amend their User Account in the Settings Interface > Users > User Accounts. Click on the relevant user's name, then scroll down to the Roles section and make sure they have the Collect Report user role ticked. Click the Save User Account button; that user will now be able to download Customer Lists.
Users from outside your organisation
External users need a specific type of User Account to be able to log in and download their Customer Lists. The quickest way of setting this up to head to Insights & Mailings > Customer List Schedules > Users. Here you'll see a list of all the current User Accounts on your Spektrix. Scroll down and click the Add button on the bottom left-hand side to easily set up a new User Account which will only give that user the Collect Reports user role:
Fill in the details, set a password, and then tell that person what their password is in person – you should never write down or email passwords! If someone forgets their password, you can click on the Change Password link next to their name in the list.
The Partner Companies Interface
Customer Lists set to run on demand are accessed via the Partner Companies Interface. This is a section of Spektrix which is separate from the main system, that's designed to be used by people who are not Spektrix users.
The URL for the Partner Companies Interface is:
https://system.spektrix.com/your venue name/client/partner-companies
NOTE: if you're not sure what your client name is, you can easily find it by logging in to Spektrix and looking at the address bar at the top of your browser window:
Anyone following that URL will see a login screen, in exactly the same way you do when you log into Spektrix:
Users should log in with their User Name and Password as normal; existing Spektrix users can use their normal login details, as long as you’ve made sure they have the Collect Reports user role.
Once they're logged in any Customer Lists which have been made available on demand to that user will show up in a list under the Customer Lists tab. To run a Customer List, they'll just need to click the Run button:
A note on running Customer Lists in the Partner Companies Interface
When you make a Customer List available to be run on demand, you'll set the output columns that it includes in exactly the same way as you would when scheduling it to be sent by email. That means your partner companies or third party users can’t customise their Customer Lists – they can only run them containing the output columns you've specified, and using the specific output method you have chosen (e.g. PDF, unformatted Excel). You'll want to make this clear to anyone running Customer Lists on demand, so that they are aware of what they can and can’t do.
Hopefully this guide has given you a better understanding of how to build Customer Lists Schedules in Spektrix. We'd also recommend having a read of these articles:
- Global and Local Segments: a guide to creating and editing Segments to define which customers should be included in a Customer List
- Customer List Builder: a guide to creating and editing Customer Lists, as well as outputting them and performing various actions using them
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If you have any further questions about Customer List Schedules or anything else, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the Support team.