Spektrix generates a range of automated emails, from welcome emails when a new customer creates an account to auto-renew emails letting customers know that their memberships have been extended. You can edit most of these emails yourself, although some may need enabling depending on how your system is set up.
This article looks at the range of automated emails, detailing which ones you can and can’t edit yourself, and the options that are available to you when editing.
Editable emails
Below is a list of the different emails which you can edit yourself.
Click on each one to go straight to the section on how to set that email up.
- Print @ Home delivery emails
- Gift Voucher/Gift Membership email templates
- New Account and Reset Password emails
- Gift Aid verbal declaration emails
- Auto Renew membership emails
Document Designs
You can edit all of these emails in the Admin Interface under Document Designs and then the relevant section.
Some of the sections in Document Designs also include things like ticket designs, but for the purposes of this article we’re just looking at the automated emails.
To edit any of the emails, just click on the Edit button at the bottom of each section. All editable fields will show up as text boxes that you can add or remove text from, and then you just need to click Save to save your changes.
Some of the emails use merge fields to pull through customer-specific information - some of those merge fields are required, which means you won’t be able to save the email if you remove the merge field. Any required merge fields will be clearly displayed against the email when you edit it.
A NOTE ON HTML: all of these emails can include HTML, which you can use to edit the look and feel of the emails. We’ve designed this so that you can add in simple formatting to these emails, in order to make them look closer to your normal brand than they would do as plain text emails. It’s worth being aware however that Spektrix doesn’t provide anything in the way of an HTML editing tool, so you can’t preview or test these emails before saving them. We recommend you only use very simple HTML, as more complex uses can cause problems when you then come to send the emails - if you would like to add HTML to any of these emails, please contact the Spektrix Support team to discuss this before you start.
If you want to use more complex styling, having discussed it with the Spektrix Support team we would also suggest you speak to a design agency to build this for you, as they will be able to test the HTML and make sure it displays correctly across multiple email clients.
Print at Home
The automated Print at Home email is very simple, but you can edit the email’s subject and add more to the body text, and also choose whether emails are sent with the PDFs attached, or with a link to download them.
NOTE: if you’d like to change the email address that your Print @ Home emails are sent from (like with the confirmation email above) please get in touch with the Spektrix Support team who can arrange that for you.
Gifts
Gift Vouchers and Gift Memberships each need a Gift Design and an Email Template, both of which you can edit from here.
Once again you can edit the subject and the body text for these emails.
Account Emails
There are two account-specific emails which you can edit, one for new accounts and one for customers requesting to change their passwords. You can choose whether or not to send these emails in the Settings Interface under Configuration > Automated Emails.
If you have one of these emails enabled, you can edit them in the Admin interface here - click edit to change the subject and body text for these emails.
Gift Aid
In this section you can edit the confirmations that are automatically sent when a customer makes a verbal Gift Aid declaration, whether that’s an email or a letter.
You can edit the email in the same way as any of the others in this section.
By default the system has a standard template already uploaded for the Verbal Declaration Letter, which you can view by clicking the Download link.
- If you’d like to add a custom letter of your own, clicking the Edit button and selecting Use a custom template allows you to upload a Word file of up to 4Mb.
- Once that’s been uploaded, you can view it by clicking the Download link next to the Use a custom template option.
Memberships
If you have the Auto Renewable Memberships functionality switched on (see this article for more information) you can edit any of the four automatically-generated emails used when the system attempts to take payment.
These emails are all editable in the same way as everything else in this section, with the subject and body text being available to edit.
Order Confirmation email
One common email that you can’t edit yourself is the Order Confirmation email. This is a much more complex email than any of the others, and at present it can only be edited by the Spektrix Support team. See below for what’s possible to edit on the confirmation email.
Options you can change
Customers are automatically sent a confirmation email when they book online, but you can choose whether they also receive one for Phone and Counter bookings.
You can find the following options by going to Settings Interface > Configuration > Automated Emails:
- Automatically send: choose this option if you want all customers booking by Phone or Counter to receive a confirmation email.
- Prompt: choose this option if you want your box office staff to have the option of sending a confirmation email.
- Never send: choose this option if you don’t want any customers booking by Phone or Counter to receive a confirmation email.
Options that Spektrix can change
Other elements of the confirmation email can be changed, but only by the Spektrix Support team.
Email address to send from
Confirmation emails are sent by Spektrix, but you can choose a personalised email address to show up in your customers’ inboxes.
- For example you could choose boxoffice@spektrixtheatre.com.
Subject line
The default subject line for confirmation emails is ‘Confirmation of your order from CLIENTNAME where CLIENTNAME is the name of your organisation.
- You can change this to use a subject that’s personalised to your venue if you would prefer.
Body text
Confirmation emails are sent in plain text and consist of an overall order summary, followed by a breakdown of the items in the order. This is built in such a way as to only display sections if the order contains the relevant items - for example the Donations section will only display if there’s one or more donations in the order.
You can add further information into the email by contacting the Spektrix Support team and letting us know what you’d like to include. You might for example want to add a section on Visitor Information, or include your exchanges and refunds policy. These sections can be added after the item summaries, to display at the end of the email.
Confirmation Text
It’s also possible to insert specific information based on Events, Instances, Merchandise, Memberships or Donations into the confirmation email, by using a custom attribute. Any text Attribute (in any of those five sections) called Confirmation Text will automatically pull information through into the confirmation email, displaying in the relevant section of the item breakdown.
For example if you have events taking place at multiple venues, you wouldn’t want to add a standard section for venue address, as it would change depending on which event was purchased. If you set up an Event-level Confirmation Text Attribute and add in the venue name and address, that information will be displayed in the Tickets section of the confirmation email.
Summary Emails
You can also generate a simplified summary email from a customer’s order, which uses the same template as the confirmation email but doesn’t include as much information.
From the order, just click the Send email button. Essentially this sends the customer the same email as the confirmation email, just without the payment summaries at the end of the email.
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If you have any questions about any of these emails, please get in touch with the Spektrix Support team to discuss them in more detail. If you are in any doubt about something, we recommend you speak to us before making any changes.