Online Express makes NXT almost worthless

Rob Kudyba

Our organization feels bamboozled. OLX (the email marketing part) is so rudimentary with zero to no flexibility. No way to control your brand. Not even a way to edit the footer. All of the templates are so basic and look like they're from the 90's. You can't edit any HTML. You can't insert images hosted else where, i.e., outside of OLX. We were using NetCommunity Spark which has its own challeges and weak metrics reporting but if you move to NXT you will be disappointed with OLX, guaranteed and will want to use something like MailChimp, so caveat emptor.

Sue Sowinski

I so agree with you that Online Express is so outdated and rudimentary, there is no flexibility to maintain the look and feel of the brand we are creating.  Online Express is very very basic, we had to sign up for Mail Chimp again, and one of the reasons we went to Online Express was so we could stop using Mail Chimp - they really need to improve the capability within olx, it is so limited.

Suzanne Murray 2

Sue Sowinski:

I so agree with you that Online Express is so outdated and rudimentary, there is no flexibility to maintain the look and feel of the brand we are creating.  Online Express is very very basic, we had to sign up for Mail Chimp again, and one of the reasons we went to Online Express was so we could stop using Mail Chimp - they really need to improve the capability within olx, it is so limited.

Thanks for sharing your experience with it. We are also considering adding on Mail Chimp out of frustration with Net Community so I appreciate the info.

Jennifer McHale

Is the problem with Online Express .... or NXT? Or, maybe, integrating the two together?

Just wondering ... we are likely 'upgrading' from NetCommunity to Online Express ... although we don't currently use NetCommunity for our marketing efforts (we use Constant Contact). NetCommunity has been primarily for accepting donations/event registrations. 

I was hoping we might be able to change that with Online Express.

Any feedback is appreciated!

Rob Kudyba

I didn't know you could get OLX as a stand alone product. It comes with RE: NXT and has 3 components: Donations, Email marketing, and Events. The Email marketing "module" (whatever you want to call it) is what's VERY limited.

Rob Kudyba

Sue Sowinski:

I so agree with you that Online Express is so outdated and rudimentary, there is no flexibility to maintain the look and feel of the brand we are creating.  Online Express is very very basic, we had to sign up for Mail Chimp again, and one of the reasons we went to Online Express was so we could stop using Mail Chimp - they really need to improve the capability within olx, it is so limited.

Thanks for chiming in. I didn't even mention that there's no multivariate (A/B) testing either.

Chris Martin

Thanks for the valuable feedback. Would anyone who has posted to this thread about challenges with the email design capabilities of OLX be comfortable messaging me to share an example email design that they are trying to achieve but can't in OLX? While there are some limitations, in most cases we've been very successful helping customers to see how they can build great looking, fully responsive emails in OLX that's actually quite close to their original design intent, without ever having to look at a single line of HTML code. I'd be happy to help.


That said, we do recognize that the level of sophistication of our customers varies. Some are comfortable hand-coding/editing emails, manually applying code-based workarounds to compensate for quirks in Outlook and other email clients, and testing all of their emails across the various combinations of devices / operating systems / email clients. But most of our Online Express customers don't fall into this category, though.


The original design intent of email in Online Express was to make it easy to build good looking, automatically-responsive emails without any tech know-how...and more importantly to have full visibility of the entire donor journey from the email you send all the way through to gifts received.


But we absolutely recognize that there's real value in the flexibility that's requested in this thread and we have plans to add much of this capability, starting this year. So stay tuned and please continue to provide feedback on what you would value in your ideal email marketing client.


Thanks!

Rob Kudyba

Chris Martin:

Thanks for the valuable feedback. Would anyone who has posted to this thread about challenges with the email design capabilities of OLX be comfortable messaging me to share an example email design that they are trying to achieve but can't in OLX? While there are some limitations, in most cases we've been very successful helping customers to see how they can build great looking, fully responsive emails in OLX that's actually quite close to their original design intent, without ever having to look at a single line of HTML code. I'd be happy to help.


That said, we do recognize that the level of sophistication of our customers varies. Some are comfortable hand-coding/editing emails, manually applying code-based workarounds to compensate for quirks in Outlook and other email clients, and testing all of their emails across the various combinations of devices / operating systems / email clients. But most of our Online Express customers don't fall into this category, though.


The original design intent of email in Online Express was to make it easy to build good looking, automatically-responsive emails without any tech know-how...and more importantly to have full visibility of the entire donor journey from the email you send all the way through to gifts received.


But we absolutely recognize that there's real value in the flexibility that's requested in this thread and we have plans to add much of this capability, starting this year. So stay tuned and please continue to provide feedback on what you would value in your ideal email marketing client.


Thanks!

My colleague just sent you a note.

Danielle Allen 2

Our concerns are;

1. Cannot edit HTML & CSS which we are trained/educated to do
2. You cannot edit the email signup form or add fields - very poor for customer segmentation and a no brainer
3. You cannot create multiple email signup forms, we have had to go back to Constant Contact to create additional signups
4. No A/B testing, must be done manually. Am told this is so people will upgrade to Luminate - bad!
5. You cannot download your own list of unsuable emails, you must request a download from BB every time?
6. You have to manually click on Add This Data to RE for EACH email, indefinitely because there is no batch sync feature or automatic sync and you will otherwise miss out on Response data if you don't go back and do this for old emails
7. Buttons can only correlate to OLX functions (donate/event), must create additional buttons manually and upload them as images

Rob Kudyba

1. No A/B testing, must be done manually. Am told this is so people will upgrade to Luminate - bad!

Ha we heard almost the same thing from the product manager (off line) who posted here. Shameful.

Chris Martin

Rob, in all fairness, I simply mentioned that it sounded like you didn't know that Online Express was and always has been a product built for organizations with simple online fundraising needs.


I mentioned that we do have other more sophisticated tools that were built to do all the things you seemed to be looking for...and all of these capabilities are very transparently disclosed on our website. Theres no trickery going on here and having our customers in solutions that are a poor fit for their needs is a lose-lose for sure.


I'll absolutely take this feedback as an opportinity for us to sharpen how we describe the differences between our products.

Danielle, below I'm including the email I sent Rob (verbatim) because your needs in an email marketing application seem to align well with his. Hopefully this helps clarify where OLX fits in our portfolio of products and which organizations are a good fit for it:


========
"Based on your feedback, I can’t help but feel like the wrong expectations may have been set about Online Express. It’s important to know that OLX has always been first and foremost a simple and prescriptive tool for organizations with simple fundraising needs.


For our customers with simple needs (typically without in-house web/tech staff) who had poor experiences in the past with other email tools that *required* them to have HTML/CSS know-how in order to build properly responsive emails (our actual target market for Online Express), by and large they see OLX as a huge improvement…not a step backward.


Note too that we offer other digital solutions with far more sophisticated capabilities like Luminate Online."

========


Thanks again everyone for the feedback.

Chris Martin

Thanks for the extra detail Danielle. Here's specific feedback on each of your product requests below:

Editing raw HTML/CSS and A/B testing we've chosen intentionally to leave to our more sophisticated products. Before building Online Express, which was always intended for our customers with simpler marketing needs, we did tons of discovery and found overwhelmingly that these customers weren't doing A/B testing (despite the feature existing in their then-current product) and only worked in HTML when there was no other alternative (and the need to do this was a source of great frustration). So we chose purposefully to build OLX's email capabilities with this feedback in mind.

More fields in the signup form is an interesting one. While we certainly understand the desire for more data for segmentation in email signups, the research is very conclusive that email signup form conversion rates fall off DRAMATICALLY with every single piece of data you ask for (even if the field is optional). We haven't ruled out the idea of additing additional fields but we'd want our customers to understand the significant price they would pay in reduced prospect acquisition in order to have additional data from the folks who do still sign up. 

Multiple signup forms...we agree with you here. We have plans to expand capabilities around managing signups and also to offer your prospects and supporters more subscription options between all and none. Stay tuned on this one.


The request to download unusable emails is something we've heard before and we think it's a problem we should solve in better ways than just an export (although we'll probably provide that too). We think everything around bounce and opt-out management should be as streamlined, and when possible as hands-off as possible. This is something you'll see solved much more tightly in RE NXT, including easy ways to get your hands on the list of addresses.

Having to click to add data to RE manually was an initial decision we made for two reasons. First, our initial discovery told us that not all customers wanted all email stat data from all email jobs to land in RE. Also, there are a few technical challenges around having background processes handle pushing data from OLX into RE that are MUCH easier to handle in RE NXT. With RE7 being an installed application, when nobody is running RE it's tougher to schedule background work to happen. But RE NXT is a perfect fit for this. The experience we're actually after with OLX and RE NXT is less about having to push data from one to the other and it's more about it just being a single, seamless application and all of the relevant data you need is always in all the right places all the time with no human interaction required. Definitely more good stuff to come here.

Custom buttons for calls to action other than built-in OLX forms is an interesting request. It hasn't been requested much but I could see the value and I'm happy to add this to our list of ideas to consider. 


If you wanted to chat about any of this directly Danielle, please let me know.


Thanks!

Chris Martin

Hi Sue...if by chance you'd feel comfortable sharing your MailChimp email design that you found unable to reproduce in Online Express, I'd be happy to have a go at recreating it in OLX and with your permission, I'd even be happy to post the results here (the design target and the OLX outcome). Our customers are sometimes surprised how closely you can match your desired end result with the drag and drop OLX experience.


Thanks either way Sue.

Danielle Allen 2

Chris Martin:

Thanks for the extra detail Danielle. Here's specific feedback on each of your product requests below:

Editing raw HTML/CSS and A/B testing we've chosen intentionally to leave to our more sophisticated products. Before building Online Express, which was always intended for our customers with simpler marketing needs, we did tons of discovery and found overwhelmingly that these customers weren't doing A/B testing (despite the feature existing in their then-current product) and only worked in HTML when there was no other alternative (and the need to do this was a source of great frustration). So we chose purposefully to build OLX's email capabilities with this feedback in mind.

More fields in the signup form is an interesting one. While we certainly understand the desire for more data for segmentation in email signups, the research is very conclusive that email signup form conversion rates fall off DRAMATICALLY with every single piece of data you ask for (even if the field is optional). We haven't ruled out the idea of additing additional fields but we'd want our customers to understand the significant price they would pay in reduced prospect acquisition in order to have additional data from the folks who do still sign up. 

Multiple signup forms...we agree with you here. We have plans to expand capabilities around managing signups and also to offer your prospects and supporters more subscription options between all and none. Stay tuned on this one.


The request to download unusable emails is something we've heard before and we think it's a problem we should solve in better ways than just an export (although we'll probably provide that too). We think everything around bounce and opt-out management should be as streamlined, and when possible as hands-off as possible. This is something you'll see solved much more tightly in RE NXT, including easy ways to get your hands on the list of addresses.

Having to click to add data to RE manually was an initial decision we made for two reasons. First, our initial discovery told us that not all customers wanted all email stat data from all email jobs to land in RE. Also, there are a few technical challenges around having background processes handle pushing data from OLX into RE that are MUCH easier to handle in RE NXT. With RE7 being an installed application, when nobody is running RE it's tougher to schedule background work to happen. But RE NXT is a perfect fit for this. The experience we're actually after with OLX and RE NXT is less about having to push data from one to the other and it's more about it just being a single, seamless application and all of the relevant data you need is always in all the right places all the time with no human interaction required. Definitely more good stuff to come here.

Custom buttons for calls to action other than built-in OLX forms is an interesting request. It hasn't been requested much but I could see the value and I'm happy to add this to our list of ideas to consider. 


If you wanted to chat about any of this directly Danielle, please let me know.


Thanks!

Hi - thank you for the comprehensive reply. I am going to review this with my team and see if we have any additional questions or feedback. Thanks again.

Victoria Halfpenny

I am exploring switching from netcommunity to Online Express. We are a small shop so the ease and basicness of it are fine. My questions are with the negative feedback I am hearing about e-newsletters. We sent out a lot of email are the emails able to customized with unique images? We do not need to change the headers/footers, but I do like being able to customize our emails.  Also, I thought I read that emails have to be manual synched? It isn't automatic? I like that when I open up a record in RE the data is already on a person's netcommunity tab showing what they have received, opened, ext...

Chris Martin

Hi Victoria. Yes you can absolutely add as many images to your email newsletters as you'd like! And you can add them anywhere inside your email that you'd like with the only exception being that you can't add them inside the area of the footer that contains the required anti-spam privacy policy and unsubscribe links. But even then, if your email design calls for a footer that has some images, you can still insert images into a new row immediately above the required footer row and style both of those rows with a common look/feel so that it all visually looks to be part of the footer of your email.


As for the stats, you are correct that you have to click a button to push the email stats for a given email job over to RE. If you read through this thread, I posted an explanation of why we started this way with OLX and how we're planning to automate that with OLX in RE NXT. Feel free to message me directly if you have more questions on this Victoria.


Thanks!

Rob Kudyba

Chris Martin:

Hi Victoria. Yes you can absolutely add as many images to your email newsletters as you'd like! And you can add them anywhere inside your email that you'd like with the only exception being that you can't add them inside the area of the footer that contains the required anti-spam privacy policy and unsubscribe links.

 

You are forgetting to mention you can't add links to images hosted outside of OLX, and good luck trying to get images to align properly with test in Outlook, OWA (Outlook Web App), Gmail, Yahoo, and the various mobile options, e.g,. Android/iPhone/iPad. The emails look different on every platform once you start inserting images and you can't control the positioning well to counter for the various email clients. No HTML option, which you probably read. Only for luddites. Caveat emptor.

Melissa Eschweiler

I share your frustrations with OLX Email.  We do not use another program for email communications and I am not a programmer, so this should be perfect for me.  We are about to switch to NXT and I have not used the event registration module.  In my experience, the simpler the email design, the better the experience.  When I try to get more content with more design options, the frustration builds.

Regarding email communcations:

IMAGES: I find it very frustrating when importing images and graphics to get the Best Fit versus Set Width settings correct so an image fills the template,  constantly adjusting alignment, padding and spacing, and image size, to look good. I read a knowledge base that certain images that are connected to urls will not align properly.

DIVIDER LINES: Sometimes they appear in test emails as all different sizes, even though the settings are all the same.

TEXT: When using text, there is built in line spacing and paragraph spacing that you have to work around and cannot change.

OVERALL: I have to send A LOT of test emails to preview the result, and almost everytime the look in the email (outlook) does not match the design screen.  I probably have to send 15 test emails before I can finalize an email.

I would love to see a library of sample emails that have been created to show me what's possible.  The email statistics are very useful.  I would like to see the functionality to add bounce and opt-outs to constituent records.  I would also like a preview screen.  I can see the potential of this tool, but in it's current state I know I'm in for a long design process everytime I create a new email.

Chris Martin

Thanks for the feedback Melissa. Here are a few thoughts / tips:

Images

One thing you'll want to make sure is that when you pick an image to use in an email, the image itself should be at least as big as the space you want it to fill up in the email editor. If you uploaded a "thumbnail" sized image and want it to fill the email width-wise, you can force OLX to do that, but because up-sizing smaller images like that result in lousy looking images, OLX doesn't do that by default, even if you pick "best fit". OLX will always happily downsize images that are too large. So I think if you make sure to start with sufficiently large images, choosing the best fit option will get you what you're after.


Also, I'll have a look for the KB article that suggests that images that are linked to URLs won't align properly. I'm not sure that's the case (or we may be able to improve that if it is).

Divider Lines

This would be great to get some more detail around. Are you seeing the line thickness vary? Or the length? Or both? If we can get some detail, we'd be happy to get to the bottom of that and if it's something we need to tweak in the underlying code, we'll do it. I'd recommend connecting with Support on this and you can reference this post.

Text spacing (aka line height)

You're correct and the new email enhancements we're working on this year will include flexibility around choice of line height

Email testing and Outlook

This is another example where we'd really like to see screen captures of what you're seeing in Outlook that you're having to work around. It's a well-established fact that Outlook has some weird quirks and ways that it doesn't respect perfectly valid HTML/CSS. But we see is as our job to apply the code-based workarounds so you don't have to iterate like you're describing. Would you be willing to capture what you see here in your next email? You can direct-message me or create a support ticket. Our goal is that you should only have to worry about building good-looking content and not have to worry about testing it in different email clients.

Sample emails

The email work that's underway this year will be looking at this. We've considered some options like allowing each of our email customers to opt in to share their email designs, so that you can get inspiration from emails that others have created. We have more discovery to do to understand who would value this, who wouldn't, and how we could add as much value as possible (like rating subject lines based on open rates, rating emails based on click rates, etc.). Stay tuned....there's good work under way here.


Hopefully that helps some. Thanks!

Victoria Halfpenny

We are right now working on creating new header and
footers for all of our emails and I reviewing the costs with
creating these images for our emails (currently we have net
community).  But we want the footer to look exactly like the
bottom of our website with hyper links for the address &
phone. 

I also would love to see some e-newsletters that other
organizations are using. I have managed to find donation and event
forms. But I would like to see some e-newsletter templates. Could
you possibly send me a few samples? 

Victoria

David Chaves

Any updates on the plans to make multiple email signup forms available in Online Express?

Alex Morosovskiy 2

Jennifer McHale:

Is the problem with Online Express .... or NXT? Or, maybe, integrating the two together?

Just wondering ... we are likely 'upgrading' from NetCommunity to Online Express ... although we don't currently use NetCommunity for our marketing efforts (we use Constant Contact). NetCommunity has been primarily for accepting donations/event registrations. 

I was hoping we might be able to change that with Online Express.

Any feedback is appreciated!

Hi Jennifer,


I just came across your February post above to the Online Express Community.


We are likely moving to NXT and I am exploring if OnLine Express can replace Constant Contact for eamial marketing purposes and if it provides a good integration supporting tracking unsubscribed customers and bounced emails. I was wondering if you have had experience using OLX since February and can share with me your comparison with CC. Thanks in advance.


My direct email is alex.morosovskiy@habitatgta.ca


Best regards,


Alex

Daniel Bayer

Alex,


By far the best thing about OLX is its direct integration with Raiser's Edge. However, while OLX keeps a list of "Unusable Email Addresses" that it automatically suppresses and that you can view whenever you want, if you want to note this on a constituent's record you have to do it manually. Right now, the info that the address hard-bounced or opted-out only comes through as part of the Appeal if you push that data to RE - it doesn't mark the email address as "Inactive" or check the box for "Requests no email" or mark the address as DNC (as far as I can tell).I don't know if Blackbaud have any plans to change this. I've only had limited use with Constant Contact, so while I can't say that it's definitively worse, I also can't really say OLX a huge improvement in this area.

Michele Stender

Hi Daniel. The reason why we decided NOT to check the Requests No Email box is that it's a "nuclear" option. If you have a constituent who is happy to continue receiving email from you...just not at their work email address, checking this box in RE means this person gets no email to any address you have on file. We also didn't want to assume that just because the constituent was opting out of a mass market Online Express email that they still wouldn't want to receive a personalized email from a fundraiser.


We are currently working on new features in our next generation of email capabilities like the ability to handle flagging on a per-email address basis.


Thanks for the feedback!

 

Jen Claudy

To add to Daniel's comment...you can push over data from OLX to RE and then Query to find those with a Response of Opt-Out for that message (or any message).  The Appeal Tag indicates which email address was opted out (good for instances where the constituent has multiple addresses and only opted-out for one of them).


I have our database set up to use different Phone Types rather than the Inactive or DNC options, as I've found it's easier to work with that way.  So I run a Query for those who have Opted-Out and then change the Phone Type (i.e. from "eHome" to "XeHome (opted-out)").  Once you check on any that have multiple email addresses, you can use a Global Change to change the Phone Type (the GC will change ALL Phone Types on the Constituent Records in your Query, so if they have more than one eHome Phone, it'll change all of them).


I want to do the same thing with Hard Bounces, but here's where, in my opinion, OLX could use a lot of improvement.  To differentiate between Hard Bounces and Soft Bounces, you either have to set up a Query that looks at Response = Bounced AND check that the record/email address hasn't received further messages (a Soft Bounce stays on the list in OLX, a Hard Bounce is removed), or you must go thru each returned email in the Unusable Emails feature of OLX.  I wish the Response said Hard or Soft, or the emails could be exported or queried on in some way.  That would make it much less labor-intensive.


Very occasionally, we send messages via Outlook instead of OLX, to very small groups of folks, so it's important to know about Bounces and Opt-Outs.  And, more often, I am asked to create a list using certain parameters and then send an OLX message to those we have email addresses for, and a postal mailing to the rest.  Well, if we have an email address, but it's Hard Bounced or Opted Out, there's no built in way to know that, so I would put them on the OLX list instead of the postal list, and then they don't get the message at all.  I've also been asked to pull an OLX list for review by my team, and it's embarrassing to have to say, "here's the list, but when we send the message, there may be folks on the list that don't get the message because the address is not valid or they've opted-out, so don't take this as concrete...and don't call someone with a follow up until I can check to be sure they did, in fact, get the OLX message."


To the Constant Contact question...we moved from CC to OLX, and I prefer OLX because I don't have to continually (and manually) sync the two systems.  Be sure, however, that you Import all of the CC unsubscribes to RE, because if the address exists in RE and you don't tag it to not receive OLX messages, you've just (at least technically, I think) broken the law by putting someone back on your email list who has opted-out.  No one cares what email messaging system you use, or that you're changing services, they're just annoyed that they opted-out and are now back on your list without their permission.  There will probably be some that fall thru the cracks, but I did my best to be sure there weren't many of those.

Matthew Nareff 2

Rob Kudyba:

Our organization feels bamboozled. OLX (the email marketing part) is so rudimentary with zero to no flexibility. No way to control your brand. Not even a way to edit the footer. All of the templates are so basic and look like they're from the 90's. You can't edit any HTML. You can't insert images hosted else where, i.e., outside of OLX. We were using NetCommunity Spark which has its own challeges and weak metrics reporting but if you move to NXT you will be disappointed with OLX, guaranteed and will want to use something like MailChimp, so caveat emptor.

My organization is just about to go to NXT and I just came across this discussion and I'm concerned now.  I noticed the last post that was specifically about OLX email not being very flexable or customizable was in March.  Has there been and progress on this since then?  I know NXT is constantly adding new features and I didn't know if this was something that had been addressed.  Thanks.

Michele Stender

Matthew Nareff:

Rob Kudyba:

Our organization feels bamboozled. OLX (the email marketing part) is so rudimentary with zero to no flexibility. No way to control your brand. Not even a way to edit the footer. All of the templates are so basic and look like they're from the 90's. You can't edit any HTML. You can't insert images hosted else where, i.e., outside of OLX. We were using NetCommunity Spark which has its own challeges and weak metrics reporting but if you move to NXT you will be disappointed with OLX, guaranteed and will want to use something like MailChimp, so caveat emptor.

My organization is just about to go to NXT and I just came across this discussion and I'm concerned now.  I noticed the last post that was specifically about OLX email not being very flexable or customizable was in March.  Has there been and progress on this since then?  I know NXT is constantly adding new features and I didn't know if this was something that had been addressed.  Thanks.

 

Hi Matthew, A lot of what you have read here from our Sr. Product Manager, Chris Martin, is still true today in Online Express. We designed it for customers that have very simple email marketing needs. It is geared toward the customer that wants to build good looking, mobile responsive email without any tech know-how and that is what it continues to do today.

 
That said, we are working on our next generation of email marketing and donation forms and we hope to have more updates later this year around that.

 
Please let me know if you would like to see more information about Online Express. Send me a direct message and we can set up a time to talk! I am happy to chat and show you some of the goodness of Online Express.

 

Matthew Nareff 2

Hi Michelle,

Thanks for getting back to me.  I appreciate the
offer.  As I said we're just going through the process of
migrating to NXT (second call with our project manager on Friday as
a matter of fact) so I think I need to get through this and at
least look at it a bit before I pull you into a discussion where
you'll probably have to do a lot more explanation given that I
haven't even sat down with NXT for 5 minutes yet.  I'm sure
I'll connect if it looks like I would need some help and more
info. 

Matthew Nareff

Database Manager- Development Dept.

The Ethel Walker School

230 Bushy Hill Road

Simsbury, CT 06070

860.408.4251

Jennifer McHale

Alex - We just signed up in the past few weeks. No real information to provide yet!

Erin Coulter 2

Chris Martin:

Thanks for the valuable feedback. Would anyone who has posted to this thread about challenges with the email design capabilities of OLX be comfortable messaging me to share an example email design that they are trying to achieve but can't in OLX? While there are some limitations, in most cases we've been very successful helping customers to see how they can build great looking, fully responsive emails in OLX that's actually quite close to their original design intent, without ever having to look at a single line of HTML code. I'd be happy to help.


That said, we do recognize that the level of sophistication of our customers varies. Some are comfortable hand-coding/editing emails, manually applying code-based workarounds to compensate for quirks in Outlook and other email clients, and testing all of their emails across the various combinations of devices / operating systems / email clients. But most of our Online Express customers don't fall into this category, though.


The original design intent of email in Online Express was to make it easy to build good looking, automatically-responsive emails without any tech know-how...and more importantly to have full visibility of the entire donor journey from the email you send all the way through to gifts received.


But we absolutely recognize that there's real value in the flexibility that's requested in this thread and we have plans to add much of this capability, starting this year. So stay tuned and please continue to provide feedback on what you would value in your ideal email marketing client.


Thanks!

Hi Chris,


I'm a new Online Express user and so far am very frustrated using the Email Marketing component (so far Donation and Event Registration forms are great though!) I have a need to create a monthly newsletter template (by the way, why can't you create templates in OLX??), and would like to share the design with you if you would be willing to provide suggestions for how to replicate it in OLX? I don't see your email here, could you please email me at ecoulter@salpointe.org so I can get in touch? Thank you!

Chris Martin

Happy to help Erin. Emailing you directly now