Create a Newsletter Page

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I had an idea of using a couple tools together to make a pretty neat eNewsletter page.Hopefully someone can pull these together on a live site and post a link for us.

The idea: Create a monthly eNewsletter page which will do 3 things: 1) have an easy enewsletter signup survey at the top, 2) display this month's current newsletter in full to read, and 3) to have an ongoing archive of previous newsletters to read. The main purpose would be to highlight the great content you put out there every month and drive conversion of site visitors to monthly newsletter subscribers. Doing this would only take building 1 Pagebuilder page, 1 Survey, and updating 2 links each month.

1.) Create a Survey which asks for just email address (and auto adds them to your eNews target group if you don't just send it to your whole housefile).

2.) Create a Pagebuilder page, call it Newsletters, and made it two column (big one on the left, about 600px, and small one on the right).

3. ) In the left column put the Survey at the top with some text enticing people to sign up if they aren't already and below that put in the S58 tag which renders an email message either with or without the stationary.

example:

] or ]

where message_id is the ID of the e-mail message and where wrap is set to "true" to display inside of the e-mail stationery, "false" to display just the message body (default is "false")

4.) Then in the right column you have an ongoing list of links to the Message Viewer links to all your old stationaries. You can use the following URL format to link to them: http://foo.convio.net/site/MessageViewer?em_id=xxxx.y where xxx.y is the message ID of the message you want to link to.

That's it! Kinda simple but I thought it could be a cool and useful page to drive Newsletter interest.If I have time I'll try and mock up the design and post.

Cheers,

Ken

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Comments

  • Ken --

    This is great. Any examples of Convio clients who are currently utilizing this?

    All the best --

    Kyle MacKenney

  • Kyle MacKenney:

    Ken --

    This is great. Any examples of Convio clients who are currently utilizing this?

    All the best --

    Kyle MacKenney

    I like it - we've been wanting to include an archive for awhile, but never seem to have the time.  I love the idea about driving interest using it!

  • Kyle MacKenney:

    Ken --

    This is great. Any examples of Convio clients who are currently utilizing this?

    All the best --

    Kyle MacKenney

    Actually I've not heard of any yet despite this page being viewed many times. However, if either of you do implement this I'd love to see it or let me know if I can help in any way as you do create your page. I get notified when anyone posts to this thread so you can just respond here.

    On a related note, I really like this website's list of key places to add signup forms: http://socialtriggers.com/email-signup-forms-build-list/

    In particular, I liked the suggestion of putting a form at the end of a Single Post #3 but I thought you could improve on that by putting the form there as well as offer a link to the above Newsletter page in case the reader was interested in reading more but not yet quite ready to commit to an email subscription. Reading more articles could be the thing that finally converts them!

    Cheers,

    Ken

  • Ken Cantu:

    Actually I've not heard of any yet despite this page being viewed many times. However, if either of you do implement this I'd love to see it or let me know if I can help in any way as you do create your page. I get notified when anyone posts to this thread so you can just respond here.

    On a related note, I really like this website's list of key places to add signup forms: http://socialtriggers.com/email-signup-forms-build-list/

    In particular, I liked the suggestion of putting a form at the end of a Single Post #3 but I thought you could improve on that by putting the form there as well as offer a link to the above Newsletter page in case the reader was interested in reading more but not yet quite ready to commit to an email subscription. Reading more articles could be the thing that finally converts them!

    Cheers,

    Ken

    Hey folks,

    I just created a template for this page and added it to our eNews and eBlasts kit, you can download it in the gallery here: http://customer.convio.com/site/PageServer?pagename=sm_free

    I also implemented it on a client site so you can check it out live here: http://kairos.convio.net/site/PageServer?pagename=newsletter

    Enjoy!

    Ken

  • Ken Cantu:

    Hey folks,

    I just created a template for this page and added it to our eNews and eBlasts kit, you can download it in the gallery here: http://customer.convio.com/site/PageServer?pagename=sm_free

    I also implemented it on a client site so you can check it out live here: http://kairos.convio.net/site/PageServer?pagename=newsletter

    Enjoy!

    Ken

    I realize this is an old thread, so I hope someone is still monitoring it. I'm very interested in creating this for my organization. Everything is looking good, except the S58 tag is not working. In the WYSIWYG the email message content compenant shows up, but when I view the actual page, there is nothing there. The email message is not showing up.

     

    Any ideas on what may be wrong?

     

    Here is a link to the page I'm working on: http://food.convio.net/site/PageNavigator/ENews_Archive.html

     

    When I view the page source on the published version of the page, the section where the email message should be displayed is just a bunch of empty <div style="text-align: center;"></div>

     

    Thanks!

  • Kent Gilliam
    Kent Gilliam Blackbaud Employee
    Ancient Membership 2500 Comments 100 Likes Name Dropper
    Becca Montjoy:

    I realize this is an old thread, so I hope someone is still monitoring it. I'm very interested in creating this for my organization. Everything is looking good, except the S58 tag is not working. In the WYSIWYG the email message content compenant shows up, but when I view the actual page, there is nothing there. The email message is not showing up.

     

    Any ideas on what may be wrong?

     

    Here is a link to the page I'm working on: http://food.convio.net/site/PageNavigator/ENews_Archive.html

     

    When I view the page source on the published version of the page, the section where the email message should be displayed is just a bunch of empty <div style="text-align: center;"></div>

     

    Thanks!

    Can you share the code you have in place?

  • Kent Gilliam:

    Can you share the code you have in place?

    Convio converted the S58 tag you had placed in the kit to <convio:session name="58" param="http://food.convio.net/site/MessageViewer?em_id=2561.0&amp;dlv_id=0:true"></convio:session>

  • Kent Gilliam
    Kent Gilliam Blackbaud Employee
    Ancient Membership 2500 Comments 100 Likes Name Dropper
    Becca Montjoy:

    Convio converted the S58 tag you had placed in the kit to <convio:session name="58" param="http://food.convio.net/site/MessageViewer?em_id=2561.0&amp;dlv_id=0:true"></convio:session>

    Yes. That's what it does in the html. Can you send me the html you have on this page: ENews_Archive

     

    Unfortunately I don't have access to everyone's production admin.

     

    Kent

  • Kent Gilliam:

    Yes. That's what it does in the html. Can you send me the html you have on this page: ENews_Archive

     

    Unfortunately I don't have access to everyone's production admin.

     

    Kent

    Certainly. I have attached it in a word document. Thank you for taking a look at it!

  • Kent Gilliam
    Kent Gilliam Blackbaud Employee
    Ancient Membership 2500 Comments 100 Likes Name Dropper
    Becca Montjoy:

    Certainly. I have attached it in a word document. Thank you for taking a look at it!

    Becca,

     

    Unfortunately I can't see why the s-tag is not rendering your enews in the archive page. The guy who built this kit is on PTO today but if you can wait one more day for a solution then I can ask him to take a look at it tomorrow. I'm not sure if there is a security category issue or what is happening. The fact that I can click on the URL and see the message though says it's not a security category issue. I'm almost thinking you might have something conflicting with the S58 tag from the <div> but I'm just not sure. I'll pass this along to Ken and see if he'll take a look tomorrow.

     

    Kent

  • Kent Gilliam:

    Becca,

     

    Unfortunately I can't see why the s-tag is not rendering your enews in the archive page. The guy who built this kit is on PTO today but if you can wait one more day for a solution then I can ask him to take a look at it tomorrow. I'm not sure if there is a security category issue or what is happening. The fact that I can click on the URL and see the message though says it's not a security category issue. I'm almost thinking you might have something conflicting with the S58 tag from the <div> but I'm just not sure. I'll pass this along to Ken and see if he'll take a look tomorrow.

     

    Kent

    That's great thanks. I had actually did not include the CSS styles that were in the kit, so I can probably try to remove that <div></div> and see if it makes any difference.

  • Becca Montjoy:

    That's great thanks. I had actually did not include the CSS styles that were in the kit, so I can probably try to remove that <div></div> and see if it makes any difference.

    Hi Becca,

     

    Glad to see you're using this kit, I personally like this one a lot because it is so simple but makes a difference in the experience of learning about an orgs newsletter.

     

    Anyway, I took at look at your page and you were close, instead of the full URL int he first parameter for the S58 tag you just need the message ID number.

     

    So instead of using http://food.convio.net/site/MessageViewer?em_id=1234.0, you just need 1234.0. 

     

    The end result will just be this in your case: [[S58:2561.0_id:true]]  and since I was in there looking I made a copy of the live version and just updated it for you which you can choose to publish if you want. 

     

    Cheers,

    Ken

     

     

  • Ken Cantu:

    Hi Becca,

     

    Glad to see you're using this kit, I personally like this one a lot because it is so simple but makes a difference in the experience of learning about an orgs newsletter.

     

    Anyway, I took at look at your page and you were close, instead of the full URL int he first parameter for the S58 tag you just need the message ID number.

     

    So instead of using http://food.convio.net/site/MessageViewer?em_id=1234.0, you just need 1234.0. 

     

    The end result will just be this in your case: [[S58:2561.0_id:true]]  and since I was in there looking I made a copy of the live version and just updated it for you which you can choose to publish if you want. 

     

    Cheers,

    Ken

     

     

    Awesome! Thank you so much for your help!

  • Ken Cantu:

    Ken Cantu:

    Actually I've not heard of any yet despite this page being viewed many times. However, if either of you do implement this I'd love to see it or let me know if I can help in any way as you do create your page. I get notified when anyone posts to this thread so you can just respond here.

    On a related note, I really like this website's list of key places to add signup forms: http://socialtriggers.com/email-signup-forms-build-list/

    In particular, I liked the suggestion of putting a form at the end of a Single Post #3 but I thought you could improve on that by putting the form there as well as offer a link to the above Newsletter page in case the reader was interested in reading more but not yet quite ready to commit to an email subscription. Reading more articles could be the thing that finally converts them!

    Cheers,

    Ken

     

    Hey folks,

    I just created a template for this page and added it to our eNews and eBlasts kit, you can download it in the gallery here: http://customer.convio.com/site/PageServer?pagename=sm_free

    I also implemented it on a client site so you can check it out live here: http://kairos.convio.net/site/PageServer?pagename=newsletter

    Enjoy!

    Ken

     

    Hi Ken, 


    THat sounds great, thanks for creating it. I folowed the link to the gallery, and couldn't discern which was your creation. Could you help narrow it down for me?


    Thanks!

  • Hi Ken,


    The kairos page doesn't seem to exist, or it isn't loading for me. Did you provide the correct link?

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