More Welcome Series examples (2020) and how to add Emojis to subject lines

Will Hull · April 2020

Hey there, everyone.

Welcome Series Ideas

Introduction to your organization from the President/CEO; Message 1.
Ways to join you on social media; Message 2.
Ways to spread the word about your organization; Message 2.
Ways to support your organization other than donating (e.g. take action on an action alert in the Action Center, donate a car, stock, property or planned giving options); Message 2.
Complete their contact record profile with your organization (lead them to the Profile Update page where they can enter their employer, secondary phone numbers, addresses, etc.) – You can embed a survey on a Pagebuilder page as a place to do this activity asking for address, phone, email interest preferences, etc. with &autologin=true added to the link to get to the Pagebuilder page from your email; Message 3.
Become a monthly donor (lead them to a monthly giving page: Recommend a dedicated message with message 3 if you choose to do this over an engagement email; please note that asking or a gift during the Welcome Series is not recommended as clickthroughs and engagement declines with a financial ask during a Welcome Series); Message 3.
Become a member (lead them to a donation form with membership levels tied to giving levels, again if you choose to do this over an engagement email as the 3^rd message)
Participate in a peer-to-peer fundraising event throughout the year (perhaps a DIY TeamRaiser or an annual event makes sense here, you can use TeamRaiser, if you get it activated on Luminate Online or perhaps https://www.justgiving.com – a Blackbaud product – if you want to drive your supporters to fundraise on your behalf)
Ask them to complete a Survey where you ask your supporters to tell you their story and why they support you (good content for use on web pages as inspirational quotes on why you do what you do as an organization); Message 3.
Ask your supporters to take a quick quiz and if they click on the right link, it can go to a page where you talk about the answer on your website. If they answer incorrectly, via a link, you can also send users to a page that says that they got the answer wrong, but to try again; Message 3.

Bonus: Emojis in Subject lines

Did you know that you can add emojis into your subject lines when crafting your Luminate Online emails? Here are 5 easy steps to do it. Also, I found that some that are very pouplar in the time of COVID-19/Coronavirus when visiting Emojipedia these days. You may find them useful as well.

Step 1: Find your emoji here: https://emojipedia.org/ and copy it to your clipboard
Step 2: Encode it to a Base64 code here: https://www.base64encode.org/ paste it into the encoder and submit
Step 3: Get the sample code here https://community.blackbaud.com/forums/viewtopic/1/443?post_id=49941 ( or use this as your sample: =?utf-8?B?CODEHERE?= )
Step 4: Paste the sample into your subject line and replace the part of the code that is between the last two ?’s on the sample code (highlighted in yellow above) with the base64 code you got from the encoder. ( e.g. here is a soccer ball: =?utf-8?B?4pq9?= )
Step 5: Optional, send yourself a test message to make sure the emoji is populating.

I hope you find these examples helpful as you shape the content for your own Welcome Series.

Be safe. Be healthy.

Allison King · April 2020

And don't forget about the Blackbaud University course: Luminate Online: Generating an Effective Welcome Series.

Will Hull · April 2020

I knew I forgot something, here, Allison King‍. Thanks for pointing out that link as well. Thank you.

Jennifer Peters · April 2020

We are also hosting a product adoption session on how to leverage reusables in Luminate Online to help you keep recurring email and autoresponder content fresh. With Blackbaud Luminate Online® reusable content, we can easily update sections of prepared email content without having to return a message to draft, pausing a welcome series, or deconstructing a great email design for a short information-sharing need. During this session, we’ll help you understand how to take advantage of reusable content in your recurring email messages and autoresponders in Blackbaud Luminate Online® and TeamRaiser® to ensure your content stays current.

Register here: https://hello.blackbaud.com/Luminate_Online_Road_to_Success_Registration.html

Meghan Christiansen 2 · June 2020

Hi everyone,

Lately we have been experiencing issues using em dashes (–) in our emails sent through LO. I was told by Support to use the Base64 encode to insert it, but it doesn't seem to be working. I am given 4oCT so I insert =?utf-8?B?4oCT?= into my email for the em dash and nothing happens, just shows up as =?utf-8?B?4oCT?= in the email.

I have tested in Outlook and Gmail. Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Meghan

Daryl Bunker · June 2020

Meghan, it just looks like you're missing a couple of "=" near the end of your string.

Try =?utf-8?B?4oCT==?= for inserting an emdash. I just tested in Outlook and it's working.

Philip Nawrocki · June 2020

Meghan Christiansen‍ were you using — previously? I use — and – for our dashes and that works a-ok.

Let us know,

Phil

Meghan Christiansen 2 · June 2020

I will try that - thank you!

Gaby Gollub · June 2020

My favorite site to get code for emojis in subject lines is: https://www.sendblaster.com/utf8-email-subject-encoder/. You just paste in the symbol or emoji you want to use, click a button, and copy the code that it generates. I've never had a problem with any code that site has provided.

Best,

Gaby

Will Hull · June 2020

Thanks for sharing that great resource, Gaby Gollub‍. I am glad that it works for you. I will take a look myself.

Thanks again,

Will

Dale Anania · June 2020

Can the Emoji be in color?

Gaby Gollub · June 2020

Hi Dale,

Emojis are displayed according to the device/email client being used. https://emojipedia.org shows you how a given emoji is rendered on different devices. They're generally in color.

Best,

Gaby

Will Hull · April 2021

Hey there, everyone.

Here are a couple more links to add to this post, in case you are looking for some others.

I hope you find these useful in crafting your own content for your own Welcome Series.

Here is an article or two from SGEngage (a Blackbaud staff-driven blog; I encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feed on this blog if you haven't already):

When it comes to Welcome Series for donors, here are a couple of external articles on the topic as well:

Thanks for stopping by,
Will

Perrine Punelle · December 2021

Hello Will,

I recently found your post on including emoji in subject lines. Thank you for the How-to.

We have a multi-lingual set up for our LO account (English and French). Emojis work fine for English subject lines. However, it does not in French: instead of the emoji, it's the code itself that appears in the subject line. Any idea why?

Thanks,

Perrine

Philip Nawrocki · February 2022

You ever figure this out @Meghan Christiansen ? I just tried all these options and none of them worked.

Meghan Christiansen 2 · February 2022

Hi Philip,

We use — and – in the html and it works. I don't think we ever got it to work in an email subject though, or maybe we just reworded our subject instead.

Cheers,

Meghan

Philip Nawrocki · February 2022

I should have been clearer. :-) Yes, email subject line. What a bummer…

Will Hull · October 2022

@Perrine Punelle Hey there. Sorry it has taken me so long to reply here. I wasn't tagged in the reply, so I missed it.

Regarding that issue about the emoji in subject lines, it might be something to bring up with Blackbaud Support at https://support.blackbaud.com and they should be able to look into why that might be the case.

Thanks for reaching out,
Will

More Welcome Series examples (2020) and how to add Emojis to subject lines

Welcome Series Ideas

Bonus: Emojis in Subject lines

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