This revamp to the compose broadcast experience will dramatically improve your experience in sending broadcast communications to advocates, bring it more in line with modern email marketing tools, and give you more direct control over your content. You will find that it is easier and faster to send beautiful, clean emails and that you now have control over your own email templates.
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This article addresses the following:
Major Changes
At the most fundamental level, you now have control over the entire end result of what your advocates see. Rather than a template containing the ‘top and bottom’ of an email, you can now save a template as the entire email, including direct control over default styles. Everything we’ve done on the page flows from this major change.
Templates
When you create a new broadcast, you will first see a choice between selecting a template or starting from scratch:
Start Blank
When selecting this option, you will see a ‘blank slate’ for you to begin adding Content Blocks:
Select a Template
The new ability to select a saved template provides you options between “Featured Templates” as examples along with any templates you have previously saved.
Featured Templates will load in a series of preset content blocks in order to provide structure for you to fill in.
Saved Templates contain any templates clients chose to save in the past.
In both cases, templates display a small preview within the selection area, along with the option for a more fullscreen preview.
To choose a template, just select the template you want and hit “Apply Template.”
Save a Template
At any point in content creation, you can choose to save your content either within an existing template or save as a new template. When saving an existing template, we reaffirm the name of the template you are saving your changes within.
When saving as a new template, you provide the new template name.
Content Blocks
So, how do you add and create content in the new Compose Page? Content Blocks allow clients to create sections of content they can easily clone, re-order, or delete. We took the things clients created most commonly and structured them into these content blocks.
Content Block Types
Text - A freeform content block where you can use the editor to add whatever you’d like: text, images, tables, links, etc. This is essentially the same as the one section you had in the previous Compose page.
Columns - Allows you to add two columns of content that will properly stack on mobile devices.
Action Alert - Allows you to add in a copy of the action alert text from your campaign, petition, etc. This option only displays when sending the call to action broadcast type.
Image - Allows you to upload an image and set its width, alignment, caption, and alternative text.
Button - Allows you to easily create a button and link it to either a webpage or directly to a VoterVoice campaign, petition, event, etc.
Social Media Icons - Allows you to add links to your social media pages. Note that if you do not include a link for one type of social media, that icon will not appear in the final email.
Divider - Allows you to add a styled divider
Content Block Controls
Reorder - Use the arrows to the left of the content block to move it up or down.
Clone - Use the clone button to make a copy of the content block. This creates the copy directly below the existing content block.
Delete - Use the delete button to remove a content block.
Styles
Also new to the Compose Page, you can now set default global styles for your broadcasts. These will tie to the templates you create, so you can have sets of styles specific to the types of emails you send most frequently.
Body - Use these styles to set the overall background color, padding around the entire body of the email, and divider styles.
Fonts - Use the font styles to set the font family, size, color, etc. along with specific styles for the Headings.
Buttons and Links - Use these styles to set the colors of links and the colors, shape, padding, and styles for buttons.
Preview
The updated preview provides a preview of what the email will look like on both desktop and mobile devices. Keep in mind that over 70% of email is read on mobile devices now. This will also include a toggle for Email / Text Message if you are sending a text along with the email.
Text Messages
As with the prior Compose Page, you can simultaneously send your email and text blast to advocates through this same page. All of the previous functionality for sending text messages to advocates can still be found here when you choose to send an email & text blast.
Send Broadcast & Confirmation
When you choose to send a broadcast, there’s a new confirmation modal that now makes it clearer & reaffirms exactly the audience the broadcast will go to and the delivery time.
When you confirm you want to send your broadcast, you will see the redesigned broadcast confirmation page as well, confirming the status of their broadcast, along with:
- an option to stop the broadcast if you'd like to make some changes before sending
- a way to create another broadcast if you're creating a sequence of messages
- an option to go back to the main Dashboard
FAQs
Q: Is there still a way to get back to the old compose page experience?
A: Yes, for the time being. If you clone any broadcast sent via the old experience you will get the old Compose page experience.
Q: Once I’ve selected a template and started working on it, can I go back and change my mind and pick a different template?
A: At the moment, once you have selected a template and saved by using the “Save for Later” button, you cannot go back and choose a different template for that broadcast without starting a new broadcast.
Q: Do I need to still have the header images for the templates I want to recreate in the new tool?
A: No. Those are still in your part of the VoterVoice server, so you can add them when you create the image block.
Q: What if I can't figure out how to use the new system?
A: For the time being, you can clone an old email to get to the old Compose page. If you need a hand with troubleshooting, email vvsupport@fiscalnote.com to tell them what's going on. If you need to schedule a half-hour, 1:1 training session, click here and choose a time that works for you.
Q: Are there any planned improvements coming up?
A: Yes! We call it Smart Check. Through the work the data science team has done to analyze call to action performance in millions of emails, we know what makes a really great call to action. As you compose your messages, we will call out best practices on the fly.
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