Event emails

For each event, you can set up multiple email announcements and event reminders to be sent, as well as registration messages. You can schedule each email to be automatically delivered a certain number of days before the event, or you can manually trigger the sending process at any time.

You cannot send an event email for an event that has already started.

For announcements and registration messages, you can choose the types of contacts to be included as recipients. 

You can customize the generic event emails yourself, or you can use a previously sent email or choose one of the professionally designed email templates provided by Wild Apricot. In either case, you can add text, formatting, graphics, and links to the message. 

To personalize the message, you can use macros to insert specific information such as the recipient's first name or organization. You can also use macros to insert a Not attending button so that invitees can let you know if they are definitely not going to register, and to insert a QR code in the registration confirmation email for faster check-ins.

After sending event emails, you can track whether they are delivered and opened.

If you include similar content in emails for different events, you can modify the default event emails to include the shared content.

You can also email links to individual event pages.

Types of event emails

The following types of event emails can be sent.

Announcement 1, 2, 3
Timing: x number of days before events
Possible recipients: All contacts (other than those have already registered, responded, or waitlisted for this event) or any combination of members, donors, attendees from past events, selected membership levels, selected member groups, saved contact and member searches, and all contacts without membership, registrations, or donations. Pending new members will receive event announcements sent to members only.

Reminder 1, 2, 3
Timing: x number of days before events
Possible recipients: Registrants (including guests)

Event registration confirmed
Timing:
For paid events: after registration is paid or confirmed by an administrator
For free events: immediately
Possible recipients: Registrant, registrant's guests, and/or event organizer

Event registration pending
Timing:
When registrant clicks Pay online button: After 15 minutes, unless online payment has been completed, or unless paying online is the only option
When registrant clicks Confirm or Invoice me button: Immediately
Possible recipients: Registrant, registrant's guests, and/or event organizer

Event registration canceled
Timing: Immediately after registration is canceled by the registrant or automatically by the system when the registration fee is not paid within 15 minutes (where the payment method is Online only and the Automatically cancel registration if payment not received within 15 minutes option is enabled). This message is not automatically sent when a registration is canceled manually by an administrator.
Possible recipients: Registrant and/or event organizer

New waitlist registration
Timing: Immediately, once a new waitlist registration is confirmed
Possible recipients: Registrant and/or event organizer

Invoice
Timing:
When registrant clicks Pay online button: After 15 minutes, unless online payment has been completed
When registrant clicks Confirm or Invoice me button: Immediately
Possible recipients: Registrant and/or administrator

Receipt
Timing: When payment is received
Possible recipients: Payer and/or administrator

For each event, you can control whether each type of message is sent, and who receives the messages. For announcements and reminders, you can control when the email is sent. For more information, see Email delivery options (below).

All event emails can be customized. For more information, see Modifying event emails (below). For information on customizing invoice and receipt emails, see Customizing invoices and Customizing receipts.

Any changes to invoice and receipt settings will be applied to all invoices and receipts issued throughout your entire system, not just events.

Setting up event emails

Setting up event emails involves customizing the emails, choosing which emails to send and when, and for some emails, choosing the recipients.

To set up the announcements, registration confirmations, and reminders for a particular event, follow these steps:

1. Hover over the Events menu and select the Event list option.
2. Select the event within the list.
3. Click the Emails link.
4. Click the Edit button at the top.
   

From here, you can set up the following event emails:

• announcements (up to 3)
• reminders (up to 3)
• registration confirmed (when registration is confirmed and/or paid)
• registration pending
• new waitlist registration

For announcements and reminders, you can schedule the delivery of the email, or send it immediately. For more information, see Email delivery options (below).

For announcements and registration messages, you can choose the recipients. For each event email, you can modify the content of the email.

Customizing event emails

You can customize each event email. You can compose the message yourself, use a previously sent email, or choose one of the professionally designed email templates provided by Wild Apricot.

The ability to customize event emails is not available for free plans. For more information, see Functionality by billing plan.

If you create a new event by copying an existing event, the event emails will also be copied. When you create a brand new event, the event emails are copied from the default event emails.

To customize an event email, follow these steps:

1. Click the email link within the event emails page (e.g. Announcement 1).
   
2. From the screen that appears, click the Edit button.
3. Use the content editor to add or modify text, formatting, graphics, and links within the message. You can also personalize the message by using macros to insert specific information such as the recipient's first name or organization. To add macros, click on the {Macro} button to access and insert the list of available event macros. 
4. Click Save to save the email.

To reset the email back to the default email, click the Restore default button.

You can click the Restore default button to add the {Registration buttons} macro to event announcements, and add the {QR_Code} macro to the registration confirmation email.

Modifying default event emails

When you create a brand new event, the event emails are copied from the default event emails. If you include similar content in emails for different events, you can modify the default event emails to include the shared content.

To modify default event emails, follow these steps:

1. Hover over the Events menu and select the Event emails option.
2. Click the default event email you want to modify (e.g. Announcement 1).
   
3. Click the Edit button.
4. Customize the message yourself or choose a previously sent email or email template to use as the basis for the email. To choose a previous email or an email template, click the Copy from button.
5. By default, event emails are basic emails without any layout. To apply a layout, click the Layouts icon towards the top of the screen, then select the layout you want to switch to, and click the Apply button. After applying a layout, you can click the Appearance icon and set a background color for the message, and change the font set. With a layout applied, you can click individual cells within the message and adjust cell settings, including background, padding, margins, and borders. 
6. Click Save to save the default email.

Event instructions added to emails

There are event-specific instructions that are added to event emails.

Payment instructions for this event only

This option appears on the Registration types & settings tab. The instructions you enter here appear on the Review and confirm page of the event registration form, and at the bottom of the invoice email sent to the registrant.

The payment instructions for each event default to the For event registrations payment instructions that were entered on the Payment settings screen.

Email delivery options

You can control whether announcements, reminders, and confirmation messages are sent. For announcements and registration messages, you can choose who should receive the email. For announcements and reminders, you can control how many days before the event the messages are sent. For announcements, you can also control who receives them.

To modify the email delivery options for an event, go the Emails page for the event then click the Edit button. The Emails page now displays options that allow you to control which messages are sent and when, and who receives them.

Scheduling event announcements

You can schedule the automatic delivery of event announcements, and choose the recipients. Schedule an event announcement involves specifying the number of days before the event to send the email, instead of a specific date. In that way, if the date of the event changes, you don't have to adjust your email schedule.

You can only schedule the day of delivery, not the time. The time of delivery typically corresponds to the starting time of the event.

To schedule an event announcement, follow these steps:

1. Click the Schedule button below the announcement number (e.g. Announcement 1).
   
2. From the window that appears, enter the number of days in advance of the event you want to send the email.
3. Select the recipients for the email.
   You can choose All contacts or any combination of members, donors, registrants from past events, selected membership levels, selected member groups, saved contact searches, saved member searches, and contacts without membership, registrations, or donations.
   
   If you choose members to receive event announcements, they will receive them even if the event is not open to their membership level. For example, if the registration types for an event are only available for members at a Gold level, all members will receive the event emails whether or not they are Gold members.
4. Click the Schedule button.

Once you save the schedule by clicking the Schedule button within the dialog, the Schedule button for the announcement becomes Change schedule.

To modify or remove the schedule, click the Change schedule button. From the dialog that appears, you can modify the schedule and click the Save button to save your changes, or click Remove schedule to unschedule the email.

Scheduling event reminders

You can control when event reminders are sent, but you cannot select the recipients. Reminders go to all event registrants, including guests.

Scheduled event reminders are not sent if the event visibility is set to Admin only.

To schedule an event reminder, follow these steps:

1. Click the Schedule button below the reminder number (e.g. Reminder 1).
   
2. From the window that appears, enter the number of days in advance of the event you want to send the reminder then click the Schedule button. For multi-session events, you can choose whether to send before each event session, or just before the first session.
   
3. Click the Save button.

The Schedule button for the reminder now becomes a Change schedule button.

To modify or remove the schedule, click the Change schedule button. From the dialog that appears, you can modify the schedule and click the Save button to save your changes, or click the Remove schedule to unschedule the email.

Sending an announcement or reminder immediately

You can choose to send any announcement or reminder at any time. To send an announcement or reminder immediately, go to the Emails page for the event then click the Send Now button.

If you don't see the Send now button, it is because you are in edit mode. Click Save or Cancel to exit edit mode.

For announcements, a dialog will appear where you can select the email recipients. The recipients will default to all contacts (except current registrants) even if you've already scheduled the announcement with a different set of recipients.

Once you send your email, it is added to the email queue, and may take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to be actually delivered.

After an event email has been sent, all your scheduling and recipient settings for that event will be reset, and the Send now button will change to Send again. Also, a check mark will appear beside an email.

Clicking the Send again button will immediately add the email to the queue. You can modify the email before sending it again by clicking the link for that email.

Choosing recipients for registration emails

For registration confirmed and registration pending emails, you can choose whether to send them to the registrant, the registrant's guests, and/or the event organizer.

Registration pending emails are not sent in the case of free events. The registration confirmation email is only sent after the event registration fee is fully paid.

For new waitlist registration emails, you can choose whether to send them to the waitlist registrant and/or event organizer.

Emailing event registrants

While viewing the list of registrants, you can send an email to all of them – including guests – by clicking the Email registrants button.

You can create your email from scratch or use one of the professionally designed email templates provided by Wild Apricot. In either case, you can add text, formatting, graphics, and links to the message. To personalize the message, you can use macros to insert specific information such as the recipient's first name or organization.

After you've sent your email, you can track opened, clicked, and undelivered mail, and review email failures. For more information, see Sending manual emails.

Guest registrants receiving the email will be unable to use the Unsubscribe link to unsubscribe from future emails since they have not been added to your contact database.

Changing the event organizer

The event organizer receives all event-related administrative emails, as well as a copy of event announcements and reminders. If you want to monitor individual registrations, you can provide for the event organizer to also receive event registration notifications. The event organizer will also be sent an email when the registration limit is reached for a particular event.

By default, the event organizer is the designated contact for your organization (see Organization details). If you want to change the event organizer to someone else, click the Edit button from the Emails tab then click the Change link.

If you want to send copies of event emails to multiple recipients – rather than a single event organizer – you could designate a contact representing an email group as the event organizer, with the email group's address as the contact address.

Routing event emails

You can also choose to send copies of event emails to other recipients (such as the event manager) according to your routing settings. If you want to route event emails, check the Copy emails according to email routing settings box. If this option is not selected, then your routing settings will be ignored for emails concerning this event.

After you have chosen the recipients for each email, click Save.

Sending a test email

To send a test email to yourself, follow these steps:

1. From the Emails page for the event, click the email you want to send (e.g. Announcement 1).
2. Click Test email.
   

The test email will be sent to the email for your Wild Apricot account, not to the event organizer or the organization contact.

Test emails use fake data in place of macros, not the actual data from your database. So, don't be alarmed if you see some unfamiliar content in the test message.

Tracking event emails

To view a summary of event emails for a particular event, go to the Emails page for that event then click the View email log link.

From the email log, you can view a summary of the emails for this event, including the number of recipients, failures, opens, and clicks.

For each email, you view more details, including the failed and delivered email addresses, and the number of clicks for each link. For more information, see Log of sent emails.

Emailing links to specific events

You can insert or email a link to the details for a specific event. The URL for the event appears in the Event URL field on the Event details tab for the event.

You can copy the URL and paste it as a link within an email or site page.