Customize Emails
Many emails are sent automatically through MembershipWorks when a particular action occurs. For example, a welcome email is sent automatically to new members when they sign up. You can customize these automatic emails by adding your own verbiage, links, and images to the automatic email templates. We’ve listed some of the ways you can customize these emails below.
Change text to titles or headings
Step 1: Add Your Title to a Separate Line
Make sure the text that you want to make a title or heading is on a separate line from other text.
Step 2: Select the Text
With your mouse, select the text that you would like to change to a heading to highlight it.
Step 3: Select a Format Option
Click Format on the toolbar and then select Formats > Headings and choose the desired heading size for the title (e.g. Heading 1, Heading 2, etc).
The text that was selected is changed to a heading.
Change the style of text to bold, italics, or underlined
You can use the Bold, Italics, or Underline options on the template toolbar to stylize text in the body of your email.
Follow the steps below to change the text in an email to bold.
Step 1: Select the Text
With your mouse, select the text that you would like to make bold to highlight it.
Step 2: Click the Format Option in the Toolbar
Click the B icon on the toolbar to change the text to bold. (Click the I icon in the toolbar to italicize text or the U icon to underline text.)
Step 3: Text is Stylized
The text that was selected becomes bold.
Use HTML to make other font size or color changes
If
you are familiar with HTML code, you can also make other font size and
color changes using HTML and/or CSS code. To edit the HTML code, you
will need to click the Source code icon in the toolbar.
Make your desired HTML changes in the Source Code box and then click OK to close the box and return to the email template.
Add tags to personalize the email
Tags are short codes that can be added to an email template to personalize
the email. They are enclosed in square brackets such as [nam] or [us] and serve as placeholders in the email template for data that will be displayed in its place in the email the member receives.
Note: Each email template has specific tags that can
be added to it and they are not interchangeable, so it’s important to
only use tags that are available for the template you are editing.
For example, the [password] tag is a tag that can be used in the welcome email template. However, you will not see the [password] tag listed as an available tag in the Renewal Notice email template. So the tag will not insert the member’s password if it is used in the Renewal Notices.
You can view a list of available tags by clicking on Tags in the email toolbar menu.
You can insert one of the tags below in an email template where you want to display the member’s name.
- [nam] – Will display the member’s account name from our system’s Account Name field.
- [ctc] – Will display the contact name from our system’s Contact Name field
- [contact] – Will display the contact name from the Contact Name field if available, otherwise it will display the account name from the Account Name field.
1. To
insert the member’s name in an email, place the desired tag in the
email template where you would like their name to be inserted.
2. The member will see their name in the email they receive instead of the [contact] tag.
Insert an image
To
insert an image into an email message, the image must first be
accessible as a direct link online. If the image is online, you can
follow the steps below to insert it into an email template.
1. Go
to the email template and click in the template where you want to
insert the image. The example below is our default membership payment
receipt template. The Payment Receipt line was moved down so the image
can be inserted above it.
2. Click the Insert/edit image icon in the toolbar.
3. Next to Image URL in the pop-up dialog box, enter the URL where the image is located online. Next to Item description, enter a description of the image. You do not need to change the Dimensions. You’ll be able to resize the image after it’s inserted in the template. Click OK when complete.
4. The
image will be inserted in the email template. If the image is too large
as it is in our example below, click on the image to select it. Click
and drag on one of the white corner squares to resize it.
Resized image in the email template
Insert a link
To decrease the chance that your emails will be flagged as spam, we
generally recommend avoiding links in your emails. If you do have to
have a clickable link, it would be better to have the link text match
the link URL. A common technique of some spam emails masquerading as a
legitimate email from a bank, etc, is to provide a login link that
actually goes to a different URL than what is shown in the text. So
having the link text match the actual link URL would make it appear more
trustworthy.
To insert a link into an email:
1. Click in the email message box where you would like to insert the link.
2. Click the Insert/edit link icon in the toolbar.
3. Next to URL in the Insert link dialog box, enter the URL where you want the text linked and click the OK button.
The link will be inserted in the email.
Attach a file
It’s
not possible to attach files to the automatic emails that are sent
through our system (e.g. welcome emails, renewal notices, payment
receipts, etc), however you can attach files to emails that are sent
manually. After writing a manual email, you are not able to save it as
you can with the automatic email templates. You will need to send it at
that time.
Please note that our email functions are designed for transactional emails. For example, email receipts, email notifications (eg. a change in your Terms of Service), etc. The feature is not intended to be used for newsletters or marketing because there is no way to unsubscribe from the emails – which is required by the CAN-SPAM act for newsletter/marketing emails.
If you wish to send newsletters or marketing emails to your members, we would recommend using MailChimp (which we integrate with), Constant Contact, or similar services designed for this function.
To manually send an email to all of your members, go to MembershipWorks > Folder: Members and click the Email link at the top of the page.
To attach a file to this email:
1. Drag and drop your file on the Click or drop file here to add attachments link above the email message box. Alternatively, you can click the link to select the file from your computer.
2.
If you clicked the link to attach your file, a dialog box will pop up
allowing you to browse for the file. After locating the file on your
computer, click to select it and click Open at the bottom of the box.
To
attach more than one file, the files will need to be located in the
same folder on your computer. Select the first file and then hold the Ctrl (PC) or Cmd (Mac) key down on your keyboard while selecting the additional files.
After all the files you would like to attach have been selected, click Open.
3. The attached file name will display next to a paper clip icon to show it has been successfully attached.
Get Support Along the Way
