I would give my eyeteeth for a "one size fits all" document to walk me seamlessly through set-up of our first Triggered email campaigns. Short of that, I am grateful for any assistance more experienced Marketers can provide.
We are working on setting up pre-show reminders right now.
We are a performing arts centers with multiple campuses and venues.
To keep things as streamlined as possible, we are hoping to set up a SINGLE list that pulls people with a show coming up in the next 48 hours.
My example: One list, with 5 different performances pulling into that list.
Those performances are on separate campuses that may each have different traffic alerts/warnings related to city-wide construction projects.
For events that may each have different security procedures (some involve bag check, some involve wanding, some involve metal detectors).
For events that may also have specific pre and/or post-show entertainment in the lobby or bar.
I am not involved in building events in Tess; just in marketing them.
WHERE in Tessitura should I be asking my Ticket Set-up peers to start inputting these (special instructions) blocks of text that relate to traffic, security, pre/post-show events?
So that I can create a Tess Output set that then pulls those blocks of text [for a specific campus, or specific event] dynamically into my Triggered Wordfly email template?
Thanks for your help!
Christine
Jamie is correct to suggest splitting these into more than one e-mail. One example I ran into in a past life was parents coming to see their children in The Nutcracker—parents come to the matinee and the evening on the same day and won't be satisfied with only getting an e-mail about one of their performances.
Tessitura lets you assign a timeslot during ticketing setup so we brought that into our views and custom elements so our lists and outputs would reflect either matinee or evening. We used these to create two triggered e-mails that fire within five minutes of each other. (Hopefully no parents get upset and call us within that five-minute window between "see you tomorrow afternoon" and "see you tomorrow evening"!)
Facility can be used to do the same thing for venue if necessary—ex: a parent could buy tickets for their children at one venue and themselves at another using the same e-mail but that's the only edge case that pops to mind for me venue-wise.
-- Mike
We are investigating what happened to Jamie O'Brien's reply via email, but for posterity here is what she said:
"Christine - The very short answer to your very big project is that you probably want to aim to do your content variations via dynamic content within the email campaign. Obviously, this still requires advanced set up, but it means you get to avoid commissioning custom content fields and output set queries. It also helps keeps the content management directly in your world, which (from the way you've phrased it) is probably an improvement on needing to enlist data entry from another department as you need to tweak things.
Mine, in WordFly language, looks like this in one instance:
{{##Production## || Show}} is playing at {{##Location## || venue}}. {{if(##Location## contains Victory) then (The entrance to the theater, pictured above, is underneath the grand staircase, on the north side of 42nd Street, closest to 7th Avenue.) endif else(The entrance to the building, pictured above, is located to the west of The New Victory, in the middle of the block.) endelse}}
A moment of caution though: your plan for one list and one campaign *only* works correctly if your patrons are only ticketed for a single event during the specified timeframe. As the point of email systems is that (1) email is the primary identification for the constituent and (2) to help ensure you don't act like a spammer, only *one* instance of an address being in a List will get recognized and delivered. Repeat instances, however valid the inclusion is given Ticket History, will be dropped and the patron will not receive that additional version of info. I hope you luck out and this isn't a concern, but I was proven wrong when I assumed it wouldn't be for us.
What we found we need to move to was a singular template with dynamic content, but distinct campaigns per venue with list and output criteria narrowing the data scope by venue. The reliance on dynamic content can make it feel a bit complicated, but I prefer managing one centralized file of content than worrying about maintaining/updating a range of very, very similar files.
This all being said (in now a not so short response), I do rely on a lot of custom content fields and custom list/output set elements, too, and you may need to as well. But in terms of displaying standard content, test how much you can achieve with dynamic expressions."
Thank you Mike. That's a great example.
In the second paragraph of your response, when you mention "views and custom elements"...where do those live? I am sorry to sound so green - but is that something to do with Output Set Manager?
Thanks Todd.
Yes; the custom elements eventually live in Output Set Manager. For our e-mails we needed information from several Tessitura tables so we used a custom SQL view to put them together in one place. Then in GoTo -> System Tables -> TR_QUERY_ELEMENT we added new lines for each custom output set element we made in our view). After we saved our changes the new elements showed up in Output Set Manager.
This requires help from whoever in your organization can edit SQL/access System Tables/etc.
The new version of Output Sets reduced our need for custom elements since the filtering is really good, but this is one case where we still use them.
Mike, thanks for this level of detail. I know our database manager will appreciate it. Chris
Hi Christine
If you have someone who can write sql on your database, you can create a custom view for this that can pull in Inventory Content items for the performance, this give you a lot of flexibility over messaging without having to change the template each time.
I have code for this that I am using currently, my view pulls in the customers and the information for both pre and post show emails and for the 2 different venues (which in my case also have send at different times). I use the view in the list to identify whether it is re or Post and the Venue and then have 4 output sets for each possibility.
You could add in the additional elements of time in order to break that down further,it wasn't needed where I currently work.
Happy to share this code if it useful.
It is possible to do multiple shows in a single email. I have done this in the past at both Royal Opera House and National Theatre but it involved a lot of custom sql.I believe I pushed the main code for doing this to the Code Repository on the Developer site.The sql is a lot more complicated but the user interaction is the same.
Mark
Christine,
I'd be happy to share our Trigger email how to with you. It's a step-by-step walk through of a basic trigger email.
As for your venue, like Mike said you might have someone create a view for you. We use one for our more complex triggers that put the name of the next performance in the email (we send them post show as a thank you).
Melissa
Hi Melissa - I'd love a copy of your 'trigger email how to' if you'd be happy to share? jbramley@aucklandmuseum.com Thanks!
Me too
tgbrown@lsc.org
Or could you post this to your profile here on TessituraNetwork.com and drop a link on this thread.
Sending out emails now. I have three docs, one for a standard triggered email, one for a triggered with multiple criteria, and one for triggered with an A/B split. Let me know if you have any questions.
Though I'm happy with the way that our performance reminders, I'd love to see how others are setting them up -- if you can send your docs my way I'd love to see them, too!
mdrapes@nycballet.com
thanks!!