Wordfly/Tessitura Company Practices

Our Graphics department creates the templates, and then we have a few users who send and deploy. There are 3-4 in the Marketing department that can, as well as the same amount in the Development department, but Marketing and Development work together with a master schedule so that there aren't too many emails going out at the same time. We have one person who pulls all lists and extractions, so she ensures there's no overlap. We decided early on that creating a few super-users in each department would be much better than opening it up to widely. Oh, and Education emails are sent by the Marketing team as well. 

We have some questions about this right now, and so I am curious to see responses as well.  We've been using Wordfly for several years, with Creative Services designing templates to be used by fundraising and marketing in their email campaigns.  Recently, there has been some discussion about reassigning the setup for triggered reminders and thank yous (creating lists in Tessitura and email campaigns in Wordfly) to Box Office.  Has anyone tried something like that with success?  Essentially, I think our question is whether certain communications are so routine that they do not require oversight by Marketing, and I am wondering if there is general industry consensus about this.  Thank you in advance for any insights you care to share!  Catherine

Most of our email communications go through Marketing. There are a few people in Marketing that have the training to design, pull lists and deploy emails through Prospect 2. We work very closely with other departments and our marketing department is almost set up more like an agency environment with the other departments as our clients. We have a master email schedule and if someone needs an email they put in a work order (we use Wrike and there is a request form for almost anything they need from graphics or the digital marketing department). The date of deploy is a requested date, but we compare it to the master schedule and work with the client to meet that request as closely as we can without stepping on other requests around the same deploy date. There are very few exceptions to this process and this helps us maintain the integrity of our email marketing program and several subject matter experts on staff who can make sure we are CANSPAM compliant and not over emailing our guests and donors. It also takes the pressure off other departments ... they don't need to learn the process, learn the software or be monitored to make sure they are following procedure and they can instead focus on doing the things that they are subject matter experts in. This has been our setup for years and it works really well for us.

Hey Lou. We have to catch up for lunch now that I'm back at the wharf. 

For new or complex functions like pages, extractions etc I'll do a webimar and either me or the Customer Service Manager  (JCs new title) will write up documentation. Whilst everyone has access to WF, comms need to fit in Marketing's calendar (Head of Marketing is the Product Owner of that) so we don't over communicate.  We also have a solid few meetings on Strategy and Segmentation to get it right. I'm still keeping an eye over all triggered emails as they can be fiddly. Pages stuff is JC and me because of testing and all the moving parts 

Hi! We have one person in Marketing (me) and a second in Philanthropy who build templates and coordinated email sends. We work together on email schedules to make sure we don't have overlap. This year, I have been working with Education as well, since they have been doing more direct sends of content to educators than they're used to. Although we only have two people working on emails, more people have access to Pages in Philanthropy, where they use RSVPs for donor events. We have been using limited triggered emails linked to survey pages where patrons can choose how to convert tickets for canceled concerts this season. I hope to do more when we open our doors again (I had been doing concert reminders weekly). As far as testing goes, we all have Tess accounts and I just build a manual list of testers. That does mean I have to duplicate the campaign and resend to patrons, but that's easy, and testing with an actual send makes sure everything really works as expected. 

Hi everyone from snowy Wisconsin!  Our publications team keeps a yearly calendar for what emails will be sent when.  We found this most helpful when dealing with different departments and the number of emails we send out.  We have headers and footers in templates that we use for the year and then change those up for the next year based on our marketing ads/events/etc... One person handles pulling the lists needed for each email and sending out the emails through Wordfly.  Our publications team writes up the emails, sends them to the appropriate department for proofing and approval, then it gets sent to our sponsorship manager for any sponsor approval. From there it gets a final look over and out the door on the day scheduled. Our marketing department has final say over the calendar.  The calendar is adjusted throughout the year as needed for more or less emails.  We monitor how many emails we send out so not to overload our members.

We have a weekly meeting with one person from Maketing, Devo, our Dance & Fitness Schools and our Data Analytics team to go over the email calender and discuss any potential overlap in lists or email dates between departments. Our Comm Ed department also uses Wordfly, but since they are only communicating with partners and teachers, they don't come to the calendar meeting. A couple of people from each department have access to Wordfly and can design templates, but we definitely have super users in each department that handle the majority of template building for their department's needs. Graphics and images come frrom our graphic designer, but the templates are designed by the department sending them, with some styling guidance from Marketing.

Like a lot of other orgs, we have one person (it's me) from Data Analytics who sets up all the lists/extractions/dynamic content/Pages connections to make sure the lists don't end up with overlap or questionable data and that the more complicated functionality is setup correctly, but there are at least 2 others (another person from Data Analytics and one from Devo) who are trained on that as back up in case I'm out. Generally it's either myself, or the super users from Devo/Marketing who hit "send."

I would really recommended getting Education and Devo on Wordfly! Our departments use it extensively! Since those kinds of emails can sometimes need a lot of personalization to replace mail merges, just make sure whoever is going to be working on that gets really well trained on connecting Tessitura Output Sets to Wordfly Data Fields and creating Dynamic Content. 

Feel free to reach out if you want to talk about any of that more! I really love all the creative and useful ways you can use Tess and WF together. 

Thanks Julie, I'm the dedicated list puller but also resonsible for systems (and education bookings) and  RSVP replies for non Donors.

We're a very small team and I'm looking at how we can use Wordfly for testing new functions, triggered email etc and making our workflows more efficient.

We have more comms than ever required because of COVID.

The final look over is essential for a writers' festival - but I'm also keen to work with Marketing to develop a way to deploy emails quickly so we can remain agile in a COVID landscape where we have to pivot at a moments notice to something new.

If you have time - I have three quick questions that would be great to get a read on.

• In terms of usage - who edits you templates? When Sponsorship / Philanthrophy proof do they proof and send back to Marketing to incorporate changes or on smaller campaigns do experienced Wordfly users edit content direcly in the template to save time or is that  too risky?
• The combined Comms calendar is great idea. At the moment we're only using WordFly for marketing - all other emails are done via mail merge which is not trackbale in Tess and can cause issues as they are not subject to the same quality control. How did you involve other teams but have one department oversee things? 
• Do 2 emails ever go out in the same day if there is no major overlap in the lists who receive them e.g Schools content V Enews?

Thanks in advance.

Hi Louise,

Let's see if I can answer your questions.  Who edits our templates? Our Creative Dept and/or our Marketing agency makes up the templates we use (a header and a footer).  We have one person who adds photos as needed to our different emails.  She also handles the Wordfly part of things.  When our different departments proof the emails having to do with their department, the edits are sent back to the staff person who handles the Wordfly part. She will edit the email proof and send out for a final look-over by our publications team.  So we have one person who is the Wordfly super user.  I am a back up on the account as the Tessitura super user.

All departments can request to send out an email, but we found having a calendar of the year ahead helps us to not send out too many emails at one time.  We know when we are having events, class registration, special promos, etc... so that helps in making that calendar. But we stay flexible in case something changes (like the pandemic). We have been using this calendar for years.  Our publications team write up the emails with input from the departments, that way we are keeping everyone involved.  By having one person be the Wordfly super user, we are staying consistent in how our emails look and we are staying on schedule with when they are sent out. 

We could potentially send out emails to two different groups of people on the same day. We don't have the happen very often, but it can and has happened during our busy times/seasons. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Julie

Hi everyone - Our set up...

• Which departments can create templates, send and deploy them? Who has a login?

Effectively, all departments who will regularly need to produce campaigns have WordFly logins for one person and handle their own Template and Campaign set up and circulation. Multiple users within the Comms group have deployment permissions. We rely heavily on Starter Emails (and, now, a little bit on Custom Blocks) and these are built by Comms staff to be quickly adjusted by anyone (delete blocks that won't apply for a particular message). When content demands something more unique for layout, it's typically a Comms campaign or one of us will create a wireframe version and then turn it over to the department end user.

• How did / do you test new functionality (for your org)? e.g Pages | Surveys | triggered campaigns | Conditional content...

To date, the Digital Services department/I experiment with new functionality and develop a strategy, then start involving other end users once their programs have a need for it. 

• What is your process - does every department use it. How do you manage this use to ensure quality control and that no rogue emails go out / the templates that other teams use are not affected.

  Would also be interested to see how this might have changed with COVID and if this has opened up it's use across your teams.

I've found that the "regular usage" concept is so important. As someone else said, people in other departments specialize in other things--learning a new software platform, plus perhaps Tess extractions, and all the best practices of email and responsive design can feel really outside of that. All campaign work used to be handled by Marketing/Digital Services (me) but the communications calendar has grown exponentially over the last 10 years. There's generally a tipping point as to when we needed someone within a department to take responsibility for their projects, due to volume. But this has only worked when someone was able to habitually use WordFly. Otherwise, the possibility of a learning curve just fizzled.

Nothing has changed philosophically because of the pandemic, though we did have to re-activate having an end user in Education because of the volume change.

• In terms of usage - who edits you templates? When Sponsorship / Philanthrophy proof do they proof and send back to Marketing to incorporate changes or on smaller campaigns do experienced Wordfly users edit content direcly in the template to save time or is that  too risky?

Calendar, brand identity/design, and voice are overseen by Comms/Digital Services. When we have an event schedule as the backbone of everything, I have everyone from the various departments confirm their expected campaign list for the year and then get it all entered into a consolidated calendar with adjustments negotiated to keep potential overlapping things spaced out (summer project). Things come up or change timing; we fold them in and move things, but the basics are in place to plan with. Who campaigns circulate to depends on the project, but there's always someone from Comms doing the final proofreading (including brand and style guide checks) and deployment.

• Do 2 emails ever go out in the same day if there is no major overlap in the lists who receive them e.g Schools content V Enews?

Sure. We work hard to space out anything to the "full list", but there are some things that should never have overlap (Educator update and donation ask). If a particular day is of upmost importance to two different projects, we can also always manage segmentation and suppressions very carefully so that no one gets two. I feel like the only time this ever happens for us is when there's a regular campaign and then a really targeted invite. The latter usually feels so unique to the user that it doesn't even read as a second message. When this happens and someone might very appropriately get two messages, I do try to put a couple of hours between the sends though, just so they are less likely to be read at the same time.