Wordfly/Tessitura Company Practices

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.

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.

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