The zone4 Newsletter system allows you to send emails to the people who have submitted their email address through a zone4 registration form. It is designed to be a flexible system that allows the creation of anything from a quick note to participants or a full-fledged newsletter with images. Emails are sent on a schedule directly from our web server to maximize deliverability and to avoid any limits your internet provider might place on sending bulk emails.
This feature can be found under the Newsletters option in your main club Overview menu.
Previously sent emails or drafts can be found in the searchable list. To create a new email, click the green “Create an EMail” button.
Select Recipients
Creating a new email will take you to the email editing screen, where you can select recipients and edit the content of the email. To set the recipients, select the registration form your recipients have registered into from the drop down. By default, this will include the email address of everybody who has registered on that form. If you want to limit the recipients to a specific program or registration option, you can set criteria similar to creating a set of custom report filters. You can select the same registration multiple times to select multiple groups of registrants from the same registration form.
To see which recipients are included based on your filters, click the “View Recipients” button.
Include All Recipients
You will also see an option called “Include All Recipients” to further filter this communication to include those recipients who have asked not to receive general emails. This settings is to help clubs comply with Canadian Anti-Spam law which defines emails as either containing specific information related to the programs or services that the participant has agreed to participate in with your club or other emails which would be considered general communication such as newsletters or promotional material for club services and events. Ultimately it’s up to the club to decide if information is of a general vs specific nature but this setting aligns with the corresponding option that appears on email fields of the registration form asking registrants if they consent to receive general information communication from the club.
This gives registrants control of their desired communication preferences while also giving the club the ability to send both targeting emails to program participants as well as general communication to those that opt into it.
Note that if your club does not want their club members to see the Opt-in checkbox, you can disable that feature by editing the E-Mail field on your registration. Your club may elect to do this if you decide that all members should get club communication and don’t want to give users the choice, or if you elect to implement your own checkbox or Yes/No field and wording on the registration and will use that field in your recipient filter criteria instead.
Continue Sending to new Recipients
One of the interesting features of the integrated newsletter system is it’s ability to automatically email people that register if they meet the filter criteria. So for instance, you could setup a nice ‘Welcome to the Club’ email with the Recipients list defined as everyone in your registration and if you select the “Continue sending to new Registrants” checkbox, it will continue to be emailed to any new person after they register. Likewise, if you have specific program emails, they can be automatically sent out to specific program participants if your recipients list is filtered on that program.
Creating the EMail
The rest of this page is where you can create the content of your email. Similar to editing a zone4 registration form, this is arranged into “blocks” or sections. You add content by clicking the “Add a Section” button and selecting the type of content you would like to add. Currently, the following sections are available:
- Headers – this is a large font line of text, that can have an image overlaid behind it as pictured at the top above.
- Text Block – text formatting options are limited to bold, italic, and hyperlinks for readability and to play nicely with various email client’s text re-flowing options for small screens. You can find the formatting options by highlighting the text that you want to format.
- Images – click the Upload Image button to select a photo from your computer and it will include a full-size image in your email. These images are hosted on zone4’s servers instead of included in the body of the email or as attachments, so they will not cause long message download times or bloat people’s inboxes.
- Logo Section – this allows you to upload a batch of small images such as sponsor logos. they are resized to 100px (about 1.5 inches on most screens) in height and centered * horizontally.
- Action Buttons – If you’re trying to drive signups for a club or event registration, having one big bright button that is clearly the focus of the email is a good way to get people to click. So we’ve provided a pre-built “call to action” button for you to include in your emails.
Test EMail
Once complete, you may wish to send a test of the email to yourself before sending it to everyone. To do that, click the More menu in the upper right, and click “Send a test copy”
Fill in your own email and hit Send. Note that is can take several minutes to send email as our newsletter system must comply with any-spam throttling rules.
Sending your EMail
When you are happy with your email, click the big blue “Send this EMail” button in the upper left. As the confirmation dialog notes, sending emails can take several minutes.
Just like regular email, after you have clicked “Send to Recipients” you may not edit the recipients list or contents of the email. If you need to send to more recipients, create a new email.
As the email is being sent out, and after, you can check the “View Recipients” dialog to see a small checkmark appear next to each recipient after their email has been sent.
