In addition to the standard email/receipt that is sent to donors after they make a gift, you have the option to set up ‘Conditional Emails’ which can be sent to donors based upon a specific designation, designation group, or affiliation selected when making their gift.
When to use Conditional Email Templates
Maybe you have a standard email to be sent to all donors, but the Football team has its own set of passionate fans. In this case, you can set up a Conditional Email that is only sent to donors who choose ‘Football’ as their designation. This email could contain a note from the coach/athletic director, or differ slightly in the language used for the standard email template. Or, maybe you want alumni in reunion class years to have a thank you message that's different than what your parents receive.
How to set up Conditional Email Templates
To begin crafting your Conditional Email template, head to your Campaign Settings > Email Templates > Conditional Templates > + New Email.
Step 1 - The Basics: Choose a name for your template to differentiate it from your standard email. This will be internal only, donors will not see the name you choose. Decide if you would like this template to be sent to donors who make one-time donations or set up a new recurring gift.
Step 2 - Recipient Selection: Currently, recipients can be based on the designation or designation group they donate to, or the donor's affiliation. If you are hoping to send this email to donors of multiple designations, be sure to select ‘at least one condition must be met’. Decide if this email template will be sent to donors of a particular designation, to an overall designation group you have crafted, or to a particular affiliation. Use the checkboxes to choose your designation(s), designation group(s), or affiliation(s)
Step 3 - Email Header: Determine a Sender Name (who the email is from), Reply-to address (the email you’d like donors to respond to), and a Subject Line (short statement shown at the top of your email). To customize your subject line based on the individual donor, you may insert merge tokens. Merge Tokens will automatically populate based on your school/info input by the donor on the donation form. You will see a live preview in the ‘Email Preview’ section below.
Step 4 - Email Body: Enter your email copy in the text field. You may also add images, hyperlinks, and files or change the color text/size using the corresponding buttons. To ensure every email is customized specifically for the donor, use the Available Merge Tokens. Emails can contain multiple merge tokens, so don’t hesitate to add several for a personalized donor experience. Make sure your cursor is in the correct area of the body of the email before hitting the ‘insert merge token’ to ensure desired placement.
Step 5 - Activation: At the bottom of the page, click the ‘Update Email Template’ button to save all changes. Your template will remain in draft mode until you click ‘Activate Email Template’ in the top right hand corner of the page. Unlike the standard email templates, you do not need to send a test email before activation.
Reviewing/Editing Templates: Conditional emails are set up on a campaign by campaign basis and will be available to view/edit within your campaign settings > email > conditional email templates tab. At any time, you may deactivate, modify, or completely delete the template from your campaign.
FAQ’s:
If the gift meets the criteria for more than one conditional email, what happens?
Donors will never receive more than one email confirmation. If a donor qualifies for more than one conditional email (ie: an affiliation-based template for "parent" and also a designation-based template for "Athletics"), we will send that donor the standard email template, rather than guessing which one of the conditional templates to send.
What happens when a gift is made to 2+ designations/ designation groups, and only 1 of the designations has a conditional template set up?
In this case, the donor will receive the conditional email template for the designation with the conditional template set up.
Do I need to send a test email to activate my template?
No, simply hit the ‘activate email template’ button at the top of the screen. Test emails are not currently available.
If I edit a conditional email, do I need to reactivate it?
No. With conditional emails, any edits that are made will modify the active template and update real time, no additional action needs to be done outside of saving your changes.