Introduction

Auto-responders are the automated thank you emails that will be sent to a supporter after they have submitted a form on our pages, i.e after donating or signing a petition.

For information on adding these to a page, please see the Engaging Network support page.

Please ensure you do not include donation asks in thank you emails that non-opt ins will receive. It is not GDPR compliant, and we could face a fine!

Thank you email templates

There are thank you email templates saved in your libraries, you can 'load' these in from the library, into your page.

Pages > Components > Thank you emails > folders called 'Donate Pages' and 'Action Pages'.

Editing emails

Unlike broadcast emails, we cannot edit thank you emails using the Engaging Networks 'Email Builder'.

To edit these email work in the source code, via the 'Advanced HTML editor' tab.

Thank you email module code blocks are found in the SharePoint module library.

If you are editing the code and the email layout becomes broken, it is usually best to start from scratch using the Engaging Networks email library templates, or you can ask the Digital Team for help.

If you need fresh code for just a single module and you are confident replacing the code in the email, you can do so using the modules linked above.

These are the typical sections you will want to look for and edit in your thank you emails. Highlighted sections are the parts you can edit.

Click on the images to view at full size.

H1 header section

Full width image and paragraph sections

Spacer section

Start of social share section

End of social share section

H2 subheading section

Editing Action Thank You Emails

Action thank you emails have new templates, with some helpful comment additions to assist with editing your emails.

When you need to add or remove a block, you would include the yellow comments in your copy or deletion. It will be clear where one block finishes, and you would paste another block after the previous block's "END" comment (after the yellow).

Some blocks like the Image block have content within them that you might like to remove, such as image credit. Here you would remove from green to green (including the green comments themselves).

Basic HTML Explained

When working with HTML, we use simple code structures (tags and attributes) to mark up a website page or in this case an email. For example, create a paragraph by placing the enclosed text within an opening <p> and closing </p> tag. Every block of code for an attribute will sit inside these kinds of tags.

HTML consists of a set of tags (also called elements), which are referred to as the building blocks of web pages and html base emails. They create a hierarchy that structures the content into sections, paragraphs, headings and other content blocks.

Most HTML elements have an opening and a closing that use the opening <tag> and closing </tag> syntax.

Below, is an example of how HTML elements can be structured:

• The outermost element is a simple division (<div></div>) used to mark up bigger content sections.
• It contains a heading (<h1></h1>), a subheading (<h2></h2>), two paragraphs (<p></p>), and an image (<img>).
• The second paragraph includes a link (<a></a>) with "a href" attribute that contains the destination URL.
• The image tag also has two attributes: “src” for the image path and “alt” for the image description.

Preheader

Note: In Action emails this is called Preview.

The preheader has default copy and this needs to be edited directly in the code via the 'Advanced HTML editor' as it cannot be seen in the Rich Text Editor. The templates in your library have the default preheader text defined by each office.

Adding Images

Images need to be sized depending on the location and whether it is an action or donation email.

Images must be uploaded to the Engaging Networks media library and saved in a folder for thank you emails. Make a note of the image url. In the autoresponder email editor, Advanced HTML tab, look for the img src HTML and replace it with your desired image url and update the alt text.

Do not use the image picker tool, this will break the template.

Creating Links

External Links: To create a hyperlink on any image, text or button that will point to a CIWF website page or any other website page that is not an Engaging Networks action or donation page;

1. Select or highlight the place where the hyperlink is to go
2. Click on the Blue Globe Icon with the Link Chain over it
3. Paste in the external url including the https part
4. In the NAME field enter appeal, action or other _ txt, button or img _ the first few words of the txt or describe the image. Examples of how the name might look: appeal_button_DonateNow or action_txt_WillYouHelp or other_img_piglets
5. Click on OK
6. On text links, highlight the hyperlink and click on the grey link chain icon.
7. Click on the ADVANCED tab. In the STYLE field enter: text-decoration: underline; color: #0BAB47;
8. OK
9. SAVE

Campaign Links: To create a hyperlink on any image, text or button that will point to an Engaging Networks action or donation page;

1. Select or highlight the place where the hyperlink is to go
2. Click on the Blue Link Chain icon
3. In the NAME field enter appeal, action or other _ txt, button or img _ the first few words of the txt or describe the image. Examples of how the name might look: appeal_button_DonateNow or action_txt_WillYouHelp or other_img_piglets
4. Select the action or donation page from the CAMPAIGN drop down list. The action or donation page must be set to LIVE for it to appear in the drop down.
5. Click on OK

1. With the text, img or button still selected click on the grey link chain icon.
2. You will see that EN automatically apply "?chain" to the end of the URL. Replace the whole url with your fully tracked link. Direct links to other Engaging Networks pages should be using an appeal code with the Type=TY eg TYEM_ES1023 For details on this see the section Linking from Thank You pages and emails in this guide.
3. For text links, click on the ADVANCED tab. In the style field enter: text-decoration: underline; color: #0BAB47;
4. Click OK
5. Click SAVE

Social share buttons

Remember that if you are using the share buttons with text and a logo, then the share URLs need to be entered twice (for the logo and the text), to make the buttons 100% clickable:

If you need a customised share module, please ask the Digital Team to create and test one for you, please do not customise the code yourself.

Social button share links

Note that these links are neither campaign nor external URLs, instead, you copy and paste the encoded link directly into the source code.

Facebook:
Take the default URL of the action/donation page and create the tracked url with appeal code and google tracking in Sales Force 

Once created, encode the tracked URL here https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/ - then add it to the URLs on the social share buttons

Locate the piece of code below within the share-ask block code (when the buttons contain text you need to do this in two locations) and replace with the new encoded url:
on the FB link it goes after u=
on LinkedIn it goes after url=

WhatsApp and Twitter :

Take the tracked URLs and shorten them in Bitly: https://bitly.com/

Then go to the encoder and add it to the end of your share copy e.g This brought a smile to my face! A really joyful video of farm animals having a life worth living #loveanimals https://bitly.com/yourlink

Encode the message and bitlylink, copy and paste it on to the URL after "text=" (when the buttons contain text you need to do this in two locations).

Customise the text on the buttons.

Email:

This one is a little different. Notice there is a “mailto:” command and it has a subject line too, which also needs to be encoded (but separately to the body copy).

Once the subject line has been encoded, copy and paste the part after subject= and before &body=

On the the main part of the message, replace everything after body=

When the buttons contain text you need to do this in two locations

Customise the text on the button.

Donate page thank you emails

In your libraries, in Pages > Components > Thank you emails, each account has:

• a generic donation thank you email template 'Donation thank you email template'.
• email templates with content specific to each type of donation that you offer, for example:

These are available for you to load into any page, but remember to unlink them from the library before making any edits. 

Custom donation thank you emails

A custom email will be any email that is not simply ‘single gift’ or ‘recurring gifts’. Make sure that you do not edit the rules or filter settings if you are using one that has been created by Digi in the library.

For example, the below rule and filter ensures that a supporter donating via monthly PayPal will receive the email that contains information on how to manage their gift in their PayPal account, not the standard regular gift email.

Action page thank you emails

Similarly, you have email templates in your library for petition/email to target thank you emails.

These cannot be loaded from the library, like donation thank you emails. You will need to copy and paste the code into the advanced HTML editor tab.

There should be an Opt In and Opt Out Thank you email templates already populated in your action template pages.

Remember to unlink from the library before making any edits.

Donation links in thank you emails

You must ensure that you are not asking for money from people who did not opt in! Therefore, you need at least one thank you email that has no donation ask in it. You can also create different emails for opt ins - one email for regular donors (perhaps asking for a single gift, or no gift at all), and one for non-regular donors (asking for a monthly gift). If you do not wish to ask regular donors for money, you will still need to create all three emails, as the processing rules for opt outs and regular donors cannot be covered by one email filter. If you want to ask opted in regular donors and opted in non-regular donors for the same gift type (eg both single), then you can just create two emails - default with gift ask, and custom without ask for opt-outs. It's very simple to set these three emails up:

1. When creating the action, in the autoresponder section, first add the email asking for a regular donation (opted-in non-regular donors) - this will be the default email.
2. Add the second email (non-opt ins, no donation ask) by clicking the plus button in the tab at the top, and select 'custom' (you won't be able to select anything else)
3. Provide the name of the rule and short name - these can be the same, eg 'opt out' for both.
4. Set the priority to '1'
5. Click the green plus button next to 'Supporter Field' and set the rule to be Opt in to all XX equals N
6. Add the subject line, HTML, plain text and click save.
7. If you wish to send a different email to opted in regular donors than the one going to opted in non regular donors (default email in point one), then add a third email
8. Provide the name of rule and short name - eg 'Regular Donors'
9. Set priority to '2'
10. Click the green plus button next to 'Supporter Field' and set the rule to be donor type ends with Active Regular. Ensure that 'Active Regular' has a capital A and capital R.
11. Add in the subject line, HTML (copy without a donation ask), plain text and save.