Ideas
Customization options needed for automatic emails
I've had a feature request open about this since last May (Ticket 666975) but wanted to get some public visibility on it as well. The addition of BLOX Notifier actually makes the situation worse and I have some good example images to share.
There are now two different ways to automatically send emails upon specific conditions in BLOX and both of them lack the customization ability needed to maintain a newspaper's brand and achieve specific goals.
First are examples of what our current breaking news emails look like, but they have to be sent manually through Email Reach's "Single Run." They maintain the style of all our other email newsletters and meet branding goals at the expense of being a manual process that gets forgotten at times.
Automatic Alerts for BLOX Email Reach
This option has been around for a couple years and allows filtering that most papers would need, however there is no ability to customize how these emails look. You are stuck with the examples below.
BLOX Notifier
I was hopeful the newly released BLOX Notifier would bring some improvements but unfortunately it is even worse. Emails produced by it are completely void of branding and most other useful information.
Answer
I have raised the same issue as we prepare to migrate to TownNews. I've had to come up with a makeshift solution (not as refined as yours) that would add at least a logo to send in a breaking news alert via the single-run option instead of automatic alerts. It basically means copying and pasting some html with the logo, links and a summary of the breaking news. It's not that involved but every additional step becomes a big deal when you are trying to respond to breaking news.
I only to go the trouble because I worry that readers may wonder if they are receiving spam or if we have been hacked if they receive an email from us without our branding. As many of you know, email is regarded as a key tool in connecting directly to our readers without relying on Facebook or other social media. That makes our email presentation even more important. By the way ... your other email options work great and offer so many options. Look forward to taking advantage of them.
A few quick things:
1. The BLOX Notifier alerts should look like the BLOX Email Reach alerts. This is something we're working to fix.
2. We can make changes to the asset page "email" mode design in a generic way, so let me know what type of thing you'd like to see there.
3. We are working on a new way to be able to send better branded emails of all kinds... email alerts and reset password, etc. We are building a "Site Branding" panel where you can set your colors and your logo, etc. That way we will be able to use your logo and colors in a standard way on system-built items such as this.
We basically need the ability to send the same breaking news email we always have (my first example above), built with the Email Reach blocks, but in an automated way.
Looking forward to the site branding panel so our emails can have our branding as well as font sizes, colors and styles that are consistent across our newsletters. Thanks for listening
I hope this site branding panel will also allow for better customization of emails sent automatically on subscription transactions. The existing subscription email templates are far too basic, essentially a plain vanilla receipt.
Especially for new users who've just purchased a subscription, we need to be able to send much richer communication, with links to app download pages and our branded social media accounts. This is crucial in making sure subscribers are as engaged with our services as possible so they're more likely to remain subscribers.
It'd also be a big help if each subscription service could have its own custom set of emails, so the details of any promotional offers included.
I'll second what Kevin said about the existing look and content of our emails. Not necessarily because it's the best option, but it's what my boss wants :)
In our case the email scrapes a template on our site that includes an image and a headline along with some branding. All of it is a link to the asset we've flagged as breaking. It would be great to replicate this functionality in the notifier -- would result in fewer after hours calls of "I can't remember how to send a breaking news email" at least :)
Actually branding panel may not be good enough. We heavily customize our outgoing newsletters with a hero image at the time and we'd like to be able to do the same thing with the saved notifications, for that matter we'd like to be able to customize them with additional content and blocks on the page... ads on the email (DFP simple tags, or LiveIntent) would also be something we'd be interested in.
Any updates on this request Christine? We continue to add new email newsletters and having the "sporadic" ones send automatically using our well established templates (with the Email Card block types) would be such a huge time saver.
We should really lump into this issue the search/saved notification emails that go out when you save a search result.
These emails have no branding, nor customization options either.
Following this thread as I'm running into all of the same issues / conversations with my boss. It is to the point where I'm completely split between Notifier / Followed Notifications as far as functionality benefits, but if both apparently lack branding options then I suppose I may just want to wait for the release of this Site Branding panel. Any estimate when that will come out?
Some progress on email customization it looks like:
Logo branding options are now available for these automated newsletters sent through Notifier. https://www.help.townnews.com/blox_cms/design/media_library/how-do-i-add-a-logo-to-a-triggered-email/article_fe7b66f4-d1fb-11ec-a4d7-f38ee9791906.html
Customer support service by UserEcho
A few quick things:
1. The BLOX Notifier alerts should look like the BLOX Email Reach alerts. This is something we're working to fix.
2. We can make changes to the asset page "email" mode design in a generic way, so let me know what type of thing you'd like to see there.
3. We are working on a new way to be able to send better branded emails of all kinds... email alerts and reset password, etc. We are building a "Site Branding" panel where you can set your colors and your logo, etc. That way we will be able to use your logo and colors in a standard way on system-built items such as this.