Message Center allows leaders to send email broadcasts to constituents - both members and leaders.  It has many of the capabilities found in the best third-party communication tools:

  • Easy to use, visual message editor

  • Real-time campaign performance monitoring

  • Open and click-through tracking

  • High-performance email delivery


Your association can use Message Center to:

  • Send program updates to all your members
  • Send meeting minutes and reports to leaders and members
  • Promote membership and donation campaigns
  • Improve communications with your members


Getting Started with Message Center

Before you begin, there are a few terms that will be helpful to understand:

  • Campaign - A email broadcast that is being created or has been sent to an audience of recipients.  Campaigns can have a status of Draft or Sent.

  • Audience - The target group of recipients for a specific campaign.  Examples of available audiences include All Active Members, All Active Leaders, or All Council Leaders.



How to Send a Campaign

There just a few steps to send a campaign using Message Center:

  • Create a Campaign - You can create a new blank campaign by clicking [Create New Campaign] OR you may use an previous campaign as a starting point by clicking [Actions]..[Clone].

    When you Clone a campaign, the campaign Name, Subject, Content and Audience will be duplicated. in the new campaign. You should first change the Name of the new campaign, and then most likely update the content before sending.

  • Edit the Campaign - Click [Actions]..[Edit] to edit the campaign details.

    Each campaign has several settings:
    • Campaign Name - The name leaders will use to refer to the campaign. The campaign name should be easily discernible and you may want to use a consistent naming convention such as: '2019 / Mar / Member Update'.
       
    • Audience - The target group of recipients. Choose from: 
      • All Active Members
      • All Active Leaders
      • Some associations may have other audiences available in the dropdown.
      • audience has two restrictions:
        -must be a primary user (i.e. associated members aren't included)

                                  -must have expired in the last year

  • Subject - The subject line that recipients will see in their email inbox. Writing great Subject lines is both art & science. In general these should be concise and informative and interest recipients to open and read your message.

  • Reply-to - A leader that will receive replies if a recipient chooses to reply to the campaign email. By default 'No Reply' address will be provided, so recipients will not have a way to reach leaders.

  • Message Editor - This is the content of your email. It has a standard header that contains your association name and logo. It also has a standard footer that contains all mandatory information for CAN-SPAM compliance, as well as links for recipients to be able to manage their notifications preferences (and unsubscribe).

    The Message can contain formatted text, images, buttons and HTML. When you click into the content, you can edit any section directly, or add new sections using the tools on the right.

    Learn More About the Message Editor.

  • Test the Campaign - You should always test campaigns before sending them. When testing check to ensure that content is displayed properly, all images, links, and buttons click to the proper locations, and there are no spelling or grammatical errors.

    You can test how your message will be displayed:
    • Click [Preview in Browser] - This will open the contents of your message in a new tab and allow you to proof the content.
    • Click [Sent Test] - this will send the email immediately to your email address, so you can preview it in your email client.

  • Send the Campaign - Click [Send] to send the campaign to all the recipients. Once you have completed this step, the campaign will no longer be editable. You will immediately be able to view the status of the campaign including the progress of sending - Sends, as well as Opens and Clicks.

    The Sends, Opens and Clicks will be updated every few seconds if you are viewing the email campaign page. From the Campaign List, you can get to Campaign Details by clicking [Actions]..[View].

    When you Send a Campaign, your balance of TOTEM Credits will be deducted by the number of recipients.  If your association account does not have sufficient credits to send the email, you may click the [Buy Credits] button to add more credits to your association account, then click [Send] again.


Glossary of Terms

  • Campaign - A email broadcast that is being created or has been sent to an audience of recipients.  
  • Audience - The target group of recipients for a specific campaign.
  • Opens - Occurs when a recipient opens a campaign email in their email client.
  • Clicks - Occurs when a recipient clicks a link contained in a campaign email.
  • Sends - How many recipients for the selected audience were sent the campaign.
  • Open-rate - Percentage of recipients who opened the email in their client.
  • Click-through-rate (CTR) - Percentage of recipients who clicked a link in an email.


Message Center FAQ

  • Q: How many TOTEM Credits are needed to send a campaign?
    You need 1 credit for every recipient of a campaign. For example, if you want to send emails 500 recipients, you will need at least 500 TOTEM credits in your association account.

  • Q: How can I add attachments?
    To include attachments to an email, you should use a free service such as Dropbox. Save the attachment to your Dropbox folder, then right-click the file and choose 'Copy Dropbox Link'. In the message editor, type the name of your attachment, for example 'March Meeting Minutes', then select the text, then click the link icon and paste (CTRL-V) the Dropbox link as the Link.

       

           Learn more about attachments

Linking to attachments in a shared folder, saves a tremendous amount of bandwidth, but more importantly, many recipients may have emails blocked or marked as SPAM if emails contain Word Documents, PDFs or other other types of files. Links should never be blocked.