About OpenArmsK

Hi Frankie, I have found that emails from our constant contact account often end up in people's promotions folder in gmail (and I don't know how other email services are configured). This means that they are often lost amongst various marketing emails. Clearly, under these circumstances, they may not be opened at all and therefore the potential volunteer may never see the invitation to attend an onboarding event. We can't know if our potential volunteers are just not interested in coming to the event (read and didn't respond) or didn't see the email. Of course, we could just send the email from our general gmail account, but then, why pay for Constant Contact's services?   It would also be more convenient to be able to access reporting on events via the Reporting tab, once an email has been sent to let people know about it. Besides which, in the Campaigns tab, Events are (or have been, perhaps some changes were made there recently) a category you have to click on to see these emails. So it might be quicker (less clicks) if event emails were included in the Reporting tab. And it just seems odd that some emails count towards reporting statistics, whilst others are completely ignored.   I know I have been quite forthright about some of the problems I have found working in Constant Contacts. It has been quite frustrating and I apologise if I have overstepped the mark. Nevertheless, this is a service that we are paying for (and we are a small, very new charitable organisation working towards ngo status with only volunteers) and I do feel that it could improve. Events on my second time around, and after the revisions that CC made, was better. Inserting images was improved (pop-up box was much bigger but calculating how big to make the picture was still total guesswork). The email reply to respondents was a bit of a mess though - there was a field in the set up page that was included in the email, but there was another field that was editable later on in the process and it wasn't possible (afaik) to see the whole email in one. When I responded to the event myself, and got the email, it didn't make a whole lot of sense. Lots of repetition, 2 paragraphs that were totally unrelated to each other (because they were in 2 separate parts of the set up, and one was written without knowing what the other said, and the other was editable but without being able to remember or see what I had said in the first) but fortunately the main detail of how to join the session was clear, so it got the main message across. You'll be glad to know the event was a success. Even though we didn't hear from most of the invitees and have no idea whether they saw the email. ... View more

Sorry, one other thing that is quite important. There are a range of responses that the end user can choose when registering. I think it was possible to edit the wording, but it was not possible to see what the end user would see when clicking on any of these. So I didn't edit any of the fields, just in case. In fact, one registrant did choose one of the other fields aside from "register to attend" (or whatever it was). So, unbeknownst to me, that button linked to a comments field where they were able to send a message. This message was only visible in the events dashboard if you clicked on that one number alongside declined! I had no idea there was even an option to send a message, so would very easily have missed that if I had not been exploring which of the invitees had declined. Actually, in writing this, I just discovered that 2 registrants sent messages. This IS REALLY IMPORTANT TO ME. THESE ARE OUR MEMBERS AND IF THEY SEND MESSAGES WE NEED TO KNOW. WE RELY ON THESE PEOPLE TO HELP US IN OUR CHARITABLE WORK AND NEED TO CONNECT WITH THEM. PLEASE DO NOT HIDE THEIR MESSAGES! THEY THINK THEY'VE MESSAGED US VIA YOUR PLATFORM AND WE HAVE NO IDEA THAT THIS IS EVEN HAPPENING. YOU NEED TO ADD A VISIBLE FIELD TO SHOW VERY EXPLICITLY THAT MESSAGES HAVE BEEN SENT AND PROBABLY EVEN SEND US AN EMAIL ... View more

Hi Frankie, thank you for your reply. In fact, as there is apparently a big re-do of the whole events process, I'm hoping that most of these bugs will have cleared up by the time I attempt events again.   As far as the process I experienced went, there were two parts to the experience. The 1st part, where you choose the different bits of your event; dates, venues, etc and the second, where you design what it will all look like. Both were frustrating in their own way. As I'm not sure from your reply that I was entirely clear before, I hope the following will help to clarify.   The first part was frustrating because it was difficult to know what was coming next, after setting up the event details. There is the Registration page and the Landing page. TBH, I wasn't clear about the difference between the two, my bad. But I feel that there could be more insight within the process as to how this will all look to the end user. In the fields where you type text, the requirements for the information you should share disappear as soon as you start typing. Panic! If I don't share the link to the zoom here, will it appear anywhere in the process? I don't know as I've forgotten what the instructions were and they've disappeared! In the end, it seems I input pretty much the same old info in each of the possible fields, without really understanding what the purpose of each was and how it would look to the customer. It seems odd that I was encouraged to share the link to the online event within a text field, that made me wonder if this was the only place it would appear and how my registrants would know how to join if they didn't have it. It would make sense to be able to choose where to show such info - before they register, or in the automatic email after registration, and not to have to input that info in a text field.   The 2nd part (design) was frustrating because I had to change the default font colour and size everywhere. Images were a particular nightmare too. When I eventually worked out how to input a logo, it was too big, but there was a lot of empty space around it, so when I made the size of the box smaller, the logo became tiny. When I tried to crop it, the image was literally less than a cm across in a tiny maybe 2.5cm strip across the middle of my screen, which was impossible to work with. Every time I tried to replace the placeholder image, it just moved and I had to delete it. These are the problems I remember, but there were more frustrations pretty much everywhere along the way.   As for the mobile view, I'm not really sure what you mean. There was an icon to click on to view the event as it would look on a mobile, but tbh, it didn't look anything like it. So if I'm supposed to do something else with a permalink or whatnot, in order to preview, when there is an icon in the process which is apparently to preview, then that's not really clear or fair to me as the user. "Just do A and B will happen" ... "Oh actually, B didn't happen because you didn't do X, Y, or Z". As I said in my original feedback, when I received the actual campaign email as a customer and viewed everything on my phone, it all looked fine and as I would have expected, but nothing like what the preview suggested.   Another problem I encountered afterwards was the events pop up code in my wix website. I managed to change the background colour and the dotted line around it, but any changes I made to alter the hex numbers to change the colour, or edit the size of the font made no difference, so it was really tiny on the screen and the colours were not what I wanted. Also, wix did not let me see the full code in the box - it was there but I was unable to scroll to the end. This may be a wix problem though.   A further problem was finding my registrants! The event email campaign did not automatically show as one of my recent email campaigns, I had to click all campaigns or events to find it EVERY TIME. Then I had to click on the event to get to reporting. If I clicked on something within the report, there was not always a link to get back to the event, or it went back to "reporting". You should be aware that the reporting tab does not include reporting on events, which seems bizarre to say the least. So back to Campaigns tab, click events, click registrants etc etc etc. Clunky.   I've read the link you provided to "Create an Event". I'd say it might have been helpful if I'd read it before going ahead, but it wasn't hugely inspiring or illuminating.   As I said before, there is a way to go before Events is a user friendly process. But here's hoping! ... View more

I had a whole reply typed up because the Accept as Solution button did not in fact appear until after I clicked on reply, so I decided to compose a thank you note. As soon as I clicked on it, my whole reply disappeared! So thank you for taking the time to explain the solution and I now know what to do if it happens again. However I am very glad to hear that the Events system is getting a revamp which it really needs. The whole process of setting up the event as a first timer was frustrating and complicated. Cropping, sizing and placing logos/images was complete guesswork. Understanding what would happen next, what the purpose of each field was, what the event would look like in each stage from the first, was obscure to say the least. So roll on the revamp! Thanks again for the help.  ... View more