Sometimes it is necessary to send out an email that is not tied to a campaign. To do this, go into your event in CORE. You will need to know the name of the template that you are trying to send out.

1. Click on Order>Queue Email/SMS Templates

2. Select your template from the drop down

3. Sort order - should not matter since this is an email not printed proofs

4. Queue Profile>First Mailing Email

5. Send Date - leave this as it is if you want the email to queue up now. You will have a chance to check the email once it has been queued before sending it out

6. Customer Names: You will need to decide if this email is going to everyone in the event or a selection of people. You have the options to send it to people who are ID'd to photos or not, a certain set range (helpful for retake alerts), or only people in certain divisions. You can also limit the images that appear to certain views in this section. If you want to send it to everyone in your event, choose: Everyone>check ID'd & Not ID'd and click queue

7. There are additional options below that can limit who the emails get sent to such as physical mailing addresses and including group photos in the email.
8. You will need to go to Queues on the top CORE menu, check the box to the left of the template that you just queued and click send for the email to go out. This is optionally the place that you can send yourself a test email before sending them to your event.

Merge Fields

Use merge fields or "placeholder variables" to import custom data that is unique to your event or participant into your email template. This is usually used to include the participant name, event name or a deadline date in your email. To access the list of available items to import, go to Emails/Proofs on the top menu>Email Templates>Click Edit on a template>Click Link that says Click here for a list of placeholder variables.

To use the merge field, simply put the code or placeholder in the position that you want that data to appear on your template when designing/creating it. Below are a few of the available placeholders but to access the full list, use the link described above.

Edit an Existing Template

If you need to customize an email template, it is easiest to use an existing template and just edit it. To do this, go to Emails/Proofs on the top CORE menu>Templates>Email Templates. Once you select a template to edit, click Copy to the left of that template. Find the copy of the email you made and click the edit button to the left of that template.

You will now be able to copy the HTML code from the section labeled HTML Email. You can select all>copy all within that text.

Then go to your favorite HTML editor and paste that code into the editor. We like to go to html-online.com/editor but you can use any editor you prefer. Simply paste the code into the section titled source code. You can make edits on the preview that you want to and then copy and paste the new HTML code back into the template in CORE. Like magic, your email template will have the new information and edits that you made. We suggest renaming the template so it is easy to find and send to your email list or event(s).

Replace an Image in a Template

If you want to replace an image that is currently in an email template, you will need to upload the new image to your file manager. You can do that by going to:

1. Emails/Proofs (Top Menu) then Template Settings>File Manager. At the bottom of the page, select the new file and click the Go Button.

2. Once uploaded, click on the name of your file to get the unique URL of that file.

3. When in the editor (pictured above) you can delete the existing image and choose Insert>Image in the editor. Paste the URL into the section that says source to replace the existing image with a new one.

Note: Some HTML editors are different in the way that images are put into them - you may need to right click and change source URL for the image instead of deleting and inserting.

Discount Codes

You may want to include a discount code in your email if you are running a special. You can use the instructions above to edit your email template to include a discount code.

Discount codes have two options - you can do a Discount dollar amount which will subtract the dollar amount that you specify from the subtotal or you can do a Discount percentage which will take a % off of the subtotal. You can even do a 100% discount to place orders that do not require payment online (helpful when you need to order a sample or replacement order yourself online).

Discount codes will not be unique per user. One code is created then distributed to all of the participants at your event. You choose what the customer will enter for the code and type it under Discount Code: Typically discount codes are used for things like free coach prints that can be redeemed online or applied to another package/product. They are also commonly used for % off sales like 15% off for the next three days. Don't forget to click the create button.

Editing a Discount Code

You can adjust the available date or the minimum basket amount on a discount code by finding it on the list of codes and changing the data, then clicking Bulk Update. This feature is used when you are using a discount code that has been previously used but you want to extend the dates it is available.

Create Shipping Discount Code

You can also create a discount code that applies to the shipping charges instead of the subtotal. This is useful for specials or discounts that include shipping. You create the code the exact same way but choose Discount Shipping Dollar Amount or Discount Shipping Percentage from the drop down menu.

Import an Email Campaign

You can easily use email campaigns setup by Candid on your events. Go to Emails/Proofs>Email Campaigns>click Refresh CCS Official Campaigns. This will update your list with all of the pre-created email campaigns that we have available to you. When you find one you want to use, simply click the copy button to the left of the campaign and rename it to whatever you want. You can pre-determine the email campaign used on your events within your workflow on the settings tab.

Create a Campaign

First, see if any of the Candid Created Campaigns will work for you. This will be the easiest way to get a campaign going on your event. If you still have the need to create a new campaign, go to Emails/Proofs on the top menu>Campaigns>Email Campaigns>Click the link Add a new: email campaign.

You will then name the campaign, choose the market(s) it will be available in, click the button for mark active and then click save. Now you are ready to start adding templates to your campaign.

When you click Add a Template to this campaign, you will be shown a list of available templates to choose from. You can select that template to add it to the campaign. Click the edit button to the left of the template to set the date or offset that you want that template to be triggered by. You will also have options to send to ID'd/Not ID'd and ordered/not ordered. Select the appropriate settings and click save. Continue to add templates to your campaign until you have completed the entire campaign.

Consolidated Campaign

There are two types of campaigns that can be run in CORE. Event specific email campaigns and consolidated campaigns. You should have an event campaign activated on all of your events that are online to get the most out of the marketing benefits through CORE. Additionally, you can use a consolidated campaign to send a single email out to many/all of your events to get even more out of them.

Why is it called a consolidated campaign?

A regular email campaign sends one email at a time to every email address in your event(s). That's great until you want to send one email out to ALL of your events. If you try to do that through a regular email campaign, you risk sending one person several copies of the same email. Each email would have links to one event which is confusing and seems like a mistake. The consolidated campaign compiles all events that an email address is linked to and sends ONE email to that address with links to all events. This is great for maximizing sales and reminding people of all of the wonderful photos you have taken of them, their family or friends. You want to queue these up at least 24 hours in advance of sending them so that the system has time to run through all of the email addresses that you have entered into your events and compile them into single emails to your customers.

Create the Campaign

To create a consolidated campaign, go to Emails/Proofs>Campaigns>Consolidated Campaigns>Add a new: consolidated email campaign. Here you will see some options.

1. Name your campaign

2. Restrict who gets email by choosing to send to only certain markets, account numbers, organizations, or offers assigned to events.

3. You can manually enter event numbers of events that you want to exclude from the campaign. You can also limit the campaign to only events within a certain date range or # of days old.

Be sure to click Active and Save. If you want to see the event names to be included click Save & Preview Events.

Add Email Templates

To add templates to your campaign, click the Add a Template to this campaign link and select the templates that you want to include in your campaign from the drop down list. Click Add for each template that you want to include. You will then see the list of email templates now in your campaign and we can assign when we want them to go out.

Automate Sending Emails

Click Edit next to the template that you want to send out. Under Auto Queue Settings, enter a date to send the email. You can choose to preview the email before sending which will keep the email in your queue until you test and approve it. This is not recommended because it often gets forgotten and never goes out. You can choose to send the email to Everyone, Ordered or Not Ordered participants. Typically the consolidated campaigns are sent to everyone. You can also choose to send it to people who are ID'd or not ID'd here. We usually choose ID'd so that the images in the email are at least someone that the recipient knows. Once you enter your date, remember to click Save. Note: You can preview the template during this step by clicking the Preview button next to the HTML. Once you save the date, the campaign will take over and begin queuing 1-2 days before the email will be sent. You can check the progress in the Queues menu.

Add an email campaign to an existing event

If you did not configure an email campaign in your workflow and now you have an event that needs to have a campaign assigned, you can do that easily. We will be looking at the Event Details page within your event.

Check to see if you have an email campaign configured. If you do not have a campaign assigned it will say "Not Configured" under your event details. If you do have an email campaign assigned you will see the name of the campaign.
To assign / change the campaign you will go to Quick Links to the right of Event Details > Settings > Event Settings
From Event Settings you will scroll down to Proof Card Settings > Select your email campaign from the drop down menu
You will have the option to set an "Email Campaign Start Date". You will only set this date if your start date is AFTER your event date. For example if your event date is 07/24/2019, but you do not want the emails to start sending until 07/27 you will enter 07/27/2019 under the Email Campaign Start Date. If you plan to send emails on your event date, you can leave this date blank and simply start the campaign when the event goes live. Click Save Changes to apply these settings.
You should notice the changes on your event details page to the updates that you made.

Template Settings within a Campaign

1. Send When: Determines when the email will send.

Event date offset: Email will go out a certain number of days before or after an event date. To do before the event occurs, simply use a negative number.

PhotoMatch Date offset. If you are utilizing PhotoMatch, you can send the email template based on the date the participant was photographed. Example: If you take photos over a week and you have 3 emails and/or SMS that typically send during that 7 day period, you can set your emails to go based on when a person is photographed instead of the event date or campaign start date. This way everyone gets all emails/sms sent without missing any.

Date: A day of the year or date.

2. Preview before sending: If checked, the email will queue up and go into your queues menu item at the top of CORE but it will not go out until you approve it on the queues page. We do not suggest using this feature unless you are testing a new template because it becomes easy to forget or miss sending out emails on your event

3. Update deadline date to: Allows you to automatically update the deadline date by a certain number of days or to a specific date.

4. Update late fee date to; Allows you to automatically update the late fee date. The update happens when the email is queued.

5. Include Customers who have: Ordered, Not Ordered, Everyone. This allows you to send the template to only those who have placed an order, only those who have not ordered or all participants at an event

6. Include customers who are: ID'd, Not ID'd, Everyone. This allows you to sent the template to people that have individual ID's on their name, only to those who do not yet have images assigned to them or to everyone at an event.

(Video below explains setting up templates to go out by PhotoMatch Date Offset)

Text Messages/SMS

You can setup/Create custom text messages and add them to your campaign. Go to Emails/Proofs>Templates>SMS Templates>Add a new: Text Message template.

From here, you can name the new template and use placeholders to pull in information like participant name or event name. Don't remove the line of text that states "To unsubscribe reply STOP". You must keep that in your outgoing text messages. Once you have the message setup, click the save button.

Once your template is saved, you can add it to an existing or new campaign by going to Campaigns>Vew (on existing campaign)>Add a: Template to this campaign.

You can set the day that it will go out by clicking edit next to your template and entering a date or offset number in the Auto Queue Settings. Do not check the preview before sending button unless you want the text messages to queue up and NOT go out. You will have to go to your email queues under the Queues menu to manually send them if you check this box. You also have the option of sending the message to everyone, ordered or not ordered/ ID'd, not ID'd or all which will impact who receives the text message when they do go out.

Registration Links for SMS/Text Messages

You can send individuals their unique registration link in an SMS Text message. If you have a roster with cell phone numbers you can send your customer an SMS Text message that contains their custom registration site URL

To send the message you will need to use the merge field $RegistrationURL$

Using this merge field will automatically create the unique URL for each of your customer so they can register additional data.

Here's an example of how you might use the custom merge in an SMS Text Message

Email Reporting

Email Delivery Reports

First you will select the date range of when the campaign and/or template queued to send.
You may optionally enter a specific event number to run a report for a single event.
You will then select which campaign you would like to view the report on. You can leave on "Any" to view all campaigns.
You can narrow the report to a specific template within the campaign.
You can narrow the report to just one email domain. Example: gmail.com, yahoo.com, etc.
You can have the report grouped by Event, Campaign, Template or Domain
To see all activity within your selections leave the break out rows set at 0.
Click Update to view your report
You can sort your results by clicking on any column header.
You can view details by clicking on any number.

# Sent = The number of email address the template was sent to

# Unique Opens = The number of unique individual emails that were opened the email template.

- Ex: if the email template was sent to 10 unique email addresses and 5 of those addresses opened the email at least once, it would show 5 unique opens.

Total Opens = The total number of times the email template was opened.

- Example: if the email template was sent to 10 unique email address and 5 of those address opened the email two times each, it would show the total opens as 10.

# Unique Clicks = The number of times an email address actually clicks at least one link in the email template

- Example: if the email template was sent to 10 different email address and 2 of those email addresses clicked on a link, the # of unique clicks would be 2.

Total Clicks = The total number of times a link in an email template was clicked.

- Example: If the email template was sent to 10 different email addresses and 4 emails addresses clicked a link in the email template two times each, that would be 8 total clicks.

# Unique Bounced = Number of email addresses that bounced, which means the email template was not delivered to the email address.

Note: You will want to manage all bounced email addresses. This means correct typos or confirm why it bounced.

- When an email address bounces you can click on the number to reveal the list of emails that bounced.
  - If the email bounced due to a mistyped email, you can correct it and requeue it
  - If the email address is typed correctly, you can click the bounce button to reveal the reason for the bounce and take action accordingly.
  - If you have many emails bouncing from the same domain, such as an organization or schools email address, it is likely that organization has blocked your emails. If this is the case, you will need to contact your organization and ask them to white list your email.

# Bounced Managed = The number of bounce emails you have either corrected and confirmed are a true bounce that cannot be corrected.

# Requeued = Number of bounced emails you have corrected and/or requeued to send again.

Note: You should manage all bounces, which means this number should match the # bounced when you finish managing the bounces.

# Unsubscribed = This is the number of emails addresses that have opt'd out of receiving emails from either this specific event or from any event.

Note: By law you must allow people to unsubscribe and once unsubscribed, not send them any more emails. CORE will automatically handle anyone who unsubscribes and will not send them additional emails based on their unsubscribe selection.

# Ordered = The number of orders that resulted in someone clicking through the email and placing an order on the retail website.

Note: if the customer gets to the retail website, not going through an email link, the order # will not be included in this total.

$ Ordered = The sales total that resulted by someone clicking through the email and placing on order on the retail website.

Note: if the customer gets to the retail website, not going through an email link, the order # will not be included in this total.

Resend a Bounced Email

If an email bounces, you can correct and resend it in CORE. Every email is worth money so it is important to get as many delivered on your events as possible. Sometimes an email is not delivered. The most common reason for that is a misspelling in the email address. To check for bounced emails, correct them and resend, go to Reports>Email Reporting>Choose a campaign, template or event and search by clicking update. When the data populates, click on the number under the # Unique Bounced column. That will open a new report and show you each email address that was not delivered.

You can update the email address here, select re-queue and save. This report also shows you the name of the participant which can sometimes aid in fixing miss-spelled email addresses. Once you correct all of the email addresses and re-queue them, you will need to go to Queues and click the box to the left of the corrected emails and click the send button to deliver them to the new email addresses. The event specific campaign will then pick up the corrected email address and include it in future mailings increasing your chances of getting a sale from that address.

View Invalid Email Addresses

Go to the Emails/Proofs Page in CORE.

On the left menu select Email Addresses > then select Invalid Addresses
From the dropdown select an event to view invalid email addresses

Note: We recommend going into the event from the Event Page, then to Names & Contact Data to view and correct invalid addresses.

Opt in or Unsubscribe an Email address

If you have a customer that didn't receive an email because they had previously unsubscribed you can re-subscribe or opt them back in.

Go to the Emails/Proofs page>Email Addresses>Manage. Then type or paste the email address in the box and select the box that says "These addresses have chosen to Opt back in to receive emails". Then click "Submit". Keep in mind that if an email has already queued up before the opt back in, that customer will not received that email. You may want to manually requeue the missed email to the newly opt'd in email address.

If you have a customer who no longer wants to receive emails, you can remove them from the mailing list.

There should always be an unsubscribe link included in the email that goes to your customers. You can simply click that link for them and choose to unsubscribe them from the specific event related to the email or all future emails for all events. You can also unsubscribe an email via CORE. Keep in mind, that unsubscribing an email in CORE will unsubscribe them from all future emails from all events.

Go to the Emails/Proofs page>Email Addresses>Manage. Then type or paste the email address in the box and select the box that says These addresses have chosen to Opt-Out. Click Submit. Keep in mind that if an email has already queued up before the unsubscribe is sent, that customer will still receive the next email. It is best to tell your customer to allow up to 72 hours for the unsubscribe to take effect.

Scannable QR Codes

If you have a roster with email addresses, you can now send emails containing a QR Code that is not only scannable by your customer to register more contact data, but can be presented to the photographer to scan and pull up a name in PhotoMatch

The merge field you'll use to add a QR Code in your email template is $RegistrationDataMatchQRCode$

We also suggest including the the website URL in the event your customer does not have a QR Code scanner, they can just click the link. For the website URL use merge field $RegistrationURL$

Here's an example of how you might use the $RegistrationDataMatchQRCode$ merge field

Send Yourself a Test Email

If you would like to receive an email so you can see how it will look to your customer you can do so from the email queue.

The email must first be queued. Either automatically via a campaign or you queuing a single email.

Once queued, go to the queues page and then to email jobs.
Locate the template you want to send yourself and check it
At the bottom of the page enter your email address and click the send text button