New Contact Center: Everything You Need to Know

What is it?

You can use the Contact Center to send a newsletter or email blast to profiles in your MC Professional database. This article reviews the new email editor and Contact Center features, launched May 2021.

How to Access

In the main navigation, hover over Community and click Contact Center. If you're sending to a specific list of profiles, you can tag them from the Profile list and click Actions > Contact

Sending a Contact Center Message

1. Begin by selecting your message’s recipients. If you've clicked through from the Profile List or another location, recipients will already be tagged and you can click the Preview button to see the details of which profiles/emails are selected. To simply use a saved search, click Add Recipients from Saved Search. All of your saved searches from Profile List are available to select. If you need to create a new search with new criteria, click Create a New Search to go to the Profile List.

Select the search you want to use, and click Proceed with this saved search.

2. Next, compose your email. You can load a previously saved email in the Saved Emails list, or a new, default template will be loaded into the Compose Email section by default. 

3. To create or edit your message, use the drag-and-drop tools on the right side of your email preview. 

The Content section displays the different types of content you can add to your message:

1. Columns: this inserts side-by-side sets of content blocks into the body of your email. Note that you can also use the "Blocks" feature for a simple layout modification that puts placeholders into your message, into which you can then drag Content elements. 
2. Button: this places a button on which you can edit the text and choose a URL to take the user when the button is clicked
3. Divider: adds a horizontal line in between sections
4. Heading: allows you to enter text pre-styled as a header for the section of content
5. Image: allows you to upload an image from your local files, or enter the URL of a hosted image to display in the email. Drag the image placeholder into your email where you want it to appear, then use the settings on the right to upload and configure the image
6. Menu: this adds a horizontal menu of links to web pages, email addresses, or other URLs of your choosing
7. Text: inserts a block of text, with basic formatting/hyperlink options displayed on the right
8. Video: allows you to embed a video in the body of the email, by entering the URL of the hosted video in the settings

Once any of these content elements has been dragged in to the message, you'll see the settings and configuration options for that particular element displayed on the right side of your message. You can select any element in your email to get those settings to appear. For example, when a Button is selected, you'll see the different settings available to format and configure that button appear on the right:

To close out of those settings and return to the main Content menu and choose a new element to drag in, just click the "X" in the upper right corner of the settings section. Click here for more detail on some of the common Content elements and best practices. 

You can also add Merge Fields into your email in any of the Text content elements. Place your cursor in the text where you want to include the field from the recipient's profile, and you'll see a dropdown appear in the toolbar labeled "Merge Tags." Select the field you want to include, and the placeholder will appear in your email text: 

4. Save your email: if you would like to save this email to load and use as a future template or copy, enter a name for the email and click Save Email.

5. Add any necessary Attachments to the message by clicking Attach Files.

6. Enter Email Details, including the From Name, Reply-To Email address (replies will be delivered here), and the Subject for the email. 

7. When you are ready to send or schedule your email, choose one of the four options in the Send Email section:

• Send as a test: enter an email address to review the email
  Note: if you configured merge data fields in the email template, they will not populate in the test email. You would have to tag a profile and use Send now for merge fields to populate.
• Send now: the email will start going out in a queue after a built-in buffer of 5 minutes
• Send at a later date: set the date and time you want this email to send. The recipient list will be set when you click Schedule Email and will not be updated.
• Set as a campaign email: set this email as a template to be sent to the results of the profile list search you selected on a recurring basis, based on the settings you choose. Click here to learn more about setting up a recurring email: https://help.memberclicks.com/hc/en-us/articles/360060308111. 

8. After Sending, you’ll be taken directly to the Message Report where you can choose to Cancel or Save the message. 

De-duplicating Emails

After you click Send or Schedule, if your list of tagged contacts contains any duplicate email addresses, the system will alert you that we found duplicate email addresses in your list, and give you the option to either "Send to All" meaning that the email will send out to every email address as many times as it appears in your contact list, or to "Skip Duplicates", meaning that if an email is listed more than once in your tagged list, it will only send to that email address one time. Note: When "skip duplicates" is selected, the system will arbitrarily choose only a single profile on which to record the message history.