Customizing Sending and Automating Announcements

Please note, all announcements, including tests, will remain visible in the Virtual Portal and PheedLoop Go! if published. If testing the announcement feature is necessary, we recommend sending an actual announcement such as a welcome email or another announcement prewritten by your team’s organization.

Announcements are hands-down the most powerful and customizable way to connect with your attendees. From push notifications, email customizations, and open/click receipts, to automatic scheduling and tag/ticket filters to segment your outreach, there are countless ways to optimize your announcements. In this article, we discuss the setup, settings, and troubleshooting.

Creating an Announcement

Creating a simple announcement is ... well, simple!

1. From the Event Dashboard, navigate to Communications > Announcements
2. Above the Announcements table, select Create 
   1. You don't need to fill in anything more than the Title and Description fields but you can fill in the rest of the fields depending on your requirements.

Once you've created the basic announcement, you can proceed to configure a few more of the fields. Let's go over some of the important ones:

Visible - Select this option if your announcement is ready to be visible and is no longer in draft mode. Without an announcement being visible, the individual portal visibility settings will not take effect. Also, if you plan to send this announcement out instead of just displaying it, and you plan to send it out automatically, do not check this option. When the announcement is sent out automatically, the option will be automatically checked for you.

Push Notifications Enabled - If your announcement is being sent out instead of just being visible in a portal, you'll want to select this option if you want the announcement to be sent out as a push notification. Push notifications are essentially notifications which are sent out directly to an attendee's device (desktop and/or mobile in the case of the mobile event app being used) in the operating system itself, and directly to the interface they are on (e.g. virtual event portal, event app) as a pop-up.

Email Notifications Enabled - If your announcement is being sent out instead of just being visible in a portal, you'll want to select this option if you want the announcement to be sent out as an email notification.

Sending Announcements On-Demand

You have two options when sending announcements out on-demand. You can send the announcement to a single individual, or you can send it out in bulk to the full list of eligible attendees. Sending announcements on-demand is ideal when you want immediate control and feedback, want to send the same announcement multiple times, etc.

To send an announcement to a single attendee:

1. From the Event Dashboard, navigate to Communications > Announcements
2. Select the checkbox next to your announcement
3. Above the Announcements table select Actions > Send Single Announcement
4. Select the attendee from the list
5. Select Send

Depending on whether the notification is push, email or both, it will be sent out accordingly.

To send an announcement out to all eligible attendees in bulk:

1. From the Event Dashboard, navigate to Communications > Announcements
2. Select the checkbox next to your announcement
3. Above the Announcements table select Actions > Send Bulk Announcements

Just like with Send Single Announcement, the email will be sent out as a push notification, email, or both depending on the options toggled on.

Sending Announcements Automatically

If you're more of the set-and-forget type, or you have too many announcements and not enough manpower to manage them all on-demand, then using the automatic sending feature for announcements is going to help. This feature allows you to create announcements ahead of time, select a date and time, and let PheedLoop send the announcement out automatically.

Ensure you have set the Timezone field correctly for your event under General > Details, as this will greatly influence when the announcement is released. The steps to ensure this is successful is as follows for the announcement you are planning to automate:

1. From the Event Dashboard, navigate to Communications > Announcements
2. Select your announcement from the list
3. Scroll down to Visibility and toggle off the Visible checkbox
4. Scroll down to Scheduling and fill out the Display Date and Display Time
5. Select Save Changes

You can modify any of the other options depending on your particular needs, such as which portals (if any) the announcement will be visible in, whether you are including a call to action button, whether you'd like to include the recipient's login credentials, etc. Otherwise, there's nothing more to do. PheedLoop will begin sending out your announcement at the specified time (at the closest 5-minute mark on the clock after your specified time). Depending on the number of people the announcement being notified, it may take several minutes for the announcement to be delivered fully, so we suggest setting the release time for the announcement to a few minutes ahead if the announcement is meant to inform the recipient of something time-sensitive.

Note that upon release, the announcement's Visible checkbox will be automatically toggled on, and the Display Date and Display Time will be automatically set in the Automatic Publish Date and Automatic Publish Time fields.

To Use Link Page Types in Announcements

A feature that Announcements hold is the ability to link sessions, exhibitors, or sponsors in the event app. If linked, the attendee will be able to select View in the event app’s notification list to open the corresponding page.

1. From the Event Dashboard, navigate to Communications > Announcements
2. Above the Announcements table, select Create
3. Scroll down to Delivery
4. Toggle on Push Notifications Enabled
5. Scroll down to Visibility 
6. Toggle on Show in Event App
7. Scroll down to Event App Settings
8. Under Linked Page Type, select Session, Exhibitor, or Sponsor depending on what is necessary
9. Select the corresponding Session, Exhibitor, or Sponsor that will appear as a new field 
10. Select Save Changes

Please note, Exhibitors will require owning the Exhibit Hall module in order to function. 

To open Link Page Types in the PheedLoop Go! App

Announcements can be accessed from any portal if included in the Event Dashboard. However, linked page types will only appear in the PheedLoop Go! App.

1. From the PheedLoop Go! App, navigate to bell icon on the top right corner of the screen
2. Select View

Reviewing Announcement Deliveries

PheedLoop records which users open and who selected the Call-To-Action button for announcements. Please note this feature does not apply to push notifications. To review the status of sent announcements:

1. From the Event Dashboard, navigate to Communications > Announcements
2. Select the checkbox next to your announcement
3. Above the Announcements table, select Actions > Review Sent Email Announcements

Re-Sending Announcements to Unique Recipients

Sometimes you may create an announcement that you want to send multiple times, but not to the same people more than once. For example, if you've created an email announcement to invite attendees to your event, and only want to send one email per attendees:

1. From the Event Dashboard, navigate to Communications > Announcements
2. Select the email you want to edit from the list
3. Scroll down to Delivery and toggle off the Allow Multiple Deliveries checkbox
4. Select Save Changes

You can safely resend the announcement multiple times now, and rest assured that it will only go out once per attendee.

Segmenting and Restricting Announcement Recipients

A powerful feature in PheedLoop's announcements system is the ability to segment your attendee-base by tags and tickets. Please note, tickets are only applicable if you are using PheedLoop's built-in registration system.

To segment announcement recipients based on tags and/or tickets:

1. From the Event Dashboard, navigate to Communications > Announcements
2. Select the email you want to edit from the list
3. Scroll down to Targeted Tags and/or Targeted Tickets fields
4. Assign the tags and tickets as required
5. Select Save Changes

This will ensure anyone who has one of the targeted tags or tickets will receive the announcement.

Please note that this does not segment who sees the announcement if you are showing the announcement in one of your portals. This is only applicable to the deliveries of the announcement as an email or push notification and is typically used by events only for communication, not display purposes.

Ordering Announcements

By default, announcements are ordered by the  Display Date and Display Time with the newest announcements showing at the top of the list. There is no problem if you do not set a display date or display time for an announcement or multiple announcements have the same display date or display time. Announcements without those factors will be ordered based on the manual order you have set for the announcements.

To re-order your announcements:

1.  From the Event Dashboard, navigate to Communications > Announcements
2. Above the Announcements table, select Actions > Re-Order
3. Re-order your announcements
4. Select Save

Recall that if the announcement is being released automatically, the display date and time for the announcement will automatically be set to the publish date and time upon release.

Using Tokens in the Description Textbox

While writing emails you may want to individually address the person being notified but don’t want to create a unique announcement for each attendee. With tokens, you can include a number of personalized text like names, links, QR codes, etc.

1. From the Event Dashboard, navigate to Communications > Announcements
2. Select the email you want to edit from the list
3. From the Description field select Insert Token
4. Select the text codes that apply to your announcement
5. Select Save Changes

Your announcements will now have unique text for each attendee.