The Message Center Custom Templates you create become available for use in sending e-blasts to your Membership.
- To contact Members through your website dashboard, click on the “Membership” tab on the vertical Dashboard menu at the left side of the screen.
- Click on the “Members” tab.
- In the “MEMBERS” window that opens, use the Search functions to narrow down your results to only the people you want to reach. (To learn how to use the Search functions, see the “Filter the Member List” section of these instructions.) Skip this step to reach all Members.
- Click on the “Members Actions” dropdown menu at the top right and choose “Message Filtered Members.”
- In the “MESSAGE MEMBERS” window that opens, activate the second toggle switch (“Send An Email To ‘XX’ Members”).
- Activate the “Use template” checkbox.
- Click on the “Select Template” dropdown menu to choose a template from the list of Message Center Custom Templates. Each message is listed by “Name” and “Subject.” Remember that if your desired template’s message subject contains one or more dynamic fields, the names of the dynamic fields will appear in the message subject as shown in the dropdown menu.
- Click on the entry for the Message Center Custom Template you want to use. To change to a different template, click on the “Change” link and make another selection.
- Use the “When would you like this message to be sent?” radio buttons to schedule your message. Note that the time you set is the approximate time that messages go out, not the time at which recipients receive their messages. Messages are queued for overall delivery.
- Select the “Now” radio button to send your message immediately.
- Select the “Schedule for later” radio button to reveal the “Select date/time” field and set a specific later message-transmission date/time. Note that the message transmission time is listed as Eastern Time and represents the approximate time at which messages go out, not the time at which recipients receive their messages.
- Click on the “Select date/time in Eastern Time Zone” field to access a combined date and time picker.
- The “Select date/time” controls open set to today’s date. To scroll forward by months, click on the “>” arrow to the right of the month and year. To select a specific month, click on the month/year to reveal a set of links to upcoming months in the currently selected year. To select a different year, click again, this time on the year shown above the set of links to individual months. Click on an individual year to select it and reveal the set of links to individual months in that year. Click on a month to select a date within that month.
- After you select a specific date, use the time controls to set the time at which you want your message to go out. By default, the time picker displays the current time. Click on the up and down arrows to the right of the hour to set the hour. Click and drag on the selectors for the hour, minutes, and AM/PM to set the desired time in Eastern Time.
- When you have selected the date and time, click on the “Set” link at the top right of the date/time picker window to finish setting up your message transmission.
- To cancel setting a transmission date and time, click on the “Cancel” link at the top left of the date/time picker window.
- When you have finished setting immediate message transmission or a future message transmission date/time, click on the “Send” button to complete the process.