Setting up a send to a friend

A Send to a Friend is designed for you to be able to capture the details of a colleague/friend, so that they can be added to your marketing lists for your email marketing. Rather than the original receiver just "forwarding" the email, and the "friend's" engagement registered as their own in the Campaign Results, using the "Send to a Friend" link in the email not only adds their details to your system, but it also separates out the results per individual.

 

To start, click on add new send to a friend button. This will bring up a pop up, allowing you to enter the name of the send to a friend function. This is simply a signpost to help you remember each option, as you may wish to create multiple send to a friend functionalities. 

In this video one of our Product Specialists will show you how to build a Send to a Friend.

Details

Step 2)
  1. This is the name (or alias) of the Send to a friend.
  2. Unsubscribe field. This is where you select the field that you would like to map to; this is typically mapped to the Optin Value. 
  3. Enter Opt In Vaue -The send to a friend function requires you to enter the Optin Value and the Opt Out Value. If you are mapping to OptIn, which we recommend, use the same values. The values can be found by clicking tools/unsubscribe.
  4. Enter Opt Out Value
  5. If you have a CSS file that you would like to choose for the style of the send to a friend form, click on the drop down and select the file that you would like to use.
  6. If you would like to enable Confirmation Opt In tick the checkbox, this means that the friend/colleague who is sent the request has the ability to confirmed opt in to your communications.
  7. If you have already set up a Confirmation Opt in you can select the design, if you wanted to edit a previous set up Confirmation Opt In you can do it by clicking on the edit button.

 

Sign Up Details

Step 3)
  1. On the sign up page for the send to a friend, you have the option to apply styles such as font style and colour. Clicking on the pencil will open up the editor. Typically, clients will use their company logo and/or slogan in the header.
  2. You can also set the appearance of the footer; this will typically be populated with information about the company. 
  3. This is the text that you would like to appear at the top of the screen. "Sign your friend up to our newsletters" would be an example of this. 
  4. When using send to a friend, the user must enter information into these fields. These will usually be pre-populated with placeholder values, as in the example above. 
  5. This is where the person who is recommending the email can enter in a message to their friend/colleague.
  6. For the submit button you can change the text on the button. For example, change it from submit to forward this to a friend.
  7. The completion message is the information that will appear once the contact has completed the form, and will inform them that it has been sent correctly.
  8. If the contact already exists in your CommuniGator Database, you can set a message to inform the contact that we already have a record of them.
  9. This button allows you to preview the design. 

 

Email to friend details

When you use the send to a friend feature, your friend will receive a text email to let them know - this is where you can design that email. Several merge fields are available to use for inserting dynamic information into the text email the friend will receive. Note that you must use the merge fields %urlHtml% and %urlText% to insert the clickable links which are required for your friend to acknowledge their interest.

  1. Enter the Email address that you would like the email sent from
  2. Select the domain that you would like it to send from, click on the drop down box to select the domain that you would like to appear. The domain selected will be your default domain.
  3. Enter the subject line that you would like to appear.
  4. Enter the content of the email that you would like the recipient to receive.
  5. This button allows you to preview the design. 

 

Friend confirmation details

Step 5)

This section allows you to edit what the friend will receive once they have accepted the send to a friend message.

  1. The confirm header is typically your company logo and slogan; to insert the information, click on the pencil this will open up an editor screen.
  2. The confirmation footer is typically your company information.
  3. Sign up message is the main body content which the friend will receive, having confirmed their interest. 
  4. You then have the option to preview the sign up message.

 

Reporting

When someone uses the 'send to a friend' function, you will be able to export a list showing who has made the referral and who the referral was made to using the results page of your campaign.

  1. Navigate to the campaign screen.
  2. Click on "View Results" on the campaign where the send to a friend was used.
  3. Click on the 'Export Options' button and then select the 'Referrals' option from the drop down.
  4. On the results screen you can see the total number of contact(s) that referred your email.

The export, you will see the contact who made the referral, the time they made the referral, the contact who received the referral, and the contact record of the new contact. If they don't accept the send to a friend the value in the "Optin"field will display as your Opt Out value, if they accept the send to a friend request it will change the Optin to your Optin value.