Communication Center

It would be very helpful if we could see the number of clicks each email link had from the email analytics page in Almabase. I see that this can be done by exporting to an excel sheet an manipulating that sheet. But it would be much more helpful and less time consuming if this information was readily available within the platform. This information is more helpful than what each individual user clicked on and will help us see trends from our audience.

Please add the number of people who clicked unsubscribe onto the email analytics. This is extremely important so that it can show us what communication does and does not resonate with our constituents. Knowing the number of people who unsubscribed is not nearly as useful as knowing when/what prompted people to unsubscribe. Also, just because they clicked on the unsubscribe link, does not mean that they actually went through an unsubscribed.

We would like to have the ability to change the name of the sender with having to be connected to a record or person in the database. Sender emails should be stand alone. This is common industry practice. We would prefer that email sender is just a field you fill in, like subject, that isn't connected to anything else. One example is we are often sending emails for different departments across campus and those emails are coming from different departments or people within those departments and going in and creating a record for each of those entities is extra work.

I would be very useful to easily identify in the email performance report - the clicks that are the unsubscribe button clicks and those that are other links within a message (other than to export and sort on a spreadsheet) It should be possible to identify authentic user clicks vs. automated system clicks within the email performance information.

Add the ability to upload templates to the Comms Hub and Custom Pages. (1) Comms Hub: Currently Bee Editor is used as the editor in the Comms Hub but you cannot upload a custom template made in Bee Editor. So if your school already has templates created, they have to be recreated from scratch within Almabase. (2) Custom Pages editor: unfortunately for some reason the Bee Editor is not even offered as a Pages editor. And there is no ability to upload a template. The current Pages editor is clunky, featureless, and difficult to deal with. Many of us have creative departments that already are familiar with Bee Editor and have created or could create templates for the Alum department to use in Almabase. In addition there are graphic design consultants one could hire on a one-off basis to create a communications template for a particular program you are launching such as a reunion, where you would like all your communications to look a certain way or maybe have a slight variation to them. The thought of having to create that from scratch within Almabase is overwhelming. This feature- ability to upload a template- should be added. Finally, it has been suggested that we use WordPress. Almabase should recognize that for a lot of small schools, having the Alum Director learn WordPress is NOT a high priority. Our school does not use WordPress for any of our sites and thus there is no one on campus who even knows how to use it and this certainly would not be approved from a financial and time management perspective. You have provided the Bee Editor. You should use it throughout the site (i.e. with Custom Pages too) as well as allow for upload of templates that could be created outside of Almabase. This would really allow us to get creative. Being allowed to upload templates no matter which editor created them, but sticking to some sort of guidelines, is what is needed. I only mention Bee Editor because it's already being used in Almabase. Not sure why the upload template feature is not available.

Currently, the Email Groups section shows all email groups created by me, and those automatically created by AB. They are not filterable, cannot be put into folders, and I cannot interact with more than 1 at a time. Often, an email group I create is just for 1 email. Leaving all of these groups active clutters the "Email Groups" section and can lead to miscommunications for team members when scheduling emails. There are many ways this can be addressed, but here are the ideas that come to mind. A better way to handle email groups that aren't needed anymore. It appears that a group cannot be deleted if an email was sent to that group. It can be marked as "Inactive", but I'm unclear as to what happens to the group after that. Perhaps add a filter tab to toggle between active and inactive groups. Have filters on the page "Email Groups" to filter out the groups by "Active", "Inactive", "User Created", and "System Generated". This will help us know where these email groups come from. Having all of the Ab generated groups in the same list with the groups I create is messy and can cause confusion for team members. Ideally, we could create folders on this page to help keep track of the different groups on the backend. Allow multiple Email Groups to be selected at 1 time and have certain actions that can be performed from the main page. Currently, if I want to mark an email group as inactive, I need to: Move my cursor over "More Actions", Select "Edit" Wait for the page to load Uncheck "Active" Wait for the page to load Click save Wait for the page to load Then exit. If I have 5 lists I want to mark as inactive, I need to repeat those steps 4 more times. Ideally, I could select all 5 lists at once and use controls on the same page to mark them all as inactive at the same time. The current controls make it very difficult to keep an organized "Email Groups" page and it would be incredibly helpful to have some additional functionality that would make it possible to keep on top of it.

Request ability to create pre-headers in emails to meet best practice standards for email communications.

The editing tools in the event description can be difficult to have show up, especially if you're editing linked text (the tools do not pop up most often in this case). Can we have the editing tools be static at the top of the event description box so that they're more user friendly?

Having the ability to rename photos in the file manager (accessed in the email builder) would be incredibly helpful. If I want a specific file name, I need to rename the file on my computer and upload the image. Sometimes, this also means I have to change the name back to match the filing system on my computer.

It's really helpful to have the pre-created merge fields for emails like event registration confirmation that have the event's name, date, list of registered events, etc. But it would be nice to have the option to edit these merge fields. To have the option to include the detailed breakdown of a donation during event registration in the confirmation email, or remove the start time for an event if the event is come and go for multiple days, etc. There have been multiple times I wish I was able to remove/add merge fields in an email, but doing so just prevents the email from being sent at all