Email wizard: open discussion of recent changes
Hello,
my name is Andrew, and I’m a member of emailing development crew at Wild Apricot.
I want to thank you for your feedback about new compose email wizard feature. In this thread I would like to explain the reasons and goals behind emailing facelift and workflow changes that we’ve done in release 5.8 - https://help.wildapricot.com/display/DOC/Release+5.8
Our main goal is to make composing mass email as easy as possible. As we planned to release new features such as scheduling, selecting and using email templates, smart recipient selection, custom layouts and many others, we realised that we cannot have them all seamlessly integrated into old interface - it would simply become a Star Trek spaceship, so what we needed is a new platform on which new emailing would be built. Also, while UX testing one of our first features (Email layouts), some testers noticed that after fiddling with the new functionality they lost focus on what they were doing, because many irrelevant things came up on the same screen e.g. recipient selection, subject, preview, and of course a number of action buttons at the top, that mixed actions (save and exit) and steps (preview, preview and send). Some of those actions were also doubled in content area, just in case.
So we decided to build a new platform for sending mass emails, that is full of features and easy to learn. We realize that new platform may be a bit confusing for people, who have used Wild Apricot in the past, so we tried to leave as many popular workflows as possible.
Our team is dedicated to making the best emailing solution for you, and we would appreciate if you spent some time to tell us a little more about problems you encountered using new email wizard.
I’m looking forward to hearing from you.
With regards,
Andrew
Husky Team at Wild Apricot
Team Husky
shared this idea
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sophia
commented
thanks for this post.......
yes, there are so many mass email software is available in the market with many tracking features, provider dashboard, create campaign and more. I read about many software on https://blogs.systweak.com/10-best-software-to-send-mail-in-bulk-2017/ this website. Its really nice. -
Hi Paul,
Yes that looks like a bug. Thanks for detecting it!
I'll contact you for details.Kate
Emailing Development team -
Paul
commented
After editing the subject line, drafts are still saving as the old Subject, so you can't even find the draft you're looking for.
Surely this is an actual BUG and not just poor design?
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SDAF Admin
commented
Hi - yes, not a fan of the 'wizard' idea. Can you make it so we can choose if we want to do a wizard or if we can leave it very manual like it was? I have to put together an eblast every week, and this new format took away tons of capabilities that I used to have. I need to 'save as' and come back to work on it later, and I need to have other members of my team come in and make edits. I need to close what I am working on (Save), go back in and open a previous one to cut-and-paste. This is SO NOT EASY to do with this new wizard thing. It's a pain in the ass to shut my entire piece of work down, go find the old one in Drafts, go through the wizard to open, cut a sentence, then shut that whole thing down, go find my current piece...to me the wizard adds layers and 10 more steps where before it was super easy.
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Paul
commented
I don't know if you have seen my separate thread about the placement of the subject line field and the test email button. If so, you haven't responded so I will link it here: https://forums.wildapricot.com/forums/308932-wishlist/suggestions/15819535-email-workflow-edit-subject-line-before-sending-t
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Hello Martha,
Thanks for kind words.
Actually, the "save" functionality won't be clear as an "autosave" message, because new users don't know where an email will be saved. When you click "save and exit" you are redirected to the draft list so and it obvious that your email is at the top of the list. That's why, in the future, we want to make a smart autosave and some more additional functionality. We want to pay all your attention to the email composing process without being nervous about saving your changes. The system should do it instead of you.
Regards,
Lily
Emailing development team -
Martha Stone-Martin
commented
Only used a few times so far.
One really nice improvement is the mobile/desktop view. Thank you.
One thing that would improve the new module is the "save". You have us all well trained to look for a green save button and sometimes a gray one. But this module does not have a save button. Yes, it autosaves and yes when you hit the "X", it will prompt you. But selecting a "X" usually means close and new users may not know that they will be prompted after. And "autosave" may not be clear that it will be saved in a place (drafts) that a user can get access to it again.
