How to Post and Email an Event

Posted on December 12, 2010 by David F. Carr

The RSVPMaker and ChimpBlast plugins work together to let you send event invitations through the MailChimp broadcast email service.

This tutorial uses the system as installed on the Economic Forum of Palm Beach County website as an example. Using the RSVPMaker options page, I’ve configured things so we always ask for an RSVP response by default and a block of default text with boilerplate on the standard meeting location and payment details is loaded into the editor when I add a new event.

I then add a headline and details about the specific event, set the date and time and publish my event.

Creating an Event

After publishing my event, I switch to the Eblasts menu and click Add New. I get a blank form, but at the bottom of the form you will see a list of links to upcoming events. Click the link to load the event into the editor.

EBlast Editor

Here, you see the formatted text of the event has been loaded into the editor. Add a title (which will serve as the subject line of the email). You can add also add an additional message introducing the event or encouraging people to RSVP online.

Load Event into Eblast Editor

When you click the publish button, you will get a prompt to “View Post” just as you would for a regular blog post. In this case, “View Post” will take you to a preview of the message in the email template.

"Publish" the Eblast

At the top of the email preview screen, you will see options that allow you to send yourself a preview of the message (good for checking that it shows up correctly in an email client) or send it out live.

Preview the Email

Here is what this message looks like in GMail.

Send a Test

When the Recipient clicks on RSVP Now, he or she will be taken to the event page on your website. If the recipient has registered for events before, using the same email address, RSVPMaker will try to look up contact details (such as phone number) rather than making the user enter them again.

RSVP Form

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  • http://integralwisdomqigong.com Mark

    David,

    "Click the link to load the event into the editor."

    I can’t seem to load content into the eBlast using the links from “Upcoming Events.” I’ve tried with both Firefox and IE. Any thoughts?

    I can manually create and use short codes so Chimpblast is still useful to me.

    With the [ rsvpmaker_upcoming ] short code is there a way to limit the number of events it will show?

    Just getting started with RSVPMaker. It looks like a really useful tool! Thank you.

  • http://integralwisdomqigong.com Mark

    How about sending to a segment of a Mailchimp list?

    • David F. Carr

      Mark, I’m planning to put out an official release of ChimpBlast to the WordPress repository in the next week or so. I haven’t gotten a lot of interest from people downloading it from rsvpmaker.com, but perhaps that will change if I put it out there more broadly.I know there are some bugs that need fixing. I’d love to get some help from other people who have figured out more tricks than I have with the MailChimp API.

      I do not yet have a good way of sending to a segment of a list. However, you could always use the plugin tool to create a rough draft of your content (particularly content derived from your blog) and then log in at MailChimp.com to refine your targeting.

      I will try to have a better answer for questions like that over time.

  • Gregory Walz-Chojnacki

    David,

    I”m trying out Chimpblasts, and I’m close to getting it to work.

    I’m not getting the RSVP Now! button to show up unless I hard code it into the eblast version of the message. And the code doesn’t contain a link to the online RSVP Maker version.

    Do I need to hard code that link, or should it be picking that up. That is, am I doing something wrong?

    • Gregory Walz-Chojnacki

      here’s the code I used:
      RSVP Now!

      Here’s the RSVP Event page in question:
      http://grassrootstosa.org/rsvpmaker/grassroots-tosa-social-sept-9/

    • http://www.carrcommunications.com David F. Carr

      I think this documentation is slightly out of sync with the current version. Sorry about that. ChimpBlast is something I use for my own projects, but it’s not that widely adopted compared to RSVPMaker.

      If you go through the Content for EBlast utility to import the event post, it should be loaded in with the RSVP Button included. This creates a draft post which you can then edit and then preview in your ChimpBlast template.