RSVPMaker Events and Email Marketing

Category: Release

  • Customization for Notification Emails

    Added by popular request: a new way of modifying the notification and confirmation messages RSVPMaker sends when someone submits the form for an event.

    The default is still that a notification goes to the event organizer (or whatever email address or addresses you supplied) saying something like “RSVP YES for The Big Event on May 1” and the attendee gets a version that says “Confirming RSVP YES for The Big Event on May 1.” By default, the confirmation message also includes a button people can click to update their RSVP.

    Now, if you want to use “Registration” rather than RSVP in the subject line, or you want to leave off the “Update RSVP” button (some people have told me they don’t want to make it too easy for people to back out), you can make those changes. (See also: How to Change the RSVP Now! Button.)

    The notifications editor opens up possibilities for adding personality to these transactional messages. It also simplifies the process of localization, since “RSVP” is not universally understood across languages and cultures.

    Sample form, showing customized subject line
    Confirmation message with a customized headline

    The information you record here should be generic enough to apply to all your events. You still get the option to add a per-event confirmation message, which will be included as long as your template includes the [rsvpmessage] placeholder (one of several documented on the page for the template editor). By default, the confirmation message is just “Thank you!” but I’ve also used RSVPMaker to register people for webinars where that message includes detailed instructions for accessing the online event. For a terrestrial event, it might be driving directions.

    The Notification Templates screen is distinct from the Email Template screen, which you use to define one or more templates for the layout of your HTML email, for example to specify a background color. Notification messages use the default template defined on that screen.

    While RSVPMaker is intended to be useful out of the box, I continue to look for ways to let you make it your own.

    P.S. for Developers

    If you create extensions to RSVPMaker, there are filters and actions you can tap to extend this feature as well.

    The default array of variables used for these templates is defined like this:

    $template_forms['notification'] = array('subject' => 'RSVP [rsvpyesno] for Customization for Notification Emails on ','body' => "Just signed up:\n\n[rsvpdetails]");
$template_forms['confirmation'] = array('subject' => 'Confirming RSVP [rsvpyesno] for Customization for Notification Emails on ','body' => "[rsvpmessage]\n\n[rsvpdetails]\n\nIf you wish to change your registration, you can do so using the button below. [rsvpupdate]");

    You can add to it with a filter like

    add_filter('rsvpmaker_notification_template_forms','my_forms');

    Your filter would be passed an array and return your modified version with additional entries in the same format.

    The sample forms use data pulled from a simple key / value array, where entries look like

    $sample_data = array('rsvpyesno' => 'YES','rsvp_title' => $post->post_title);

    The filter for that is ‘rsvpmaker_notification_sample_data’.

    Finally, there is a ‘rsvpmaker_notification_templates_doc’ action you can use to add to the documentation at the bottom of the page.

    As part of my WordPress for Toastmasters project, I plan to use this same template utility for confirmation and reminder messages for specific meeting roles.

  • Using RSVPMaker on Membership Websites

    Version 3.9.7 adds better functionality for membership websites, where the people entering RSVPs have user accounts and log in prior to responding.

    • The system will now automatically look up any previous RSVPs associated with the same account (which for unauthenticated users only happens if they click the update link in a confirmation email).
    • Form fields will be filled in based on user metadata, provided that the form field names match the usermeta fields. Example: a membership site records the user’s work number as work_phone, and the form field is also labeled work_phone, so the work phone number on the user’s profile is filled in by default on the RSVP form.

    Here is an illustration of that last point:

    Adding the Work Phone field in the form generator.
    Adding the Work Phone field in the form generator.
    The generated code for the form, with Work Code as the label displayed to the user but work_code as the field ID.
    The generated code for the form, with Work Phone as the label displayed to the user but work_phone as the ID for a text field.
    The work phone number is filled in by default on the form.
    The work phone number is filled in by default on the form.

    The RSVPMaker form generator is a simple utility that does not address all possible variations. One that would require manual coding is to make a field containing profile data a hidden field rather than a user editable one. For example, a hockey league that contacted me with the request for this feature has a custom profile label for “Team,” which is a value they might not want users to be able to alter on an event-by-event basis. Or you simply might not want to display information including name and email address that is already in the user profile table.

    To make the form fields hidden instead of editable, we would manually change the form code “textfield” to “hidden” as in this example:

    <p class=”work_phone”><label>Work Phone</label> [rsvpfield textfield=”work_phone” ]</p>

    Becomes:

    [rsvpfield hidden=”work_phone” ]

    Whether this will work with your membership plugin of choice depends on how it handles custom profile data. So far, I’ve tested it with my own RSVPMaker for Toastmasters plugin as well as the Ultimate Member plugin (which is used by the hockey league I mentioned). You can also program your own user profile fields by creating your own plugin or custom theme (with the code added to functions.php). For RSVPMaker to retrieve custom profile data, it must be recorded as standard WordPress user metadata, which is recorded in the database table typically named wp_usermeta (some sites may change the prefix to something other to wp_). The user metadata field names must also follow the convention of being all in lowercase with an underscore in the place of any letters or punctuation, which is the same way the RSVPMaker form generator formats field names based on the label text.