Broadcast Email
Buzzshot's Broadcast Email feature allows you to send out broadcast emails to your players. Use it to send out a monthly newsletter or to let players know about new room openings or your latest special offer. It’s what many people would use tools such as Mailchimp for but it’s fully integrated into Buzzshot and easier to use.
Verifying your domain
In order to use the Broadcast Email feature you must verify your domain name. This gives Buzzshot permission to send emails on your behalf and is what allows us to deliver emails to your players without them all ending up in the spam folder. You can read more about verifying your domain name here.
Creating and sending a Broadcast
To create a Broadcast go to the “Broadcasts” section in Buzzshot and click “Create Broadcast”. You’ll be asked for a name for the Broadcast, this is purely for you records so enter something that will help you find it in the future. Next you’ll choose a From Address (who the email will come from) and select who to send it to (see Targeting below).
Enter a Subject for display in the recipients’ email client and a Preview Text (this is often displayed below the subject in many email clients). Finally you’ll want to select a template and edit it to add your own content. See “The email editor” below for details on editing the email content.
One you have created your email you can click Send Test Click to send it to yourself and see what it looks like in an email client. You can then either Save Draft and come back to it later or you can Schedule Send to send it either now or at a scheduled time of your choosing.
The email editor
Buzzshot’s email editor combines ease of use with a lot of power. You can keep things simple if you like or you can create complex graphical emails. Starting from one of our templates can help you achieve a great looking email with minimal effort. Even if you plan to start from scratch and create your own template we do recommend that you look the existing templates to gain a better understand of how they are put together.
The email editor has Rows that contain Columns that contain Content blocks. Drag in the content blocks from the Palette on the left into the place you want them on the Canvas in the middle. You can click on the Gutter on the right to edit a Row or click on the Content click itself to edit it.
The Mobile and Desktop buttons (
) in the bottom right hand corner allow you to switch between Mobile and Desktop design views. This is important as many of your players will likely be reading your email on their phones! By default we collapse all columns into rows on mobile but you can edit a row and select “Don’t collapse columns on mobile” if you don’t want that.
Click the Preview button (
) to see what the email will look like in an email client. You can switch between mobile, tablet and desktop versions of the preview.
Targeting
Buzzshot Broadcast Email supports pin-point targeting of the players who will receive a particular Broadcast. When readying your Broadcast for sending the “Send to” box will default to “All Players”, to enable targeting switch it to “Players matching a certain condition”. You can then supply conditions such as “Has played Room A” or “Played in the last 30 days”. You can combine conditions either as “AND” (all of them must match) or “ANY” (only one of them has to match) and you can even add groupings to express more complex filters.
Consent
It is vitally important to obtain consent to email people marketing messages. Failure to do so can lead to spam complaints which could lead to us having to unfortunately cut of your access to the Broadcast feature. You can obtain consent via Buzzshot using the “Email opt in” checkbox in the player registration form. We recommend editing the text of the opt-in checkbox to explain to players what they’ll be getting, for example “May we send you updates and offers about our escape rooms via email?”.
Importing Lists
Buzzshot Broadcast Email works with the data you already have in Buzzshot but also allows you to import existing lists you have in other software. So if you’ve captured an email address and obtained consent via Buzzshot already then you’ll be able to easily include them in your mailings. To import an existing list from another provider:
- Ensure that you have consent to email every address on the list you’re going to import. Sending to emails for which you do not have consent will lead to spam complaints which will lead to us having to unfortunately cut of your access to the feature.
- Export the list from your existing provider in CSV format, this is the default export format for most providers (including Mailchimp)
- In Buzzshot go to the “Broadcasts” section then in the side menu click “Imported lists”. Then click the “+ Import List” button at the top.
- Select “Create New List” and click “Browse” to select the CSV file you saved earlier and click “Upload”.
- Buzzshot will now analyse the file, once it’s ready you’ll be asked to select the meaning of the various columns. You should at a minimum match up the email column but you may also want to match first and second names and a phone number. Any columns you do not match will not be included in the import.
- Click “Import” and wait for Buzzshot to complete the import process.
Pricing
Buzzshot Broadcast Email charges you based on the number of emails you want to send each month, this is different from some other providers who charge based on the size of your email lists.
An inclusive free allowance to existing Buzzshot customers, this allows you to send up 20,000 emails every year. This means, for example, if you have a mailing list of 5,000 players you could send everyone a broadcast email once a month for four months without needing to purchase more (Ie. a mailing list of 5,000 people x 4 broadcast emails each = 20,000 broadcast emails).
If you need more than your free allowance then you can pay for a monthly number of email sends. A reliable guide price for this optional upgrade would be USD $25 for every additional 20,000 emails you want to send per month. You can see full pricing and upgrade if you need to here.
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