Event organizers regularly find themselves wanting to inform their participating speakers and session owners about certain particulars of their events. They also may want to collect additional data about the accepted sessions and speakers.
While this can certainly be done by contacting every speaker or session owner individually, Sessionize offers a versatile Group mailing page designed to help you quickly send information and request data from multiple eligible session owners and/or speakers at once.
The options are ultimately limitless, but here are some common scenarios when you might find the Group mailing page particularly useful:
- Tell speakers about a dinner you're organizing for them
- Inform speakers about the technical capabilities of the rooms they'll have their sessions in
- Notify speakers about rehearsal dates and times
- Send your event's Powerpoint template to speakers
- Ask speakers and session owners to fill out the missing information from the submission and additional fields
- Ask speakers for their flight numbers and other travel details
- Ask speakers to upload their presentation
To find out about the difference between a session owner and a session speaker, please read the following article: Session owner and session speaker, what's the difference?
Create a new group mailing
To create a group mailing, visit the Group mailing page and click New mailing. Note that you can create as many group mailings as you want, with each serving a separate purpose and coming with its own dedicated report.
On the right side of the Group mailing page, you'll find the exact number of speakers and owners of accepted sessions. If there are more session speakers than owners, that means that certain sessions have multiple speakers.
Group mailing cannot be sent to speakers and session owners whose sessions haven't been accepted. Group mailing isn't meant to be used for communication with speakers whose sessions have been declined, nor is it a tool that you can or should use to inform speakers about their session status. Informing speakers must be done through the Inform speakers page. To learn about our informing system, please read the following article: Informing and confirming logic explained.
Set up your group mailing
Every group mailing message has two key settings: Goal (what do you aim to achieve with your message) and Send to (who do you want to receive the message).
Send an informative message
If your goal is to send an informative message, select the appropriate option from the Goal dropdown menu and choose if you want to send the message only to session owners, only to session speakers, or both. Regardless of your choice, the right side of the page shows a list of eligible receivers, which you can then manually select, deselect and filter by category.
When writing the message, you're welcome to use the variables listed below the message box to insert the respective values. Quickly add them to your message by clicking on them to copy them to the clipboard and pasting them into the message.
Once done, it's a good idea to send the email to yourself to check if the message looks exactly like you want (Send test to me button). To send the message to the selected recipients, use the Send emails button. You can also save the group message and come back to it later by using the Save only button.
Collect additional data
To collect additional data from your accepted session speakers, owners, or both, select the To collect additional data about sessions and/or speakers option from the Goal dropdown menu. Then choose if you want to collect data about sessions, speakers, or both, by selecting the appropriate option in the Collect data about dropdown menu.
Your choice will determine who's going to receive your message: session speakers, session owners, or both. The list of recipients is always visible on the right side of the page, where you can manually select or deselect them, as well as filter them by category.
Selecting the data you want to collect comes down to picking the desired fields from the Add a field menu and clicking Add. You can choose any number of existing session and speaker fields, as defined on the Edit event page, and you can even create new ones without leaving the Group mailing page.
After selecting the fields you want to gather data for, write the message. Make sure to include the {BUTTON_TO_FORM} variable, as it will become the Open Form button in the actual message, as pictured above. Speakers will use this button to access the form and fill out the data you requested.
Finish sending the group message by clicking the Send emails button at the bottom of the page.
This is what speakers will see after they click the Open Form button in your email. All they need to do is fill out and submit the data you requested.
Check reports
Every group mailing message includes a report that can be accessed through the appropriate button on the Group mailing page or when viewing a particular group mailing message.
These reports keep you up to date with the most important aspects of your group messages, including:
- Who opened the data collection form (and when)
- Who submitted the data you requested (and when)
- Who has yet to fill out the forms, and how many of them
Add important info to the Speaker Dashboard
You can use the Speaker Dashboard page to add important information, as well as useful files, for speakers whose sessions are accepted. That will give your speakers a place where they can easily stay up-to-date with everything important related to your event.
This is how accepted speakers will see your guidelines and files on their dashboard.
Real-life example: Use group mailing to collect presentations
Group mailing has an endless number of possibilities and potential uses. We'll give you an example of how you can utilize it to collect the presentations from your speakers and easily distribute them to the technical staff at your event.
- Create a new group mailing message
- Set the Goal to To collect additional data about sessions and/or speakers
- Select the Sessions (messages will be sent to session owners that can manage a session) from the Collect data about menu
- Under Data to be collected, select *Create new session field, name it “Session presentation” (or similarly), and select File upload from the field type dropdown menu. If such field already exists, simply select it from the list
- Write your message, remembering to include the {BUTTON_TO_FORM} variable
- Check and select/deselect message recipients, assuming you don't want to send the message to all eligible (accepted) speakers and/or session owners
- Click Send emails
This is the form your speakers will see after they click on the Open Form button in the email they'll receive from you. They simply have to select or drop a presentation file to upload and click Submit.
Mass-download all presentations
But wait, there's more! As a special treat for our users, we have the option to mass-download all presentations collected through the additional file upload field you created when setting up the aforementioned group message. Instead of downloading them one by one, visit the Export page, look for the field you created, and click the appropriate download button. We'll neatly pack the presentations in a ZIP file that you can hand over to your technical staff.