Email templates - a new visual builder
Experiencing difficulty creating beautiful and responsive email templates for your guests. This should be a thing of the past.
Our new visual email builder will give you the most modern and easiest way to create your own stylish templates that meet all technical requirements. Up till now such tools were only present in specialised email marketing products, however, we have made these tools available for you, too. Furthermore, our visual email builder is perfectly integrated with Clock PMS+, as well as with the system parameters for dynamic content.
For the quick creation of emails, we have added special modules, a gallery of email templates made by us, as well as a possibility for copying your already existing email templates.
From a technical point of view, the templates based on the new visual builder, comply with the requirements of various email clients. Considering that they have a responsive layout we can confidently say that your emails will have the best presentation both on desktop and mobile devices.
Another very useful feature is the work with images. Through the image editor, you can very easily crop, rotate or resize images, for example. The built-in gallery gives you a quick access to all images you have at least once used allowing you to reuse them in new emails. The Banner component lets you position, edit and move texts and logo onto another picture, i.e. to make a composition which then can be edited or translated into various languages.
In Clock PMS+, you can continue using your old templates, however, they are not compatible with the new visual builder. If a template uses the legacy or the new editor depends on the new setting added by us to each template - Editor. Open the template edit screen and select Visual Builder in the Editor field. Save and then select Templates and Edit. Instead of the legacy editor, the new Visual Builder editor will open:
- Click the the Templates button at the top of the screen to see the predefined templates. Thus selected, this template will overwrite the current template.
- Use the Copy from button to copy the whole content from another template and language. Thus created in one language, this template can easily be translated into another language. This feature can be used to create your own templates to be then used as a starting point for a new template. Please note that the selected template will overwrite the content of the current one.
- Undo and Redo buttons for the last operations;
- A button to see the HTML source of a template for advanced editing purposes;
- Preview button opening the template in a new screen;
- Save button to save the template;
To add a given parameter to the template, just position your cursor to the desired place in the text and select the parameter from the Merge Tags menu (see the next screenshot). Soon we will also publish an article on how to use the template parameters on our Support portal.
Here is a very brief description of the feature and the editor logic:
- In the first tab - Appearance, you can find options for basic stylization of colours, fonts and background colour or image;
- You can also change the font or the colour of any element added at a later stage, but if you use the basic stylization, you can spare yourself much work on the stylization of each individual element;
- In the second tab - Content, you will find the elements needed for building the content of your email;*
- The most basic elements are Structures. They define in how many columns your content will span - 1, 2, 3 or more, as well as the ratio of these columns. In each email, you can combine multiple structures, i.e. one structure with one column, followed by one with two columns, and then - once again a structure with one column, etc.
- In each of the columns of the structure, you can place texts, images, banners, buttons, and other elements to be found in the Blocks group. For each block, there are related settings appearing when the given block is selected;
- In Modules, you can find parts created by us to be added to your template. Then, if needed, you can change their colours and fonts to better match your design.
Related support articles and templates coming soon.
Events - a new screen for quick date edit of dates, PAX and quantities
To give you more options for a quicker and easier edit of your more complex events, we have added a completely new screen. Its main purpose is to let you change the event dates and the number of guests in all activities and charges in a few clicks only. On just one screen, you can see and edit:
- Event period;
- Dates and quantities of charges posted to the folios of the Event;
- Date and PAX for every Meeting Room Booking;
- Date and quantity of the charges related to Meeting Room Bookings;
- Date and PAX for every Catering;
- Date and quantity of the charges related to every Catering;
To access the new screen, open the Event and select Functions - Bulk Update
For even quicker and more comfortable edit, we have added the Autofill feature to this screen. Use it to prevent the multiple entering of one and the same data on the Bulk Update screen.
Here is an example: If you have 4 activities and 10 charges related to them you would like to transfer from 10 Aug 2020 for 15 Aug 2020, on the Bulk Update screen, you need to enter the new value of 15 Aug 2020 14 times. Here the new Autofill feature comes to your assistance. You simply open the Autofill screen and enter 15 Aug 2020 next to the old value of 10 Aug 2020 just once. As a result, all 14 values will automatically be completed at once. The same applies to the quantities, too. Click the Save button on the Bulk Update screen to save the changes.
A new Self Service Portal page with the booking details
The page contains info of the standard booking confirmation - period, room type, rate, prices, guest details, Google map, guarantee policy description, as well as the rate description. On the new page, you can also find a link to the Self Service Portal and its features.
This page has been designed to simplify booking confirmations, i.e. instead of creating complex booking confirmations containing all the booking info, you can focus on your email style replacing all of the booking info with a link and use the saved space upsell offers and marketing messages. The parameter for inserting a link to the new page is called: Self Service Portal - booking details URL
Here is how the booking confirmation could look like:
Other
To improve the technical accuracy of the HTML code of the emails being sent, we have introduced a new logic analysing the email content. Depending on whether it is a whole HTML template or an HTML partial, the necessary HTML and CSS code is added. This will improve the compatibility of the HTMLS emails with the various mail clients. Furthermore, the analysis is also used by the CK editor, where there is editing before sending.
Interfaces:
LightSpeed POS (L series) - Improved transfer of daily sales.
Fixes:
- When guaranteeing bookings from the Self Service Portal, no entry was added to the change log of the booking and no push notification was sent.
- Ledgers - the double conversion of charges in some cases led to discrepancies in the folio balance. As a result of these discrepancies, the folios remained in the ledgers despite being already balanced.