Sending a Newsletter

In this article, we cover how theaters can use broadcasts to send individual messages to users in a marketing list. A Newsletter broadcast enables theaters to share and schedule additional information outside of weekly showtimes, such as special offers or upcoming showings.

Broadcasts allow theaters to send individual messages to users in a marketing list. They are typically used to share weekly showtimes or as a monthly newsletter. To access your broadcasts, log into Customer.io and click on the Broadcasts tab. There are two types of broadcasts theaters can send: Newsletters and API-triggered Broadcasts. This article will explain the former type.

Newsletters are best for emails which share information outside of weekly showtimes, such as special offers or upcoming showings and events. They can also be used as an alternative to the Showtimes Broadcasts for theaters who want more flexibility over the content.

As Newsletters do not have the benefit of automated marketing subscriptions and unsubscribe links managed by the API, it is important to read to our articles on Marketing Lists and Unsubscribe Links to ensure you are only messaging subscribed contacts. Newsletters should be set up to target one marketing list at a time and the unsubscribe link must be connected with this list.

Customer.io's simplest content editor to use is Drag-and-Drop. Their article, Drag-and-Drop Emails: The Basics, provides an overview of the content blocks and rows you can use within an email. We recommend reading this article while editing a newsletter to help familiarize yourself with their editor.

- - - Looking to save time? Check out the section How to clone a Newsletter below to learn how to duplicate from a template or previous newsletter.

To set up a new Newsletter, go to Broadcasts > Newsletters in Customer.io and select the purple button "Create Broadcast". You will then be asked to specify whether you are sending messages triggered by an API. Select the option for a standard Newsletter.

Customer.io will first take you the Recipients tab. If this is a marketing email, you must use a segment which checks that users are opted-in subscribers (see support article Marketing Lists: Setting up segments for marketing subscribers).
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The Contents tab will ask which channel you are sending this Newsletter for. Select Email. To begin adding content to the newsletter, click the Content box. In the example below, this is labelled as Newsletter Template:

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Customer.io has a range of content blocks to choose from. After dragging a new content block into the email, select the block to bring up more styling and properties options. This will allow you to edit the block in various ways, such as adding new text, changing the color and adjusting padding. More information about using the drag-and-drop editor can be found here: Drag-and-Drop Emails: The Basics.

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Customer.io Content Blocks

INDY has recently launched a new Newsletter template with pre-styled content blocks (pictured below). If this is not already available in your workspace, you can make a request by creating a support ticket.

If your newsletter is a marketing email, you are legally required to include an unsubscribe link which matches the marketing list you are targeting. We do not support Customer.io's unsubscribe link as it blocks all outgoing emails (including transactional ones) and does not update people's marketing preferences in INDY Admin.

You can learn how to do the above in our article on Unsubscribe Links. Or create a support ticket if you need further assistance.

Before sending the newsletter to your mailing list, you should send yourself a test. In the top right, there is a dropdown menu labelled "Actions". When clicked, it will bring up an option to send a test email.

Before you can schedule a newsletter, Customer.io will ask you to add a goal. When enabled, it will allows additional conversion tracking, such as how many people purchased a ticket or visited the website after receiving the email.

If you are new to Customer.io, we recommend selecting the option Without Goal or creating a support ticket for assistance. For intermediate to advanced users, we will discuss Goals in an upcoming support article, Measuring Email Performance.

At the bottom of the Review tab, you will be given an option to schedule this email. After adding a date and time for when the newsletter will be sent, you can check if this email has been scheduled in the Broadcasts tab. It should no longer be labelled as "Draft", but instead be labelled as "Scheduled". This will be updated to "Sent" after its scheduled time.

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Scheduling a Newsletter (there is also an option to send now)

If you are sending a newsletter to the same audience with similar content, we recommend using the cloning feature instead of creating a new newsletter every time.

To clone a newsletter, simply click the three dots next to it and select duplicate. The duplicate will share the title, but have [COPY OF] placed ahead of it.

What to name a Newsletter

We further recommend giving the newsletter a meaningful name. A good structure to follow would be [PURPOSE] + [DATE] + [MARKETING LIST/SEGMENT] or [CINEMA] + [PURPOSE] + [DATE] + [MARKETING LIST/SEGMENT] if there are multiple cinemas in your workspace.

You should also tag the newsletter with the marketing list and cinema (if operating as a chain).

An example of this would be:

Yosemite Cinema Upcoming Events October 2022 Promotions
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(With the tags "yosemite cinema" and "promotions")

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