Custom emails are emails you design in the admin panel and send to your event's registrants. You send them once, at a scheduled time, or automatically when Brella sends an invitation or an attendee joins. Brella tracks delivery, opens, clicks, bounces and unsubscribes for each email.
Before you start
You need to be an organization admin or an event admin.
The event must be Invite only. Open Details, set Set event visibility to Invite only and save. For a public event the Custom Emails page shows "The event must be invite-only to enable custom emails".
Recipients are picked by registrant list (ticket type lists and custom lists). Create the lists before you create the email.
Warning: Send now can't be undone. A sent email can't be edited or deleted.
Where to find it
Communications > Custom Emails in the admin panel.
Create a custom email
A custom email has three steps: Settings, Content and Review.
Open Communications > Custom Emails and select Create New. If the event has no custom emails yet, select Create Custom Email.
Enter an Email name. Registrants never see it; it identifies the email in the list.
Enter the Subject.
Choose a Sending method: Send now, Scheduled emails or Automated triggers. For Scheduled emails, pick a date and time under Select a date and time. For Automated triggers, pick one or more triggers under Select triggers.
Under Who should we send this email to?, choose one or more audiences. For Automated triggers the audience is set from the triggers and can't be changed.
Under Target delivery by registrant list, choose the lists whose members can receive the email.
Select Proceed.
Build the content in the Visual editor or the HTML editor. See Build a custom email with the visual editor and Build a custom email with the HTML editor.
Select Send test to send the email to your own address, then select Review.
Check the summary under Confirm settings. Select Edit settings to change anything.
Select Save as draft, or select the button for your sending method (Send now, Schedule for later or Enable trigger) and confirm.
Nothing is saved before the Review step. If you select Back on the Settings step, the admin panel asks you to confirm that the changes are discarded.
Sending methods
Send now
Brella sends the email to the current members of the selected audiences and lists when you confirm. The status changes to Sent. The email can then only be viewed and duplicated.
Scheduled emails
Brella sends the email once, at the date and time you choose. Times are in the event's time zone and can't be in the past. Until then the status is Scheduled and you can still edit the email, delete it, or open it and select Save as draft to cancel the schedule. After sending, the status changes to Sent.
Automated triggers
Brella sends the email each time the trigger action happens, to the person it happened to, if that person belongs to one of the selected lists. The status is Triggered. The trigger stays active until you delete the email or open it and select Save as draft.
Trigger | When Brella sends the email | Audience |
Invite created | The first time Brella sends an invitation email to an invite. This replaces the default invitation email. | Unused invites |
Invite updated | Every later invitation email to the same invite, for example after you resend it or change its email address. This replaces the default invitation email. | Unused invites |
Attendee joined | When a person uses an invite and joins the event. There is no default email for this. | Joined attendees |
Invitation emails go out when you select Publish invites in People, when you add an invite after publishing, or when you select Send invitation emails for selected registrants. Only invitation emails sent after you enable the trigger use the custom email. Invites that received their invitation before that are not emailed again.
Audiences
The audience decides which members of the selected lists receive the email.
Audience | Who receives the email |
Unused invites | Invites in the selected lists that still have an unused seat. |
Joined attendees | Registrants in the selected lists who have joined the event. |
Registrants with Admin Meetings | Registrants in the selected lists with an accepted meeting that an organizer created in the admin panel. |
Registrants with Non-Admin Meetings | Registrants in the selected lists with an accepted meeting created in the app. |
Choose Unused invites and Joined attendees together to reach all registrants in the lists. Each email address receives the email once, even if it matches several audiences or lists.
Statuses and actions
Status | Meaning |
Draft | Saved, not sent. Any email can be returned to this status except a sent one. |
Scheduled | Waiting for the scheduled time, shown under the status. |
Sent | Sent, with the sending time shown under the status. |
Triggered | The trigger is active. |
Under Actions, each row has Edit (View for sent emails), Duplicate and Delete. Delete is not available for sent emails. Duplicate creates a draft named "<name> (copy)" in the same event with the same subject, content, triggers, audiences and lists. See Duplicate a custom email to another event.
The Email Name column also shows the triggers ("Invites (Created & Updated)", "Attendees (Joined)") and a Selected Lists label; hover it to see the list names. You can search by name or subject, filter by status and sort by name.
Statistics
Statistics appear for Sent and Triggered emails. Other statuses show "-". The page notes: "Performance statistics may have a delay of approximately 30 minutes."
Column | What it shows |
Sent | Number of recipients the email was sent to. |
Delivered | Number of recipients whose mail server accepted the email. |
Opens | Share of recipients who opened the email. |
Clicks | Share of recipients with a recorded click. Brella records a click when the recipient opens the app through a link in the email, such as the join link. |
Bounced | Share of recipients whose email bounced (hard and soft bounces). |
Unsubs | Share of recipients whose address has been unsubscribed since. See Unsubscribes from custom emails. |
Sender and reply-to
Custom emails are sent from your organization's sender. If your organization has a verified custom email domain with Allow event emails from custom domains turned on, Brella uses that domain. The sender is then the Default sender name and Default sender email set under Custom domains. Otherwise the sender is "Brella" at [email protected]. The reply-to address is the sender address. There is no per-email sender setting.
The switches in Communications > Email Settings apply to Brella's default emails, not to custom emails. See Email settings and sender address.
Limits
Subject: up to 988 characters.
Content: up to 100,000 characters of HTML.
One audience set and one list set per email. To reach different lists with different content, create separate emails.
Statistics are kept per recipient. A person who matches several lists is counted once.
Troubleshooting
"The event must be invite-only to enable custom emails"
The event is public. Open Details, set Set event visibility to Invite only and save.
"Time can't be in the past!"
The scheduled date and time, in the event's time zone, has already passed. Choose a later time.
A triggered invitation email was not sent
Check three things: the invite belongs to one of the selected lists; the email's status is Triggered; an invitation email was sent after you enabled the trigger (invites published or Send invitation emails used). The default invitation email is only replaced for invitation emails sent after that.
Statistics show "-"
Statistics are only shown for Sent and Triggered emails.
Edit is missing, only View
The email has been sent. Sent emails can't be changed. Select Duplicate and edit the copy.