Send messages using the Message Center

WHAT'S IN THIS GUIDE:

• What is the Message Center
• Understand the Message Center's three message types
• Create and send a message
• Message customizations
• Add recipients to your message

What is the Message Center

Cheddar Up’s Message Center has three main functions. It allows you to: 

• Create and send a message
• Add recipients (a number of different ways)
• View message history and email delivery reports

Understand the Message Center's three message types

Before we dig into how to send a message, let’s first cover the message types available in the Message Center. The Message Center is where organizers can send email messages to their group from Cheddar Up. There are three different message types available to you: 

1. 1. Invitations are sent specifically to invite your group to view your collection page. Oftentimes organizers will either choose to invite people to their collection page by sharing their collection page URL OR by using this invite feature.
      
   2. Messages are used to send any type of communication to your group at any time. This message type can be used to communicate to your entire group, a subset of your group, or an individual.
      
   3. Automatic reminders can be set up to send on a schedule (you decide the frequency). This message type can only be used if you’ve already sent an invitation, or if payments have been made on your collection (basically, this message type can only be used if there are already email addresses associated with a specific collection in the Cheddar Up platform).

Create and send a message

To create and send a message you must first enter the “Message Center”. You can access the Message Center from three different locations on the platform: 

• From the Address Book
• From the Share step (within the collection builder)
• From the Manage view (within the collection builder)

Once in the Message Center:

1. If not already selected, choose the collection related to the message you are sending. 
2. Choose the type of message to send (Invitation, Message or Automatic Reminder).
3. Add recipients (see more about adding recipients below)
4. Type and customize your message.
5. Click "Send Message".

Message customizations

When drafting your message, you have a few ways to customize it to make it your own, which include: 

• You can customize your “From” and “Subject Line” fields.
• If your collection has a banner image, you can click the “Add Banner Image” button, which will add that same banner to your message. 
• You can customize your email with custom header text and other formatting options including: bold, underline, italics, bullets or a link. 
• By default, all message types will include a “View Collection” button in the body of the email that links to your associated collection page. If you do not wish to include this link, you can toggle this off. 

Also, keep in mind that you can use the “Send me a test” link to see what your email looks like in advance of hitting send. When you click “Send me a test”, the test email will go to your Cheddar Up account owner’s email address. 

Add recipients to your message

When sending a message within the Message Center, if you click the teal “Add Recipients” button, you will reveal the following four ways to add recipients:

• My Contacts: This reveals two types of saved lists that you can select from and then filter based on additional parameters that apply to those lists such as paid, visited, invited, etc. These two list types include: 
  • My Lists: These are lists that you have created within your own personal Cheddar Up Address Book. 
  • Collection Lists: These are saved contacts that are associated with other collections you have created. These could include people who have paid, visited or been invited to a specific collection.

• Add Manually: This allows you to manually type the name and email address of a recipient. This is a great method if you are sending to a smaller list of people.
  
  
• Copy and Paste: This allows you to copy and paste a list of recipient emails (from a spreadsheet or other document) with either commas or line breaks between each one.
  
  
• Upload a File: This allows you to upload a .csv file with name and email columns for easy importing. We provide a .csv template for a seamless upload. This is a great method if you are importing a large number of contacts. 

You can use one or all of the methods above to build and refine your recipient list as necessary. No matter which method you use to add recipients, be sure to click the teal “Add” button on the left side of the modal. Doing this will add the contacts to the table on the right. Once you’ve added your recipients, you have the opportunity to review and edit the names and emails of your recipient list in the right side of the modal. You can edit any name or email by clicking into the field, making an in-line edit, and then clicking off of the field to save it.

When you are happy with your list, click “Save Recipients” and your recipient list will be saved. You can continue to add more recipients using the the "Add Recipients" modal as necessary.

See it in action: