Send Event Confirmation Email Containing 7 Possible Calendar Files

Noemi_Aguilar
Level 2

Send Event Confirmation Email Containing 7 Possible Calendar Files

Hi,

We have an event coming up. A recipient can select 7 sessions to register for. Is it possible to send them one confirmation email that contains only the calendar files of the sessions they registered for?

I would like to do this without using any additional type of scripting (such as velocity). We don't use dynamic calendar functionality. We upload the ICS file to Design Studio, and use an "Add to Calendar" image box, so I'm wondering if there's a way to just use segmentation and dynamic content to populate the email correctly.

Thanks,

Noemi

11 REPLIES 11
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Send Event Confirmation Email Containing 7 Possible Calendar Files

No idea why you'd want to avoid Velocity (which is the best tool for this).

Other than that, if you want to use standard Dynamic Content, you have to use multiple Segmentations. It's wildly inefficient and prone to error.

Or you could write the full <a> HTML to a Textarea field from the form side. Then output that HTML {{lead.token}}. But since you said "no scripting" guess that's out too since it involves custom JS.

Noemi_Aguilar
Level 2

Re: Send Event Confirmation Email Containing 7 Possible Calendar Files

Thanks, Sanford!

Jay_Jiang
Level 10

Re: Send Event Confirmation Email Containing 7 Possible Calendar Files

Use a custom field to save the session the lead registered for - {{lead.Event Session}} - and the values should be unique across all events e.g. use a unique naming convention 190308EventNameS1

name your calendar files the same as the sessions

link your ics files using the lead token: https://cname.domain.com.au/rs/munchkin/images/​{{lead.Event Session}}.ics

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Send Event Confirmation Email Containing 7 Possible Calendar Files

That'll leave broken links for all the events they didn't sign up for.

Jay_Jiang
Level 10

Re: Send Event Confirmation Email Containing 7 Possible Calendar Files

Well if they didn't sign up for the events they won't get the autoreply with the ics file.

and FYI OP this will only work for the immediate follow up reply email, if they sign up to Event B while Event A is still live, and Event A sends out a reminder, their ics link will be for Event B

but when you're using marketo for basic functionality what can you do? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Send Event Confirmation Email Containing 7 Possible Calendar Files

Well if they didn't sign up for the events they won't get the autoreply with the ics file.

They can select 0-7 sessions, or so the OP implies. So if they signed up for 1 session they'll get 6 broken links.

Jay_Jiang
Level 10

Re: Send Event Confirmation Email Containing 7 Possible Calendar Files

Read the opening post wrong, my bad.

Jay_Jiang
Level 10

Re: Send Event Confirmation Email Containing 7 Possible Calendar Files

If you're only doing 1 of these events, you could set up segmentations and use dynamic content (checkbox for each session - meaning 7 segmentations and in the email 7 dynamic contents), but if you do many of these events, it'd be unfeasible in terms of scalability.

You have Marketo, a powerful tool, why not use it's more advanced capabilities?

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Send Event Confirmation Email Containing 7 Possible Calendar Files

You have Marketo, a powerful tool, why not use it's more advanced capabilities?

Exactly! Combining your idea of strictly tying together the session name and the ICS file name, you need only:

#foreach( $session in $upcomingSessions.split(";\s*") )

${session}: <a href="https://pages.example.com/path/to/${session}.ics">Add to calendar</a>

#end