Plan & Promote News for 04 December 2024

These are the releases that you have been waiting for!

Top News: Audience Segments, Website Layouts, and more

The product team has 5 big improvements they're working to deliver in this window that we know you’re going to love:

1. Audience Segments in Registration - Audience Segments allow you to segment groups of invitees and guests more accurately, improving content management and targeted communication. For our Registration users, this release will make Audience segments available across all events.
   
   Highlights:

   • Audience Segments in Email Filters: Use Audience Segments as a filter in custom event emails to send targeted communications to attendees based on specific segments.

   • Audience segments to control Session Visibility: In addition to using Registration Types and Admission items, you can manage the visibility of optional Sessions by Audience Segments to create unique experiences for attendees and make them available for registration.

   • Audience segments to filter attendees: Apply Audience Segments as a filter on the planner-side Attendee List for bulk actions, such as updating session registrants, printing badges, etc,

   Watch a 4-minute demo video on Audience Segments in Registration

   Audience Segments as a filter on Custom Event Emails

   • Enhanced Email Targeting with Audience Segments: Use Audience Segments as an additional filter when setting up custom event emails. For example, create an email for invitees with an Accepted status associated with selected segments.

   • “AND” Criteria Filtering: When Audience Segments are applied, they will function with existing email filters using AND logic. For instance, you can now target invitees who are yet to register (Undecided) and associated with one or more Segments

   • Advanced Filters Repositioned: Advanced filters are now located directly on the Email Details page, streamlining the workflow by moving them from the previous Email Advanced Settings page.

   • Exclusions for Survey Emails: In this initial release, the Segments filter is unavailable when creating emails targeted to survey audiences.

     
     

   Audience Segments for Visibility of Sessions in the Registration Process

   This addresses the limitation of assigning attendees to a single registration type and simplifies session visibility configurations. By leveraging this, you can deliver a tailored event experience for diverse audience segments, enhancing personalization, engagement, and satisfaction.

   • Enhanced Personalization: Attendees will have access to sessions based on their registration type, admission items, or audience segment, ensuring they only see sessions relevant to their profile.

   • Flexibility and Ease of Use: With this feature, an attendee can now be part of up to 50 audience segments. Once registration is launched, adding or changing an attendee's registration type becomes risky. However, audience segments can be created on the go without affecting existing registrations.

   • A session can have up to 25 audience segments associated with it

   • Visibility will be based solely on the audience segments an invitee belongs to at the start of the registration process. Any changes to an invitee's audience segment after registration has begun, such as adding or removing them from a segment, will not impact their current registration.

     

   Audience Segments as a filter on the planner-side Attendee List page

   Audience Segments will be available as a "filter" on the planner-side "Attendee list" page. You can filter invitees and guests by associated segments, offering greater control and efficiency in managing attendees and performing planner-side bulk actions.

   • Some common planner-side bulk actions include:

     • Registering or un-registering attendees for a session

     • Send personalized one-off emails using the “Send Email option”

     • Print name badges for attendees

   • The filter will only be visible on the Attendee List page upon creating at least 1 Audience Segment in an event.

   • The "Invitee Status" and "Audience Segments" filters operate using the "AND" criteria, ensuring precise results

   • Choosing multiple segments from the Audience Segments filter switches the logic to "OR" criteria.

     • For example, if you select "Accepted" in the invitee status and "General members" and "Special members" in "Audience Segments", it will show you a list of everyone who registered - in “Accepted” status AND further filter them by who are “either” part of "General Members segment" or "Special Members segment".

   • When using "Audience Segments" filter on the Attendee List page, the Advanced Search option will be disabled. To utilize Advanced Search, simply clear the segment selection to regain access.

     
     

   • Reporting Enhancements:
     Audience Segments will also be available as a new field in the following OnArrival reports,

     • OnArrival Terms and Conditions Consent Details

     • OnArrival Signature Details

     • Badge Printed with OnArrival History

2. Section Layouts for Event Websites - We're thrilled to introduce a significant enhancement for our website designer that will elevate your website creation experience. Designing a website can be time-consuming and often requires deep understanding and knowledge of the Website Designer.

   To give you a starting point for your website creation journey, we are providing a selection of pre-built, ready-to-use sections that you can choose from to create stunning, professional-looking websites in a fraction of the time. Simply browse through our collection of pre-built layouts, select the one that best suits your needs, and customize it to make it your own

   Things to Know :

   • The section layouts can be accessed from the new "Sections" icon that will be introduced in the right-side navigation panel in the site designer.

     

   • The section layouts will be grouped into different categories, making it easy to find the right section based on what you are trying to build.

     

   • Upon choosing a category, you can browse through the available sections under that category and drag and drop them onto the site designer canvas.

     

   • These new sections essentially combine existing widgets like Text, Image, spacer, etc. Once dropped, these will behave the same way they do right now. You can still customize, rearrange, and delete these widgets within a section to personalize it to your specific event.

     

   • You can use section layouts on website pages and the header and footer sections of your website.

3. Search Bar added to Session List - You can now search for sessions on the session list by the session name to find the sessions more quickly than browsing through the full list. The search bar can search the entire session list by typing the name or part of the name (a 2-character minimum is necessary) and pressing enter. The results are a refined list of sessions based on the provided search parameters.

   

4. AI Writing Assistant Improvements for Event Email Designer - Email content provides a direct line of communication between you and attendees, making it a vital part of any event management and marketing strategy. Our improved writing assistant will utilize existing event and email data to create meaningful AI-generated content with minimal planner input. This will save you vital time and energy during the event planning process.

   

   Key Features

   • Writing Descriptions from Scratch

     • The assistant is given existing event and email data (event name, dates, email audience, subject line, etc.) to help with content generation. This means you won't need to write a first draft - the assistant can write content from scratch.

   • New Chat Bot Interface

     • Planners interact with the assistant through a new chat bot interface, making it easy to quickly request edits. You can specify what type of content they'd like written - do they just want an email introduction or a full email's worth of content? The bot may also ask clarifying questions to gather information before generating content.

   • Data Tag Awareness

     • The bot is aware of data tags that are commonly used in emails. If they contain data, the bot will try to use them in place of plain text whenever possible.

     

5. Accessibility Update for Images in Event Site Designer - We're excited to announce an important accessibility update for images added in the event site designer. Image Alt Text will now be required for non-decorative images. This will ensure event websites and registration pages are accessible to all attendees, including those using a screen reader. Alt text can also help with SEO to get more eyes on events.

   You can still manually mark an image as decorative, which removes the alt text field.

   What's the difference between non-decorative and decorative images?

   • An image that contains important information for understanding the full content of a webpage should be marked as "non-decorative." Non-decorative images require alt text so the information within them can be conveyed properly by screen readers. Examples of non-decorative images include maps, diagrams, and tables.

   • An image that doesn't add any meaningful or important information to a webpage should be marked as "decorative." These images are typically added for branding or design purposes only or already have text describing them on the page. By marking them as decorative and not assigning any alt text, these images are ignored by screen readers - this helps to reduce noise and distraction for screen reader users.

   By properly classifying images, you can make the event information accessible to more attendees.

   What does this look like?

   When an image widget is added to the canvas, it is marked as non-decorative by default, and you will be required to add alt text.

   

   If the image is decorative, you can mark it as such, and the alt text field will disappear and won’t be required.

   

   How will this impact existing images?

   Existing images without alt text will be marked as decorative and won't require any alt text. Existing images with alt text will be marked as non-decorative to preserve the text. You don’t need to make any changes.  

3 additional improvements to make your job easier

If you thought the above items are exciting, wait until you see what else the team plans to release in the next launch window:

• Advanced Rules are Now Applied on the Manage Hotel Requests Page - The Manage Hotel Request page allows you to quickly edit multiple hotel requests simultaneously without going through the modification flow for each attendee. You cannot bypass the advanced rules set in the event when modifying the dates for any existing request from this page. Advanced rules were previously enforced only when attendees or planners submitted or modified the hotel requests through the registration workflow.

  This change will ensure that advanced rules for hotel requests are applied consistently across all planner and attendee interactions and will prevent a planner from mistakenly overriding the event's hotel booking policies.

  The Manage Hotel Requests page can be accessed in the event by going to Attendees > Manage Hotel Requests

  The Advanced Rules for hotel requests can be created by going to Registration > Advanced Rules > Create Rule > select the type as "Hotel Request"

• SMTP code added to Email Details report - This release will give you visibility into the SMTP code in the Email Details report, so that you can better understand how your emails are performing. The Email details report is a planner-side report with data related to the emails sent from the application.

  In addition, a new status is being added as "Message Accepted," which will indicate that the recipient's server has successfully accepted the message and returned SMTP status code 250.

• REST API Enhancements -

  • Billing Address in Transactions Endpoint: Access the billing address and credit card information with the List Transactions endpoint. This will help with integrating invoicing-related details directly into financial systems, streamlining accounting processes, and improving accuracy.

  • Last Modified Date updated in Orders on adding Discount Code: Now, when a discount code is added to an Order, the last modified date will be updated. Determine if and when an order has been updated by simply checking the Last Modified Date.

  • Item Association and Question Type in Event Questions: Item associations for questions and question types are now returned in the Event Questions endpoint. You can now identify whether a question is tied to a specific Agenda Item, such as Admission Items or Sessions.

Visit our Community with questions

Questions about anything we’ve rolled out this window? As always, get questions answered in the Community via the Open Forum. Also, attend our next quarterly Product News webinar on November 20, when the product team will share updates and answer questions!