RSVP campaigns: invitations with replies
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An RSVP campaign is an invitation people answer. Each guest gets their own reply link, answers yes or no on a page in your gallery's style, and you see who is coming, keep a waiting list, check people in at the door and know afterwards who came. This article describes RSVP campaigns in WrkLst 10.
What an RSVP campaign is
An RSVP campaign is a campaign like any other — one letter, written once, sent from your own mail account to each person on it, see Campaigns — with an event behind it. Every invitation carries the guest's own reply buttons. A click opens a reply page in your gallery's style — on your own domain, if you have set one up for presentations — where the guest answers Yes, I will attend or No, I can't attend, names the guests they bring and, if you asked for them, adds a note or their dietary and access needs. Until the reply deadline they can change their answer through the same link.
Guests who say yes get a confirmation by email with the details and a calendar file, and, if you set one, a reminder before the event. These emails are sent by WrkLst in your gallery's name; a guest who answers one reaches the person who wrote the campaign.
In Messages, an RSVP campaign carries the RSVP badge. An invitation records no opens: the answer is what counts.
Starting an invitation
- In Messages, choose New › New RSVP campaign.
- On an exhibition, choose New invitation in its Campaigns section — the invitation is already linked to the show.
- From an exhibition's Dinner list — see "A dinner list for a show" below.
An RSVP campaign has four steps: Event, Letter, Recipients and Send. Give it a Campaign name and, if it belongs to one, the Exhibition. Link the show whenever there is one: the show then lists the invitation, and its answers count in Opportunities.
Start from an earlier invitation takes over the event, the settings and the letter of an RSVP campaign you made before; the recipients stay this campaign's own. It is offered as long as nobody has been written to.
The event
The event — Name of the event (shown on the reply page and in the confirmation; empty, the campaign's name is used), A few words for your guests, a Picture with its Caption, the Language of the reply page — the page, the confirmation and the reminders speak it; The account's language unless you choose another — and the Time zone the times are in, where the event takes place.
When and where — one stop or several, for example an opening, then a dinner. Each stop has What, a Day with From and Until, the Place, City, Address and a Note such as the entrance or a dress code. Who sees the address decides per stop: Everyone invited, or Only after a yes — until they accept, guests see the city only. That is how a dinner's address stays with those attending.
Replies:
- Who can reply — Personal invitation: each recipient replies through their own link, and nobody else can use it. Open invitation: one link you can share anywhere; anyone with it registers with their name and email address. Copy link copies it. Someone who registers is matched to a contact by their email address; no contact is created. An address can answer only once — a second registration sends that address its own reply link instead.
- Places — optional for a personal invitation, required for an open one. Once the places are taken, a yes goes on the waiting list.
- Reply by — after this, answers can no longer be changed on the page.
- Guests — No guests, Everyone may bring guests, or Only recipients I choose, and Guests per invitation. Guests are named, for the guest list at the door.
- Let guests add a note and Ask for dietary and access needs. Guests share their needs only if they agree to their use; they are deleted 30 days after the event and never added to the contact.
- Reminder to those attending — No reminder, or one to seven days before, by email with the details and the calendar file.
After the reply — Words for those attending (on the page and in the confirmation email) and Words for those declining.
Before you can move on to sending, the invitation needs a date and a start time for every stop, and an open invitation a number of places.
The letter
WrkLst writes a first letter from the event — the subject, a greeting, the stops as every guest may see them, the reply deadline and a closing line, in the language of the reply page. Adjust it as you like; it is written in the same editor as any message, see Messages. Each guest's reply buttons go where you place them: put the cursor there and choose Reply buttons in the Insert: row below the text. Without it, they go below the letter. Rewrite from the event replaces the subject and the text with a new letter from the event, after asking, because your changes to them are lost.
Recipients and sending work as in any campaign — see Campaigns: people marked Don't reach out and addresses unsubscribed from the newsletter are left out.
The guest list
Open the campaign, and its Guest list comes first. At the top: Attending — everyone coming, against the places if you set any, split into those invited and the guests they bring — No reply, Declined, Waiting list, Checked in and, after the event, Didn't come. Below it everyone: the recipients with their answer, their guests, their note and their dietary needs, then those who registered through the open link and the walk-ins. Show filters the list — All, Attending, No reply, Declined, Waiting and, once the event has begun, Came and Didn't come — and Find a guest searches it. A name opens the contact.
- Give a place moves someone from the waiting list onto the guest list; they are told by email. Nobody moves up by themselves.
- With Only recipients I choose, set under Guests how many guests each recipient may bring — also after the invitation went out: their page shows it at once. Tell them by email when I allow guests after the invitation went out sends them a note.
- Remind those without a reply sends a reminder to everyone who has not answered yet.
These three belong to the person who wrote the campaign. Guest list (CSV) downloads the list, and Copy link copies an open invitation's link.
At the door
Tick people off as they arrive — the box at the start of each row; each guest they bring has a line of their own. Add a walk-in adds someone who was not on the list, with a name and, optionally, an email address, and checks them in. Anyone who may open the campaign can do this, so a colleague at the door can use a phone. After the event has begun, Didn't come marks someone who said yes and did not come; Undo takes the mark back.
Afterwards
- Every contact you invited shows an Invitations section: each invitation with its event, its show and how it went — Came, Didn't come, Attending, Declined, No reply — and above them, how often the person was invited, said yes, came and didn't come.
- Each answer is written in the contact's contact log as RSVP and counts as contact — see Opportunities: more lists, the contact log and Don't reach out.
- With Opportunities on, someone who said yes to an invitation for a show — Said yes to an invitation — or came to it — Came to an event — has a reason on that show's artists. A no, or a yes marked Didn't come, says nothing. See Opportunities: whom to contact next.
- The exhibition lists the invitation in its Campaigns section, with how many are attending, declined or have not replied.
A dinner list for a show
With Opportunities on, an exhibition's Suggested section offers Dinner list: the people proposed for the show, near the venue. Choose Around the venue — within 10 to 250 km, or Any distance — and which Opportunities: All, Medium and high or High only; Also people without a known place adds those without a located address. Each person shows their place and distance, the strongest reasons and how earlier invitations went — invited, said yes, came, didn't come, and the last one — or Not invited before.
Tick the people you want — Select all who can be invited ticks everyone with an email address — and choose Invite … people to the dinner, up to 50 at a time. WrkLst creates an RSVP campaign set up for a dinner — one stop on the show's opening day, if it has one, at 8 pm, whose address only those who accept see, no guests, as many places as people invited, and a reminder the day before — and opens it on its Event step for you to finish and send. People marked Don't reach out, unsubscribed from the newsletter, without an email address or confidential to you are left out, as with Write to them.
Who may do what
Like any campaign, an RSVP campaign needs Campaigns in your plan and your role. Only the person who wrote a campaign can edit, send or delete it.