Touchpoints are assumed to be transactional in nature (details about a booking, for instance) and are covered by Legitimate Interest. Therefore they do not follow the "Opt-in/ Out" rules that govern campaigns. This means that a student may receive an email, even if they are opted-out of receiving emails.

To ensure that Students who are opted-out of receiving emails do not receive these, we recommend adding the condition "Student Opted in to email = yes" to your touchpoint.

Please see this article for the basic set-up. Remember to set the Touchpoint as a draft to edit.

Here you can set when you want the Touchpoint to go out. You can set the Touchpoint to be immediate, or go out at a certain date and time. You can learn more about immediate Touchpoints from this article. 

Please note all times are in GMT, so consider this when sending out Touchpoints to international students.

Some Touchpoints include an event from which the Touchpoint will be sent.

For example, you could set an email Touchpoint containing a campus map to go out five days before the event date. 

You can also set whether you want to include only new students in the workflow, or both existing and new students. 

Please note: When using the "Existing and New" option, this will only send to recipients who've never received the touchpoint before.

When setting the touchpoint up, the option to send to all students on the workflow will send out to everyone.

When editing an existing touchpoint to use this option, the touchpoint will send out to recipients who've not historically received this touchpoint.

For example: A touchpoint is set up on a workflow that already has 10 records. The touchpoint is set to send to new records only. 9 more people join the workflow, and those 9 new records get the touchpoint. The touchpoint is then edited to be sent to "new and existing additions". The touchpoint sends to the 10 people who didn't get it previously. It does not send to 19 people, since the other 9 already received it.

An email Touchpoint works very similarly to a regular email. You can use the top drop-down to select a template, then fill out the From and Subject fields as normal.

You can also add merge tags to the Subject line, by clicking the [...] icon:

The main body of the email can be enhanced with merge fields and conditional text. See this article to learn more about merge fields, and this article to learn more about conditional text.

❗ Please Note: Is it not possible to add videos to emails, as many email clients consider it to be a security risk, and hostile to people on limited data plans. Instead, we recommend using a screenshot of the title image with a 'play' button in the middle, then link it to the video you want to direct your students to. See this article for further details.

Once your email is written, the content will be merged into the template wherever you've put the "[xxxreplace_with_contentxxx]" merge tag. For example, the above touchpoint will look like this when sent to the student:

Please note: When making edits to your templates, you will need to re-save your touchpoint content in order to make the template change live. This is so that you can keep some touchpoints on the old style for A/B testing.

You can use conditions to send Touchpoints to specific students. For example, you could send a Touchpoint to all students whose Year of Entry is 2019.

To do this, click the Plus icon and choose your conditions from the drop-downs available. Be aware that any dates must be formatted as YYYY-MM-DD, for example, 2019-01-01 for 1st January 2019.

For more advice on conditions, see this FAQ.

You can add attachments, such as a campus map, which can either be attached to all messages or only some depending on the criteria set. 

To add an attachment, click the Plus icon, then click "Choose a file to attach" and select your file. "Attach to all messages" is ticked by default, but if you only want to send the attachment to some students, untick this and enter your conditions. Click save and the attachment will be uploaded. You can see what attachments have already been uploaded, download them to view yourself or use the Minus icon to delete the attachment.

Before you set your Touchpoint live, you have the option to review your work. The view on the left shows the base email template, while the view on the right shows the full email. The buttons beneath each view allow you to open a full-sized preview in a new window, or send yourself a test email.

Attachments won't be shown when previewing the touchpoint in a new window, but you can check how they look by sending yourself the test email.

Once you are happy with your work, you can change the status to live. You will then see a green confirmation banner.

You're all finished! Your Touchpoint is live and will send when all conditions are met. If at any point you need to amend the Touchpoint, you'll need to pause your workflow, and set the Touchpoint back to draft. Equally, you may want to archive your Touchpoint. You can learn more about archiving Touchpoints here.