Objective:
In this How-To, we will learn about the best way to create Holiday Closure Notice Templates in Core iQ. We will explore the following topics:
- How to make a set of Holiday Closure Emails using Core iQ templates
- How to set up merge fields to make annual template changes easier
Letting your customers know about your holiday hours can be a meaningful way for you to connect with them even more. That’s why Core iQ v2.0 now includes 10 email templates directly related to letting customers know about your holiday hours and closures. With preselected images and pre-written copy, creating a Holiday Closure Notice Schedule has never been easier! Let’s learn how.
How to create Holiday Closure Notices using Core iQ Templates
We will assume in this tutorial that you are creating your schedule from the beginning of the calendar year, but the process will be the same no matter when you are creating this schedule. We will start by creating all 10 custom emails for the major federal holidays. To create an email from a template in Core iQ, we just need to navigate to the Communication Templates area and click the Add a New Template button. Using the search feature, we can look for Holiday Emails in Core iQ. Since it is the first holiday of the year, I will start with the New Years email template.
The moment you start your branded New Years email, you will see that Core iQ has handled a lot of the heavy lifting. We have gone ahead and populated these Settings:
- Template Name
- Email Subject Line
- Communications Category
- Customer Receives No More Than Once Within
That means that all you need to do is review the copy and imagery. You will see that there are a few custom merge fields for the opening and closing dates, which we will handle next in our tutorial. From there, we can click Save & Preview, which will give us a great preview of our closure email. Core iQ will display the dynamically created email that will be sent to all of your customers with email addresses on file. If you approve of the copy and imagery, there isn’t anything else that you need to do within this template other than mark it as Approved in the Compliance section. This approval tells Core iQ that the email is ready to be sent out to your customers. From here, we can move on to adding a few custom fields before we create the other 9 templates.
Using our custom Close/Open merge fields
You will notice that in each template, there are two merge fields that are completely custom to the holiday Close and Open dates. These are meant to consolidate the amount of work that you have to do every year when reviewing your closure schedule. In order to create these custom merge fields, go to the Custom Field Definitions area of the Core iQ Admin dropdown. There, you will be able to create the merge fields that will be used to populate the date for every holiday you will be closed and the date that you will reopen. Simply add a new definition for each of these items, putting the listed name exactly as written in the ‘What You Want to Call It:’ field. Then put the exact date in the ‘Field Value’ box (e.g. Monday, January 1, 2018).
- New Years Close Date
- New Years Open Date
- MLK Close Date
- MLK Open Date
- Presidents Close Date
- Presidents Open Date
- Memorial Close Date
- Memorial Open Date
- Independence Close Date
- Independence Open Date
- Labor Close Date
- Labor Open Date
- Columbus Close Date
- Columbus Open Date
- Veterans Close Date
- Veterans Open Date
- Thanksgiving Close Date
- Thanksgiving Open Date
- Christmas Close Date
- Christmas Open Date
Once you have these fields set up, maintaining your schedule every year becomes a snap. Just edit each definition any time between when the communication is sent by Core iQ and when it will be sent again. Core iQ will dynamically pull in the new data every time the communication is sent out!
Creating the Remaining Templates
Now that we have these custom merge fields set up, they should start to populate within your Desktop Preview for all of the Holiday Closure templates. Head back over to the New Years Bank Closure email template to make sure that the 2018 dates are correctly populating. If they aren’t, or you want to make any edits to the copy of the email, you can head to the Body section to do just that. Once you have made all of the edits to your content, make sure that this template is marked as Approved, and move on to the next holiday. There are a total of 10 templates in Core iQ that come pre-populated with imagery and content for each of the major Federal holidays. Review, edit, and Approve each of these templates and you will be ready to move on to creating your automated Holiday Branch Closure schedule.