You can easily set up additional elements in your campaign templates to make your messages interactive and easy for your contacts to get back to you.

For example, you can invite your contacts to an event, where they can click through a button to add to their calendar or create a prepared email response for them to easily reply to your newsletters.

In this article, you'll learn how to add to your template:

↳Invite contacts to an event via Google Calendar

↳Sending an invitation file
​ ↳Creating an event with AddEvent

Within the newsletter template, it is possible to set up a button or a link that can be used to ensure that after clicking through, your recipients will open up a prepared email, which they can then easily send and respond to your campaign. This is what the mailto function is for.

As this is an HTML element, it needs to be inserted in a specific format. To insert a ready-made email, just insert the following format into the link:

​

email@address.com

the email address to which you wish to receive the contact's reply

Subject

the subject of the email, which will tell you which newsletter the contacts are replying from

The text that will be displayed.

the content that will be displayed within the body of the prepared email

💡If you for example want to send further information only to serious candidates, you can pre-write a reply to the address with the subject "Interest in training" and pre-fill in the text "I am interested in training, please send me further information...". The contact will then send this email along with their contact details.

Once you have prepared an email in this way, which can then be sent from the contact's side with one click, you need to insert this format into the link field. You can paste it into a button or a classic text link. Don't forget to save your template before testing.

When pasted into a text link, you insert this predefined format into the URL field.

After clicking through, your contact will then see your pre-prepared email in their default mail management application.

Just like you can create a link to send an email, you can create a link to dial a phone number. While most mail clients will already recognize that this is a phone number and automatically dial it when clicked, you can still set this option manually in your template to be safe.

Here, you will enter the following value in the link field, where you will add the phone number to be dialled via this click-through instead of the phone number.

The link on the button will then look like this.

The button for dialling a phone number responds best in the mobile display because, by the very nature of telephones, it is a device that is designed to do just that.

Is there an event coming up that you want to remind your contacts about and would you like to give your contacts the option to add this event to their calendar with one click? You can do this in the following ways:

You can send your contacts an invitation to an event via Google Calendar, where clicking through the invitation will save the event to the contact's calendar. This type of invitation is only compatible with Google Calendar.

You can create the event according to your own requirements - you can save the name, venue, date, time, and a note about the event. Your contact will then see it on the calendar exactly as you create it.

Here's how to do it:

First of all, you need to create the event itself in your Google Calendar. It is important that the public option is selected in the visibility section.

Once you've saved the event, just select Publish Event through the event options.

You will then see two options that you can insert into the template:

The first of these options is HTML Code, which you can insert into your template through an HTML block where you insert this code. In the final preview, the link to this event will then appear as an image of the Google Calendar logo.

The second option is to insert a link to this event using a button or text link, where you insert a standard button or text link, where you insert the link to the event in the link/URL field. You can then better customize the appearance of this button or link to match the overall look of your message.

When you click a button or icon, your contact is presented with a pre-populated template of the event, which they then save to their own Google Calendar with a single click.

The downside of a Google Calendar event invitation is that it only works if your contact works with this type of calendar. The most widely supported type of calendar invitation is the .ics file, which contains the event information and can be read by most calendar applications (Yahoo, Office 365, Outlook, Apple Calendar, Google Calendar). This way the file can be opened by almost anyone.

You can generate the .ics file within individual calendars, or by using a web-based tool to generate the .ics file. This file can then be referenced within your campaign in a link or button. However, you will need to store this file on your own domain and link it directly to that location.

Once clicked, this file will then be downloaded on the contact page. Once opened, it will then be possible to open this file in your preferred calendar application and then save this event as a new event.

ℹ️ It should be noted that the display of .ics files varies depending on the device and the type of mail recipient. Thus, while some mailboxes will display the file as a downloadable file, others can automatically read it and offer the option to add it to the calendar. Some recipients may also block the download of the external file. Ecomail cannot control this situation.

To share an event, you can also use the external AddEvent tool. The free version allows you to create up to fifty events to which you can easily create a link to an invitation through this tool.

The advantage of this invitation method is its compatibility with all devices, where after creating an event through the app, you have the option to choose what the event invitation link will look like. However, you need to register for this website.

First, in the AddEvent web app, create a new event via calendar and the Create > Event option.

In the event, you can choose all the necessary parameters such as name, venue, date, time, and even add a note.

After creating an event and saving the event, you will see a menu where you have several options to share the invitation to this event. Of those that are compatible

with our template editor, you can use the following:

💭If you need help setting up any of the functions listed above, do not hesitate to contact our support via chat or email