Pushpage (Newsletters)

Michael Maloney · July 11

I would like to learn what features and functions that people like and use in Blackbaud Pushpage(s)? As well as what they feel is missing.

Troy Burki · July 11

@Michael Maloney in my opinion, the single bright spot of Pushpages is the ability to use dynamic distribution groups based on an advanced/basic lists. Everything else is very outdated compared to all other mass email providers. Key things needed are a modern drag-and-drop interface, dynamic content blocks, and a much more robust placeholder functionality based on available data fields and not just very specific fields.

Shannon Krise · July 11

@Michael Maloney The user interface is very outdated as Troy said, and we use BrightArrow for most of our “single message” types of mass communication. Although I would love an update to the platform, I do find pushpage's “click-thru” content capability very useful if you lack a dedicated communications team.

We have a grade level pushpage, and inserting “click-thrus" allows the pushpage editor for each grade level to select calendar events from the myschoolapp calendars to insert into an upcoming events section, or select from a list of news articles or announcements to include. This allows an editor to quite quickly populate a template from content that already exists in myschoolapp, and the content can easily be created by multiple authors. It does mean that teachers need to be trained to share content with the grade level page content category so that it will be available to editors when producing the pushpage.

We can add just the brief description of a news article with a link to the full article, but my two biggest issues with “click-thru” content is that the events pulled in to the pushpage do not include links to the calendar event, and we cannot include athletic events.

Kathy Hannon · July 12

@Michael Maloney we use push pages and love them for our email communications however, the newsletter is challenging! We use push pages for our newsletter but we send a link to our Constant Contact page. We use Constant Contact for the newsletter because we can add companies and outside individuals that want to subscribe. We have BrightArrow also, but would not use for newsletter.

Rebecca McCullough · July 14

@Michael Maloney Pushpage is outdated in it's user interface and quite cumbersome to use. We don't have any other option, though, so I rely on basic HTML changes to make the changes I need to for formatting. I know other folks use a third party like Constant Contact, but we are really trying to keep only one set of mailing lists to manage!

Michael Maloney · July 14

@Troy Burki thank you for your feedback!

Michael Maloney · July 14

@Shannon Krise thank you for your feedback!

Michael Maloney · July 14

@Kathy Hannon thank you for your feedback!

Michael Maloney · July 14

@Rebecca McCullough thank you for your feedback!

Katherine Bailey · July 16

@Michael Maloney The UI is outdated looking and clunky to use. This was our first year with Blackbaud and fairly early in the year we switched from using Pushpages for our weekly newsletter to using the Communications/Email Designer feature in Raisers Edge NXT. We previously used MailChimp which I honestly prefer, but the Email Designer in RE is pretty close. If Pushpages could just be a copy of the RE Email Designer that'd be a huge upgrade.

A couple of things that I find lacking in RE's Email Designer: I believe MailChimp gave me the option to resize images within the email builder when they were too large; this would save me oodles of time and effort. The ability to drop something that would allow for style breaks between sections in the same column number would also be great. I have a workaround but it feels cumbersome and doesn't always work well. I'd be a very happy camper if these features were added.

Pushpage (Newsletters)

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