clubs_support

Review 2024, Preview 2025

Review 2024

In 2024 anyway, back some new features and additional integrations:

Preview 2025

By 2025, planned and certainly implemented (seen now already partly in test at some try-out clubs).

  • Media Library
    A separate library (images, documents, videos) for club media, activity reports, meeting minutes, newsletters, ...
  • Activities Listing
    External listing (for public site, social media, ...) with the activities. Management of these public activities, public listings
  • Registration module
    Further checks and controls on: guests, waiting lists, save the date, historic pricing, ...
  • Webshop
    A simple webshop (for club clothes, specific material), for members, with full financial handling

And especially the additional functionalities already available now at the same license cost as the starting platform of previous years. Or more for the same money.

All on our support site, via the links provided above.

Read more

Logout

In exceptional cases a Logout may be necessary.

Logout – https://yourclub.klubs.be/index.php?action=logout
Where yourclub is replaced by your Klubs domain name.

Usually this is only necessary if the user has not logged in often and several software releases have been rolled out in the meantime.

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Mail Delivery & Mails Effciency

Maybe not really a Release topic, but interesting info for both users and admins around an important club topic, namely mail communication.

Mail set-up

There are two possible options:

  • klubs shipping address - yourclub@klubs.be
    such as vlerickalumni@klubs_support
  • club shipping address - president@yourclub.be
    such as info@concorde-philotaxe.be

Full info - Mail set-up

And associations evolve, so please review this topic, and any adjustments/set-up records to admin@klubs.be.


Mail Delivery - Users

Quite a few clubs have to deal with members not getting emails to arrive in their mailbox. Here is a brief explanation and also a Long Read around this issue.
(Which is usually not located at the club set-up or Clubs).

Full info - Mail Delivery Users


Mail Delivery - Admin

A Long Read around mail delivery with an approach from the club, the sender - Clubs, and the received, the members.

Full info - Mail Delivery Admin

Read more

Mail Delivery - Admin

Below topic also in a Long Read, possibly to be forwarded to IT responsible or interested members - Clubs Efficient Email Communication

Previously, the Mail Set-up within Klubs is also important in this context:
- Klubs Mail Set-up

Within Klubs, e-mail is the form of communication to members.

For sending the mails from Klubs we work with a transactional mail system. This separate service guarantees high delivery and then also provides the information around tracking and tracing.

Mail deliverability, also known as mail deliverability, refers to the ability of an e-mail message to be successfully delivered to the recipient's inbox, rather than in the spam folder or not arriving at all. This process involves several factors at different actors

  • Club
    • email list quality
    • mail set-up
    • formatting of the mail (personalization)
    • Mail interaction
  • Sender - Clubs
    • mail formatting
    • reputation of the sender
    • settings at the sending mailsever
  • Receiver
    • spam settings
    • end user
    • mail handling server

Background info

Here are a few links around this issue:

Club

Quality of the email list

Given member lists, the mailing list should be fairly reliable in terms of mail requirements. Regularly check the mail addresses of your members and certainly of your prospect lists.

  • Limit Role Based mail addresses such as info@, support@, admin@.
    Ask your members for a recognizable mail address, preferably with name and first name.

Mail set-up

Spam filters also pay attention to the mail set-up, then the from and reply-to mail address.

  • Do not use Role Based mail addresses here and certainly not no-reply@.

Formatting the mail

Many identical mails are to be avoided. Personalization is therefore appropriate.

  • Personalization of emails with shortcodes (#firstname), especially the subject

And especially to be avoided is the use of the Klubs mail feature for SPAM sensitive mails and subjects:

  • Things to do with money or making money;
  • Do not include ** asterisks or € EURO characters;
  • Don't make the subject line too long

For the content of the mail are to be avoided:

  • "Click here" or "Look here soon."
  • Things to do with money or making money;

With the Klubs mail editor you have many possibilities:

  • Make sure hyperlinks point to trustworthy websites
  • Don't put the entire URL in the email, but link it in a piece of text
  • To be avoided !!!!! or ????, words in CAPITAL LETTERS, or different fonts
  • Images: optimal 600 px wide, and small files (loading mail on 4G)
  • Do not use complicated html code for formatting

Mail Interaction

For Mail Server Reputation (see also below), what happens to emails that are received is important.

If there is a lot of interaction with emails by recipients, think opening the email and clicking through on links, then this increases the reputation of the email server. Conversely, the reputation goes down when there is little interaction. The reputation also lowers when recipients of the e-mail mark it as SPAM.

This makes paying attention to the mailing list when sending a newsletter very important. You want as active a file as possible; the addressees should really be interested in the emails you send. That ensures as much interaction as possible and thus a positive effect on reputation.

Therefore, from that point of view, sending a newsletter with the same content multiple times is highly undesirable.

  • Mail formatting that results in high interaction
  • Avoid repetitive emails

Sender - Clubs

Formatting the mail

Essential is that someone can unsubscribe from a newsletter. If you hide the ability to unsubscribe a bit, SPAM filters often catch on. 

By default, Klubs provides an Unsubscribe option.

Reputation of the sender

This is about the online reliability that the e-mail server has, from which e-mails are sent. Receiving e-mail systems (Google, Microsoft Hotmail/Outlook, Telenet, ...) track the reputation of e-mail servers. When the reputation is high, e-mail is simply delivered to the inbox. If it is low, e-mail may end up in the SPAM box.

It may even cause an email server to be blacklisted and thus not delivered at all.

The reputation of a sending email server is built up and thus changes over time. 

To build reputation, the key is to incrementally increase the volume of emails sent from a server.

Within Klubs, we work with an external, reliable, mail handler, and continue to continually protect this reputation.

Settings at the sending mailsever

Only at a specific club shipping address, such as president@yourclub.be

The components involved

  • SPF (Sender Policy Framework)
    This standard specifies who is allowed to send emails on your behalf;
  • DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail)
    Provides an authenticity stamp on your e-mail;
  • DMARC: (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance)
    Tells you what to do when you receive anomalous emails;

Receiver

Spam settings

Mail not arriving has a lot to do with spam settings at the recipient.

Outlook, Hotmail, almost all Microsoft mail accounts, have a very high spam sensitivity. In addition, the problem of checking with company accounts or Providers with specific Anti-Spam filters.

Here is some background info around various mail delivery issues:

End User

For resolution of Mail Delivery issues some suggestions for the end user:

  • Safe Sender
    sets the default klubs mail address (see received mail) as safe sender
  • Klubs in Contacts
    put the default klubs mail address (see received mail) in your contacts as safe sender
  • Check Spam mailbox
    designates the mail, in the Spam mailbox, as Safe Sender

Mail handling server

In exceptional cases, it is necessary to white-list the sender mail address with the server of the received. If you deem this necessary, contact us to speak with your Domain Name Manager

Here the following standards are then considered:

DMARC: (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance)
Tells you what to do when you receive anomalous emails.

SPF (Sender Policy Framework)
This standard specifies who is allowed to send emails on your behalf;

DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail)
Provides an authentication stamp on your e-mail;

Read more

Activities - Non-Members

Klubs is a Membership platform.
Registered members have a login, can register themselves for activities, as well as register guests, connect with other members, view their contact info, in other words use their Membership.

For certain activities it is necessary or useful to give non-members the opportunity to register as well. This can be done in Klubs via a public link.

Public Subscriptions

Settings

In the settings of an activity you can choose to make the activity accessible to public subscriptions. A public link is then generated for this purpose.

This Public link (for example - https://demo.klubs.be/register/index.php?id=38) can be forwarded in a Mail Campaign to prospects or in a personal mail or possibly even published on social media.

Use

On this public link, there is then the opportunity to register the registration.

The registration is complete with the personal details, as well as the additional questions(meta-fields) and the billing info.

Public Listing

To make known the Activities that are open to non-members, there is the Public Listing.
This then automatically adopts the respective activities for publication on a public website or social media.

Module

The Public Listing is a separate Module and therefore must be activated:

Admin / Settings / Modules

  • Activities " Public listing of activities

Setup

Set-up is simple by designating on the activity in question as to be published on the Public Listing.

In doing so, the link can then also be copied for use on a public website, social media, mailing, ...

Listing

These Activities are then displayed, in chronological order (possibly by Activity Category). With indication of Date / Time, Location, Activity Image and the Short Content.

There is a button for more information.
Here comes additional information: Full Text and Google Maps indication of activity location.

If the activity at the Activity Institution is designated as Public Accessible, the link to register also appears. This then through the Public Registration.

Read more

Activities - Member Groups

Certain activities, specific to certain member groups, such as board meetings, can also be managed with Klubs.

Setup

When setting up the activity, you can indicate the availability for the different member groups.

This restricts visibility on the dashboard or activity list to the members of this member group.

Activities List

In the activities list you can clearly see the availability of the activities

Communications

In the communication you send to the specific Member Group, the limited availability will be clearly indicated.

Read more

Financial Succession

A separate topic for financial tracking within Clubs then specifically for clubs without accounting integration.

 [The use of Financial Tracking is managed through an Advanced Setting]

Payment status

A "slider," for easy indications, has been implemented at payments:

  • Activities List Attendees: to be billed
  • Activities List Attendees: pay status
  • Memberships: pay status
Financials - Activity Slider.png

Reporting

Especially for those Klubs that do financial tracking in Klubs (without accounting integration), there is now also the convenient overview of open items (Activities and Memberships).

Reporting - Financial 600.png

Communications

And for full follow-up, the communication was also adjusted, with now separate target group selection of different attendees: Members, guests or registrations through the public link.

Communications - Target Paid Types.png
Read more

Release - Spring 2024 N°2

Great news! The latest KLUBS release, just under 2 months after the previous one, now includes even more features, with the goal of less administration, and more focus on members.

Evaluations

And the focus on members is now really implemented in Klubs with the Survey functionality.
Isn't it extremely interesting for club operation to be able to conduct an evaluation with members present after an activity.

Evaluation - Form -Graphic-representation 600.png

And therefore a comprehensive evaluation functionality:Different evaluation forms (for different audiences)

  • Member or public evaluations
  • Limitation (per member) in terms of number of evaluations
  • Extended question (Text, Number, Yes / No, Choice, Range)
  • Results: Graphic Representation and Download

Test it out, full support info at - Support Knowledge Base


Sponsorship

At Klubs, we are certainly mercantile and attentive to your club's finances. One possibility here is Sponsorship.

Sponsor - by Activity .png

To give these sponsors even better visibility, it is now possible to customize per activity the mail header, footer (with sponsor logo) and sponsor link.


Onboarding

A bulk import of members into Klubs can be notified via the Member Import function.

Members - Import support 600.png


With following features:

  • Members / Prospects: import of both Members and Prospects
  • Profile info: import of profile info of members
  • Memberships: automatic creation of Memberships (period, pricing, ...)
  • Member groups: multiple Member groups per member possible

Read more

Integration, API and data exchange

In this knowledge base topic, we focus on integration, API and data exchange within the Klubs platform. These features are essential to optimizing your experience with Klubs and leveraging the full potential of the platform.

API - Application Programming Interface

An Application Programming Interface (API) is a collection of programming commands that call the functions of a program. It is a method that allows two platforms to communicate with each other.

Klubs now has following APIs that are fully supported(updates, releases).

Internal APIs:

  • Member Import: A bulk import of members into Klubs can be notified via the Member Import function. This involves importing basic CRM info, member type, membership type and period.
  • Activity Listing: An HTML page containing activity data such as description, date, location, for use on a public website.

External APIs:

  • Mailchimp: Synchronization of Klubs CRM contacts with Mailchimp Audiences (List ID).
  • Yuki: Accounting integration (full accounting) for tracking financial processing of memberships, activity participation, ...
  • Billit: Digital invoicing and document management, used here as a gateway to more than 40 connected accounting packages.
  • Treasurer/Treasurer: Accounting integration (single accounting) for accounting tracking of financial processing of memberships, activity participation, ...
  • Mollie: Payment processing of online payments for memberships, activity participation, ...
  • Saferpay: Payment processing of online payments through the Wordline platform

Technical APIs:

  • Mailgun: Email Service Provider as transactional mail server for mail delivery optimization and reporting.
  • AWS: Mass media storage for documents, photos, etc.
  • SSO - Single Sign-On: Klubs can be integrated into an SSO environment, allowing users after login, in a larger organization, to access Klubs directly as well. The existing API is based on Okta as Identity Provider (IdP) and SAML for the exchange of authentication and authorization data to Klubs as Service Provider (SP).

Data Exchange

Data exchange within Clubs via downloads, with the following structured data available for exchange via CSV files:

  • Member information: CRM info, additional profile fields, membership information, GDPR settings
  • Activities: Participation in activities, billing lists, ...
  • Evaluations: Individual activity reporting questionnaires.
  • Reports: Attendance lists with overview by activity, total overview of all activities

Integrations

These member-based CRM integrations help improve your workflow and make your organization more efficient.

  • Bars: Tracking of bar consumption by members, complete with product list, tablet order recording and link to member billing.
  • Locations: Follow-up of reservations from various salons, complete with follow-up, assignment and linkage to member billing.
  • Associations: Add-on for associations that work with Associate Clubs, and allow their members to use these locations via reciprocity.
  • Digital General Assembly: complete platform for setting up and legally holding a General Assembly.
Read more