Workshop is an internal communications email platform designed to streamline the way you connect and engage with your team. Within minutes, you can easily create, send, manage, and measure engaging email campaigns, newsletters, and announcements.
In this article, we will cover the following:
Navigation overview
When you are added as a new Workshop user and log into your account, you will first see your account dashboard. At the top of your dashboard you will see a navigation bar with seven options: CALENDAR, CAMPAIGNS, EMAIL, TEXT, PAGES, JOURNEYS and MANAGE.
CALENDAR: The CALENDAR tab allows you to view past, present & future communications and activities all in one place. You will see any drafted, sent or scheduled emails plus, their cross posted channels on the calendar as well as, can also leverage notes to plan out future communication - helping your team communicate more effectively each and every day.
See additional information about the calendar here.
CAMPAIGNS: The CAMPAIGNS tab will show you your Active, Ongoing, Completed, and Scheduled email campaigns. If you click into a particular campaign, you can view an overview of your campaign, the performance of the campaign over time, individual emails within your campaign, and a list of recipients. You can also filter campaign performance by departments, teams and more.
See additional information about campaigns here.
EMAIL: If you have the email channel then the EMAIL tab will display all of your Draft, Scheduled, and Sent emails.
To continue working on a current draft, find the email you would like to edit from the email tab and click into it. From here, you can edit your current content, add additional content blocks, send test emails, and more.
To review the email analytics of a particular email, find the sent email you would like to review from the EMAIL tab and click into it. From here, you can view the email’s performance including an engagement overview, time read, an engagement timeline, devices, web visits, and clicks!
TEXT: If you have the SMS channel then the TEXT tab will give you access to all of your Drafted, Scheduled, and Sent text messages, as well as, quick access to your Inbox. See more information about SMS here.
PAGES: If you have the pages channel then the PAGES tab will give you access to all of your Drafted and Published Pages. See additional information about Pages here.
JOURNEYS: A journey is a sequence of automated actions. The JOURNEYS tab will give you access to all of your Drafted, Active and Deactivated Journeys. See additional information about Journeys here.
MANAGE: The MANAGE tab is where you will manage your Lists, Directory, Templates, Users (including groups), Media Library and Apps/integrations.
How to create an email
To create and send an email from Workshop, navigate to the EMAIL tab and select Create email in the upper right-hand corner. From there, you will first choose whether you’d like to create a regular email or an automated email, then decide if you’d like to start from scratch or from a template.
You can choose to create an email from one of your templates, a template that has been shared with you, one from the template library, or, start from scratch!
- My templates: These templates are emails you have created and saved.
- Shared with me: These templates are emails that your team has created and shared with you. (To learn more about Workshop's sharing and privacy settings, check out this video!)
- Template library: This is a pre-designed email template library. You can clone and modify any email in the Community template library.
Once you begin in the editor, this is where you will add all of your content to create your email. On the left-hand side of the editor, you will see the following options:
Create tab
The Create tab is where you can generate a fully AI-written and styled email simply by describing the type of email you want to create.
Build tab
The Build tab is where you can drag and drop content blocks into rows to design your email.
Styles tab
The Styles tab is where you set your default styles. Any styles configured here will be automatically applied each time you drag in a new content block.
Settings
The Settings section is where you configure your subject line, preview text, recipients, and send options. See the How to Send an Email section below for a full breakdown.
EDITING ROWS
When you click into a row in the editor, you will see two options: Styles and Visibility.
Row Styles — within the row styles, you can set:
- Background color — apply a background color to the row
- Background width — choose whether the background color spans the content width or full width
- Content alignment — set how content aligns within the row
- Padding — adjust the spacing around the row
- Rounded corners — apply rounded corners to the row
Column settings — by expanding further within the row, you can:
- Add or remove columns from the row
- Dynamically drag to adjust the width ratio of columns
- Apply a background color to individual columns by selecting the column and using the color selector; repeat for any other columns as needed
- Apply rounded corners at the column level
ADDING CONTENT BLOCKS
In the Build > Content section of the editor, you will see eight content blocks that you can drag into your rows to make up the layout of your email. These options include:
- Heading
- Paragraph
- Image
- Button
- Divider
- Spacer
- Survey
- Video
To add a content block to your email, click and drag the content block of your choice to the area of the email you would like it to display. For example, if you’d like to add a header section, click and drag the Heading content block to the area within the email that you would like it to display. Every content block has its own settings, such as granular controls on padding. The left-side panel automatically switches to a property panel for the selected content element.
How to preview an email
To preview an email, click the Actions menu > Preview in the upper right-hand corner of the email editor. Once you enter the preview, you can toggle dark mode and preview what your email will look like on specific devices including desktop, tablet, and mobile.
You can also 'Preview as recipient' to test your email personalizations.
How to send a test email
To send a test email, click the Actions menu > Send a test email in the upper right-hand corner of the email editor. From there, select one or more recipients to send the test email to. You can also receive the email as a specific person. This is helpful if you have utilized merge tags or audience segmentation on one or more of your rows within your email.
If you need feedback or approval on your email, you can include a note to your test email. Select the Add a note to the test email checkbox and type your note in the box. Recipients will receive the note in their inbox along with the test email. Enabling the Allow reply-all can also be helpful when seeking feedback or approval from multiple test recipients.
How to send an email
Before you send your email, you will need to set your email send settings. To set your email settings, click on the Settings tab on the left-hand side of the editor. This is where you will add your email send settings, recipients, additional channel notifications, and sending options. We will go through each section a bit more in-depth!
Settings
Add your general email send settings and generate an inbox preview.
- Email name: this will be the name shown internally in your dashboard
- Subject: set your subject line that will be displayed in employees’ inboxes
- Preview text: set the preview text that will be displayed in employees’ inboxes (90 character limit)
- From name: set the name of the sender of the email. This will be displayed in employees’ inboxes. This is usually a person, department, or the organization name
- From email: set the email address of the sender. This will be displayed in employees’ inboxes
- Reply-to email: set the email where replies will be delivered. This is not enabled for everyone, but if you want replies to be directed to a different email than the from email address, we can enable this setting for you.
- Campaign name: add your email to a specific campaign. You can leave blank if you don’t have a campaign associated with the email
- Inbox preview: clicking this button will generate a preview of how the email will appear in employees’ inboxes
Recipients
Add the lists and specific people you would like to receive the email. Workshop syncs with your HRIS or Outlook so you automatically have the employee info you need. If you can’t find the list you need, contact your team member that invited you to Workshop!
You can also exclude specific people or lists from receiving the email. For example, you can send to multiple lists while excluding certain individuals or sublists.
Additional notification channels
Select the additional channels you would like to cross-post the web version of this email to including SMS, Slack, Teams, and Sharepoint. You can also customize the preview message for each channel!
Note: If a recipient does not belong to one of the channels selected, they will not receive a notification in that channel.
Sending options
In the sending options, you can choose to send your email immediately or schedule it for a future date. By default, the setting is set to Send now. If you prefer to schedule your email, click the Schedule for later button and choose the desired date and time for sending.
How to review the analytics of an email or campaign
Once an email has been sent, you can track the analytics to see how your email is performing. You can view both individual email analytics and the analytics of an entire email campaign! We will walk you through both.
Reviewing the analytics of an individual email
To review the analytics of an individual email, navigate to the EMAIL tab and click into it. From there, find and click on the sent email you would like to review.
At the top of the page you will see a snapshot of your email’s details including, the subject line, sent date, a shareable link and QR code, the campaign the email is associated with (if it has one), and the recipients sent.
You can also choose to share this email with team members by clicking the Share button in the top right-hand corner, or click the Actions dropdown button to edit, clone, create a template, view, or export the email.
Below this information you will find three tabs: Analyze, Surveys, Recipients.
Analyze
The Analyze tab will show you all the analytics you need to see how your email is performing. You can review the email as a whole or filter the data by date range, list type, departments, and more!
- Engagement Overview: see an overview of your email’s engagement over time. You can also see the total opens, unique opens, total clicks, and unique clicks
- Time read: learn how many people read, skimmed, or glanced at your email. Workshop defines read as more than 20 seconds, skimmed as 5-20 seconds, and glanced as less than 5 seconds
- Engagement timeline: view your email’s opens and clicks over time
- Devices: see the percentage of people that read your email on desktop versus mobile
- Web visits: see the visits to your email from its shareable link
- Clicks: view the unique and total clicks for the links you included in your email
To filter your email by date, list type, departments, and more, click Add filter in the top left-hand corner of the Analyze tab and choose the data you would like to review. Then click the Save button. You can also review a certain time period by selecting a date range. Filtering is helpful if you want to see how a specific department or list is engaging with your email.
Surveys
The Surveys tab will show you the data associated with any survey you included in your email. You can review the over response rate in addition to individual comments.
Your survey results will display based on your choices when you built it. If you created an anonymous survey, no names will be visible from the results tab.
Recipients
The Recipients tab will show you a breakdown of everyone who received your email in addition to the opens and clicks for each recipient.
To filter your recipients by date, list type, departments, and more, click Add filter in the top left-hand corner of the Recipients tab and choose the data you would like to review. Then click the Save button. You can also review a certain time period by selecting a date range.
Reviewing the analytics of an email campaign
To review the analytics of an email campaign, navigate to the CAMPAIGNS tab and click into it. From there, select the campaign you would like to analyze.
Here you will see an overview of the campaign like the creator, start date, and end date. You can also choose to share this campaign with team members by clicking the Share button in the top right-hand corner, or click the Actions dropdown button to edit campaign details, create an email within the campaign, delete the campaign, or export the campaign’s data.
Below the campaign details you will see a campaign overview with the total emails sent, recipients, average open rate, and average click rate.
Next, you will find a performance chart of your campaign. Here you can review the total number of recipients, the open rate, click rate, click-through rate, total opens, and total clicks.
You will then find a breakdown of all individual emails within the campaign. You can see the email name, number of recipients the email was sent to, unique opens and clicks, and the status of the email. Additionally, you can click into any individual email from this view.
Lastly, you can review an in-depth look at the recipients within the campaign. You can view their overall engagement, events, opens, and clicks. If you would like to see the engagement of a particular team member, you can search for their name or email address in the search bar in the top right-hand corner.
Filtering Campaign data
To filter your campaign by date, list type, departments, and more, click Add filter in the top left-hand corner and choose the data you would like to review. Then click the Save button. You can also review a certain time period by selecting a date range. Filtering is helpful if you want to see how a specific department or list is engaging with your campaign.