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Calendar setup guide

The first step toward engaging with customers through calendar marketing is to create a new calendar and add events.

Creating a calendar​

  1. Log in to the Rokt Calendar Merchant Center.

  2. Click Create Calendar.

  3. Populate the Calendar Info page with the required information (Name this calendar, Calendar Subscription Title & Select a unique URL) needed to launch your calendar.

    The Details section provides some high-level customization to identify this calendar:

    • Name - the name by which the calendar will be referred to in the Merchant Center
    • Calendar Subscription Title - The name shown to subscribers as they subscribe to the calendar. If you leave Calendar Subscription Title blank, customers see Name by default.
    • Description - Shown on the calendar homepage to give more information to the subscriber
    • Language - Language of the static text shown throughout the subscription process and inside events
    • URL - custom slug to direct your users to subscribe
    Optional fields

    While we don’t require Calendar Subscription Title, Calendar Description, or images when creating your calendar, including this information helps potential subscribers better understand the content you will be sharing.

  4. Add tags to your calendar. Tags allow you to segment calendar and event content for your audience. Adding tags also lets your customers select a preference for the type of content they wish to receive in their calendar.

    For example, if a TV network was creating a calendar for their channel and wanted to allow customers to subscribe to specific different genres of movies, they could create tags for each genre like Comedy, or Action and Adventure.

    Create a tag by selecting Add Tag, then add a name and recognizable image. The default tag selector preselects that tag when the customer visits the page during subscription. You can then reorder the tags based on how you would like them to appear on the landing page by clicking and dragging each event.

    note

    Within the tag section, it is best practice to include an All Events tag and to set it as the default if customers may be likely to subscribe to all tags. This is to ensure that users who don’t wish to view specific events can receive all events offered in the calendar automatically.

Creating events​

Calendar events can be created either manually and dynamically.

Manual event creation​

  1. On the Events page, click Add Event.
  2. Name your event (and include emojis if you’d like by clicking on the smiley face next to Event Name).
  3. In Location, provide a physical location or communicate a call to action (CTA) e.g., “Watch the brand new season, tomorrow at 9!”.
  4. The Description field provides a higher character limit to share additional information with your subscribers. You can include more information about an event, like relevant links to materials or landing pages.
  5. Every event requires a start and end date and time (in 24-Hour time format), with the ability to set the time zone of the event.
  6. Reminders to events can also be set to your preferred time before the event has taken place (1 minute to 40,320 minutes/4 weeks).
  7. Enabling Schedule event sync lets you specify a date and time that the event will become visible to your subscribers rather than syncing the event immediately. We recommend setting a visible date at least 24 hours before the start date to ensure the event is delivered to all subscribers in time.
  8. Events can also be repeated every day, week, month, or year depending on preferred repetition.
  9. Once the Details section of the event is completed, you can choose what tags (previously created on the Calendar Info page) can be added to the specific event you are creating. If the event you’re creating is for your TV network’s Night of Comedy for example, then you would add the Comedy tag to your event, ensuring that subscribers are receiving relevant content.
  10. After you’ve saved the event, you can then edit, duplicate, and delete the event prior to its release.

Events import​

  1. On the Events Page, click the Import Events tab, and download the Sample Event Excel File located in the bottom right-hand corner of the page. Once downloaded follow the instructions below to import your events.
  2. In the Merchant Center, create all event tags.
  3. Create at least one event and upload all possible logos to be used across the entire calendar.
  4. Download the sample file by clicking Sample event file.
  5. In the spreadsheet enter one event per row.
  6. In the spreadsheet, populate the Timezone field by using the dropdown option in the related cells in the spreadsheet.
  7. In the spreadsheet, populate the *TimezoneList by entering the IDs of each time zone separated with a comma. The IDs can be found on the referenceData tab of the spreadsheet.
  8. In the spreadsheet populate the TagList by entering the tags separating them with a comma. Tags can be found on the ReferenceData tab of the spreadsheet.
  9. Save the spreadsheet.
  10. Click Upload Excel to upload the saved spreadsheet.
  11. Click Import.
Events feed

If you have an API or flat file that contains details of the events that you’d like imported and synced to your calendar, speak to us and we will work with you on an integration.

Calendar styling​

From the Styling page, you can customize how your calendar landing page appears to subscribers.

  1. On the Styling tab, you can upload assets in the form of banners, logos, favicons, or brand colors fit to match your businesses’ exact specifications.

    Note: Style from Twitter profile gives you the ability to pull assets directly from a Twitter profile. This way you can easily import your brand assets (banner, logo, etc.) and colors to ensure visual cohesiveness.

    On this page you can also preview your Add to Calendar landing page from either a mobile phone or desktop by clicking the View As button above the mobile phone and toggling between the two.

  2. In the Content section, you can input your calendar’s title and subtitle, your previously built tags, and calls to action.

    1. When creating the Tag List Drop Down Title, we recommend asking a question to your audience (e.g., what types of movies interest you?), then populating the Tag List Instructions field with instructions on how to select the best option for each customer (e.g. Select from the options below). Under Tag list instructions, toggle the Allow Multi Tag Selection to On to allow customers to select multiple options. The Display Tags As Tiles toggle allow tags to be showcased as photos (which were previously populated) instead of a list.
    2. Also included on this page are some customization options for a compact subscription view. The link to the compact view of the calendar is also shown in this section.

Review​

From the Review page, you can publish your calendar and review subscriber performance across devices, and view sources of subscription.

To publish your calendar, navigate to the top right corner and click Publish. Next to this button is the share feature which allows you to share your new calendar on social media via direct link or by copying the URL.

Performance can be tracked on this page in a number of ways. View more information on reporting here.

Settings​

After your calendar has been successfully published you can make amendments to calendar/subscription settings in the top right corner of your screen under Settings.

Audience segmentation​

Within general settings is the ability to Hide this calendar on your portfolio and confirmation pages if you’d like to give a specific segment of your audience access to the calendar.

Email capture​

On the Email Capture tab, you can enable important features such as email capture, marketing opt-in selection, and additional custom opt-ins to provide the necessary terms and conditions to subscribers.

If you are not able to identify a subscriber in the query string of the subscribe link, we strongly recommend enabling email capture. This can be optional or mandatory for users to provide their email address and gives you better understanding of your subscribers, and allows Rokt to measure the impact of your calendar events and optimize your calendar.

Social​

The Social tab provides additional information for sharing content across the various social media platforms. By default, sharing a calendar on social media will show the calendar header image, if you want to use a different image please upload it on this page and be sure to complete the Twitter card and Facebook open graph tags.

Subscription options​

From the Subscription Options tab, you can set up customized delivery of calendar events across the various calendar tools and devices. For example, you can enable or disable subscriptions with Outlook, Apple, and Google on desktop or mobile.

You are also able to configure the SMS subscription option that allows desktop users to receive an SMS with a link to continue the subscription on their mobile device.Below that is the ability to allow event reminders to be turned off, which is available should subscribers request it.

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