New NEON Release: An Overview

(1) New Campaign Email Templates

NEON introduces a new, simplified way to make more complex campaign emails and newsletters.  You can access this new feature from the "Campaign Emails" screen by clicking on this new button that you will see on the right of the usual options:

This new editor enables you to more easily create emails from basic template structures, that are proven to work well with email inboxes of every kind.  You can edit each story or feature in your newsletter to create
complex mailings with ease!  More importantly, now you can copy and paste your email content from Microsoft Word or other applications into the new editor and still keep the consistent, professional-looking layout styles and fonts those templates provide.

You will be asked to choose from a number of template styles, which vary based on format, scheme, number of text sections, position of sections or columns, etc.  Each section of your template is individually customizeable as seen below:

  

 

(2) New Activity Calendar, NEON To-Do Area, Email Reminder, Oulook "To-Do" Area Export

NEON is now an even more active system.  All activities listed under the "Activities" section of each contact record, as well as all of the "Activities" listed under grants and solicitations, are now linked to a “To Do” area in the NEON control panel.  These "Activities" can now be linked to an email reminder, and can even export to the "To-Do" area in Microsoft Outlook.

This enables you to create activity reminders for yourself, for other staff members, or even your constituents.  NEON will send you, your staff, or your constituents an email reminding you or them about the activity.  You can set the email reminders to be sent at any time you want, and even set the number of minutes and hours ahead of time to send the reminder.  Use this to create tasks for yourself, remind yourself about meetings, remind fellow staff members about activities, or email your constituents with reminders.  Then you can export all of your activities to your Microsoft Outlook and keep on top of things there as well.  To export to Outlook, click the “Activites” button on the light blue bar of the “Communication” tab, and then click “View All Activities”; you will come to a page where you can sort and export your NEON activities.

This is a critical new piece of our software, that if used correctly can help you keep track of everything you need to do inside & outside of NEON.

 

(3) New Form Builder & Survey features: Add CAPTCHA, Donations, Membership Signup

You can now add Donation and Membership Signup features to your surveys or othe custom forms, so that people can contribute to your organization right away, without leaving the form!  This will enable you to build completely customizable Membership & Donation pages with the exact fields you want on them.  You can add HTML, text, custom fields, NEON fields, and more; and put them all in the specific order and layout you want.  You can even build ithe form across multiple pages.  In addition, a CAPTCHA can be added to your surveys.  This is a group of randomly generated numbers and letters, displayed in a distorted manner, as seen here: 

The person completing the survey is required to enter the sequence of numbers and letters into a text box.  Computer "bots", or automated programs designed to send floods of spam or bogus form entries, cannot read a CAPTCHA, so they will not be able to complete your forms.  For more information on these features or to add the Survey feature to your NEON package, please call (888) 860-NEON or contact support@z2systems.com.  This is available for $20 per month for unlimited forms & survey.

 

(4) Manage your constituent menu options

You can now arrange the list of options that your constituents see in the drop-down menu on their login page. This enables you to give your members, donors, or supporter the exact experience & options that you want them to receive then when they login to the NEON system.  You now control the landing page, and the available options.  You can remove unnecessary options, or even change the wording or description of options to conform to the language of your organization!

This will enable you to limit the options available in the login to exactly what is important to your constituents.

 

(5) Manage order, display of custom field options

Want the choices in custom fields to display in a custom order?  Using a drag & drop editor you may now arrange the display order of the options that appear on your Custom Field questions or data requests, regardless of the order in which these options were entered into NEON.  For instance, here are a number of randomly entered answer options for the standard "How did you hear about us?" question:

 

(6) New Events features: Attendance tracking and waiting lists

 If you have specified a maximum number of attendees for a particular event, NEON will now track the number of registrants against that number. Any additional constituents who attempt to register for the event will be notified that registration is full, but that they have been added to a Waiting List in case any of the current registrants cancel. If any valid registrations are removed from the system, you can move those members on the Waiting List to your valid registration list and apply their payment. In addition, any event for which registration is full will display the word "Register" in red under your Events tab, so they can be easily identified for further action.

More great features coming soon!