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Setup Create Templates Sending Emails Lookups Delivery Status Troubleshooting |
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The main e-BLAST! screen is roughly divided into four quadrants.
The upper left quadrant is where you select your Lookup Criteria. See our tutorial on FortuneFlow Lookups for details on this easy to use, yet sophisticated lookup tool. It drills down to get the records you are after, much faster than ACT! itself! Selecting Merge Documents Select your merge document on the lower left quadrant of the main e-BLAST! dialog, by navigating to it and double clicking it from the list on the right of the Merge Document Tab, or clicking the down arrow on the right of the tab to select the your HTML or plain text merge document. When you click on the file selection listbox, or the selected merge document textbox at the bottom of the merge document tab, the tab extends to the right to ensure that you can see the full name and path of the files you are selecting. When the focus leaves these controls the tab snaps back to it's original size! Selecting Attachments The Attachments tab is also on the lower left quadrant:
Navigate to the files you want to attach to your emails and double-click them on the files listbox on the upper right of the tab, or multi-select files by holding down the [CTRL] key and clicking on multiple files, then click the down arrow to select them. e-BLAST! has a handy "Auto-zip" feature that will create a zip file "on the fly" and add attachments in the same folder to it. Just give it a name and optional security password and the zip file will be created in the same folder as the attachments, the selected files will be added to it, and sent as the attachment! This saves lots of time messing around with clunky zip file utilities and helps to make your emails deliver faster. if your document contains an Attachments merge field, the merge field will add a bold heading with the list of attachments: Attachments: Mydocument1.doc If you have created an Auto-zip file, the same Attachments merge field might look like this: Attachments in MyZipFile.zip: Mydocument1.doc The use of the Attachments merge field is highly recommended, as it lets your audience know that any attachments were intended and are not viruses. See the Creating an HTML Email Template Tutorial for details on the Attachments merge fields.. The HTMLBody Field Textbox The #HTMLBody# merge field is a great feature that you can include in your standard HTML Letterhead Template or any template with "stock" information that you want to be able to personalize with a note specific to your latest conversation with a contact. The way it works is simplicity itself: Whatever you type into the HTMLBody field textbox will be spell-checked and merged into the #HTMLBody# merge field in your templates. This makes performing a "one of" HTML email with your brand, picture and signature graphic, etc. just as easy - in fact easier, than doing a plain old text email message. This is crucial to effectively branding and differentiating yourself from your competitors in every email you send. The Paste Append Tab The paste append tab in the upper right quadrant, allows you to paste HTML and/or text to the bottom of the email(s) you are sending. This makes it easy to use your standard HTML Email letterhead when responding to emails sent to you, or to copy and paste a web page or any text to the bottom of your emails.
Click on the "Normal View" Toggle Button (which applies to all three tabs on the upper right quadrant) and it will display the "Enlarged View" which will expand the tab to cover the e-BLAST! main dialog. Toggle it again to return to the Normal View. This gives you room to view and edit more efficiently. If you toggle the HTML Mode/Text Mode toggle button, you can also paste plain text to the bottom of your emails. If you paste or enter data in both, then the HTML will appear first followed by the text. The Text Message Tab The Text Message Tab is where you edit the Alternate Text Message, which is what people who can't receive HTML will see, if they have a "MIME" (Multi-part Internet Message Exchange) aware email client. The
alternate text is automatically generated from your HTML
template, which you can then edit to suit. You can
create a text message that is completely different - perhaps
pointing the reader to the real message on your website with
a link, etc. To enter a hyperlink, simply type the full URL
to the desired page, and the recipient's email client will
translate it as a click-able hyperlink. If your HTML template has been edited since it's initial loading into e-BLAST!, the program will sense this and reload the HTML. It will also prompt you to ask if you want to re-edit the Text. If you select Yes, e-BLAST! will put the focus on the Text Message Textbox so you can edit it. To regenerate the alternate text from the HTML, click the reset button on the Text Message tab and it will regenerate the alternate text from your HTML template. The contents of the text message textbox are spell-checked when you click the preview send or Send buttons to deliver your messages. Record Updating and Sending Options e-BLAST! has great updating and record keeping capabilities, which are found in the lower right quadrant of the screen:
The toggle buttons tell you
what the current function Familiarize yourself with the options for each toggle button by cycling through them and observing what the text says. Some have two positions, and others have three. This is a clever way that FortuneFlow packs lots of function into a single dialog, while communicating everything you need to know clearly, to save you from endless confusing layers of dialogs. Most are self-explanatory, but the following items deserve special mention: Notes/History Record Keeping As illustrated above, whatever you type in the "Add Note to Notes/History Tab" textbox will be added to the Notes/History for each contact, as part of a single note that includes all notes, including Subject, HTMLBody Field text, and the Merge Document if hyper-linked to the contact record. Any hyper-linked email attachment documents are entered as separate hyperlink entries on the Notes/History tab. Send ACT! Records From "X" to "Y" This
selection allows you to restart a merge at the last record
that failed, to restart from where it failed. If your
computer crashes mid-merge, it isn't a disaster with e-BLAST!.
It's a good idea under such circumstances, to perform
routine maintenance on your ACT! database, including running
the ACTDIAG.exe Scan and Repair database routine found in
your ACT! program folder. This will backup your
database, fix any problems that might have caused a crash
and re-index it when you re-open the database in ACT! The Merge ACT! Data/BCC Method Toggle Button This controls whether or not e-BLAST! will attempt to personalize your messages by merging Contact merge fields. If the BCC method is selected, it will generate your emails faster, but won't personalize the subject or body of your email. Any contact merge fields won't get merged, but any User's My Record merge fields, Attachments or Distribution List merge fields will be merged. The BCC Method sends one master email to the email address entered in the Header tab of the User's Preferences dialog with "Blind Carbon Copies" getting sent to everyone in your lookup. The BCC increment set on the General Tab of the User Preferences dialog controls how many emails the program will generate per "master email" sent to the address set on the header tab. This will not expose the list of recipients to the other recipients. It also doesn't personalize your message, so you will usually want to use the Merge ACT! Data selection. The only advantage of the BCC method is that if you don't have room on your hard drive for a large merge, the BCC method will allow you to still get your message out quickly because it only has to be saved and loaded for delivery once, instead of once for each email. The Update ACT! After Sending/While Sending Toggle Button This controls when ACT! will perform the updating of contact records. If you select Update ACT! after sending, it will generate the emails and pass them to the SMTP Express for delivery the fastest, and will log a note to the Notes/History record of every contact that matched the lookup, if their record contains an email address in the ALT Email Address field specified in your User Preferences. If you update your Notes/Histories while sending, it will write to the notes history of only those records as each email is generated, if their record contains an email address in the ALT Email Address field specified in your User Preferences.. The Via SMTP Express/ALT Server Toggle Button This controls whether your emails are sent via the SMTP Express Email server that comes included with e-BLAST! or an alternate server such as your ISP or in-house Exchange Server. Under most circumstances, you will want to use the SMTP Express, as it is many times faster at delivering email than selecting the ALT server will be. The ALT Server method can only deliver one message at a time, whereas SMTP Express can deliver up to 64 messages in parallel at the same time. Some receiving servers perform a reverse lookup against the "From" Email address and compare that to the MX record for that domain, to see if the message is coming from an SMTP server registered for that domain. If the records don't match the connection will be refused. To avoid this, register a static IP for your sending computer with your domain registrar as a secondary SMTP server for your domain. There are other circumstances that could cause this, such as a domain black-listing you for SPAM. Any messages that fail at the server level for this or any other reason, that isn't specifically that the email address or domain is non-existent, can be looked up in the Delivery Status field with the term "Retry Failed Email" after you scan and update your failed items folder. All matching records can be retried using the ALT server (Set up on the ALT server tab of the e-BLAST! User Preferences dialog) See: our tutorial on Scanning & Updating the Delivery Status of Emails for instructions on updating and logging the delivery status of your emails. Managing Campaigns With Groups This is one of e-BLAST!'s best features. Whatever your lookup criteria is, including a lookup by group, you can add all those contacts to a group and/or sub-group at the same time as you send your emails. Simply select the group and optional sub-group to add the contacts to and e-BLAST! will add them to it. You can also remove them from another group (including the lookup group) at the same time! Simply select the group to remove them from on the Remove From Group drop-down list. If the lookup is performed on a Group the email merge will be logged in the Notes/History for that group. If you add contacts to another group, you can log the activity in either the lookup group or the group they are added to (the group they are added to is the default). This makes it easy to move contacts through a campaign in groups. Perform your lookup on Group "A", add them to Group "B" and remove them from Group "A" all at the same time. The next time you perform your lookup on Group "B" add them to Group "C" and remove them from Group "B". Creating New Groups and Sub-Groups If you want to create a group and/or sub-group, simply enter the name of the new Group in the "Add to Group" "ComboBox" and e-BLAST! will create the new group and add the contacts in the lookup to it. To add a Sub-Group, do the same with the name of the Group, followed by a hyphen (no spaces) and then the name of the new sub-group. You can also create both a new group and a new sub-group at the same time. Entering the Email Subject The Email Subject can be Merged with any combination contact merge fields desired, in the same form as you would use in the body of your HTML Email template! The Preview/Send Button This allows you to preview your document before sending it. There are tabs to view both the HTML and Alternate Text versions of the document. You can scroll forward and backward through your contacts to see exactly what your email will look like. You can then send from there by clicking the "send" button or cancel by clicking the Cancel button. The Send Button When you click on the Send Button, a message box appears telling you how many records matched your lookup:
If you choose "Yes" the Email Merge Operation will be executed instantly. If you choose "No" to preview the list of contacts, you will be presented with a table view of all contacts that matched your lookup including the contents of all fields used in your lookup criteria, the Company, Contact and Email Address:
This provides a good check to
make sure that your You can export this table as a tab delimited text file that you can dress up and print in Word or Excel, etc. If there is a Distribution List merge field, a second message box will display after you click Yes to merge. It will advise you of how many contact records match your lookup and ask if you want to enumerate and add the distribution list to your email. Spell Checking When you click Preview/Send or Send, e-BLAST! spell-checks the HTMLBody Field text, if any, the Alternate Text Message and the Subject text. The HTML is not spell checked, as it is assumed you spell-checked it before saving it. If your local pictures don't display, in the preview window and instead show a place holder with an X in it, they may still get properly embedded, but send yourself one to be sure. See the Creating an HTML Email Template Tutorial for details on the correct construction of picture references. |
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