There is a book called "Business Contact Manager for Dummies" (written by a
forum member here) that can be picked up easily. I havent read it myself, but
it should provide you with the necessary information. But first of all, try
the "Help" function, it will also give you some help.
Here is however a detailed procedure, given that you want to send an e-mail.
(You cant attach a file to a letter, as it obviously will go to printing
instead of e-mailing.)
(My excuses if my desciption on some tabs are wrong, I use a norwegian
version of BCM)
On Step 1 (Large number on the left):
1. Select "Marketing Campaigns"
2. Select "New" to create a new campaign
3. Give your campaign a name, it is indifferent what you call it
4. On the "Campaign Type", select "E-mail" from the drop-down menu
On Step 2:
1. Leave "All business Contacts....." as it is and click the "..Filter" button
2. Using the filters, do your customer selection to who you want to send you
e-mail. (The system will automatically only select contacts that have an
e-mail entered.) Press "Ok" down to the right when you are done and have
reviewed your list of recipients.
On Step 3:
1. On "Delivery" select "outlook" from the drop-down (or leave it if outlook
is set as default, it should be"
On Step 4:
1. Push the "Create" button. This will prompt you to save your campaign,
select "yes".
2. Your e-mail interface should now start. Enter a subject for you e-mail,
this will be the subject on all e-mails that are sent.
3. Push the "Insert" tab on the ribbon, then select "insert file". This will
start your explorer file browser, defaulting to your "Documents" folder.
4. Locate the the file you want to insert, select it and select "insert"
down to the right.
5. You should now be brought back to your e-mail interface, and the file
should show below your subject line.
6. Write what you want to say to your customers in the body field.
7. Save and close the e-mail interface. (Select the windows button top-left,
choose save, then close the interface by using the "X" top right. You may
have to click the close button twice)
Step 5:
1. You shold now be back in your Marketing Campaign interface. Pust the
"Start" button to send your emails.
2. When the e-mails have been sent, you can use the "Track" button on top to
see that the deliveries are ok. Depending on how many contacts you have, and
the size of your e-mail + attachment, sending can take some time.
Some notes:
1. Remember that every single outgoing mail will include your attachment. I
would strongly advise you to consider the strain you will put on your e-mail
server if your attachment is larger than a say 2-300kb, especially if you
have a lot of contacts. This will also spend a lot of storage space on the
server. Reduce the size of your e-mail and attachment as much as possible. If
your attachment is a Word document, perhaps consider converting it to a pdf?
2. If you are sending these e-mails to your customers, consider that perhaps
not all of them have high-bandwith, or perhaps also recieves e-mail on their
phones/pda's. They will not be very happy if they spend 30 minutes of their
holiday time opening a sales letter that is jamming their devices from
getting other important e-mails. Can you link to a page on your web site
perhaps, instead of having the attachment at all?
3. If you send to more than about 1000 contacts, you need to split up your
e-mails in order to avoid getting SQL TCP errors. If you have more then 1000,
use your "filters" as explained above, making sure you do not send more than
1K e-mails. Just repeat the whole scenario to send to all your contacts.
(Expect the system to spend several hours to send this many e-mails - if you
have this many contacts, really reconsider the size of your mail yet another
time)
3. That said, I use the Campaign to send several thousand e-mails through
the system every month to all my customers, and it works like a charm. Only
thing is that I need to delete the log files and sent e-mails afterwards in
order to keep the system sizes down.
Good luck! -Vidar C.
