Mass Emailing via Report Generator

Report Generation

As you have learned in the Report Generation article, you are able to use ESC to mass market and email your customers. The Report Generation tool provides more powerful methods to select a more specific group of customers that you wish to contact.  Let's take a look at that.

1. Find the Report Generation screen in the Customer Info menu under the Reports section.  In the Report Generation screen, you'll find an assortment of tabs that cover various modules in ESC.  You can utilize any combination of criteria in these tabs to target the customers you wish to make contact with.  
   For instance, if you want to contact all Active customers within the 33907 Zip Code that have an active agreement with you, you would enter 33907 as the Zip Code on the Customers tab and then switch to the Agreements tab and set the Active State field to Active Only.
2. Fill in your criteria for your target customers and then click OK.
3. The next screen will provide you with a variety of options.  The panel on the left will allow you to print a report for the customers in the list, print labels for them, or export them to a tab-delimited text file that could be exported into Excel.  The first three options you'll see will be...
• Mail Merge using a Template - allows you to print out letters from ESC with each customer's information filled in.
• Email using a Template - allows you to email letters from ESC to customers with their information filled in.
• Email All Customers with an Email Address, and Print Remaining - allows you to email letters to all customers with an email address and will print out a letter for each customer who lacks an email address.
4. If you do not already have a Template built, you can do so by clicking on the Manage Word Processor Templates option at the top of this screen.  This will provide you with a word processor that allows you to build a letter or document to be sent to your customers.  If you already have your Template setup, you can skip this step. For more about building Word Processor Templates, click here.
5. To send your email select either Email using a Template or Email All Customers with an Email Address, and Print Remaining. Then click the Begin button.

In the next screen, you'll be asked to select the Template you wish to email to your customers from a drop-down menu.  Once you select a template, the Document Name field will automatically fill in with the name of the template, followed by today's date.  If you select the Attach sent documents to customer locations option, the Document Name is how the file will be named when it is attached.  You'll also have the ability to send emails in batches, rather than all at once.  Many email providers will limit the number of outgoing emails that can be sent in a day.  So you can use the First record and Last record fields to select the range of emails to be sent.

Click the Send button to view the message you are about to send in the Email screen.  Here, you will need to enter a Subject and a From (reply) address.  If you're ready to send this message on its way, click the Send All button to send this email to all customers in your list.  Note: If you click the Send button instead, only the current message will be sent and the next one in the list will be opened for editing.

Report Generation isn't just for contacting customers - it also provides you with the ability to generate reports, print labels and export customer data to a tab-delimited text file, the same as the List Views.  However, unlike the List Views, Report Generation provides you with the ability to fill in criteria for your customers across multiple modules.